How to Build Accountability In Your Team

Imagine you've built a team of people who are all-stars at their individual roles. Every one of them is exceptional and has the potential to become a leader at another company. But they won’t because they don’t have accountability on their team. 

If you’re reading this, it means you’re the team leader or aspire to be one someday. You understand that teams are responsible for their outputs, not just their inputs. You know that to build your team and its effectiveness, you need to create a culture where people take ownership of their performance, and working together as a unit is more important than competing against each other for personal gain. 

That sounds like an awesome place to work, but building that kind of culture isn’t easy. It takes vigilance, effort, and time from everyone involved—especially you as the leader or aspiring leader of your team. But if it’s something you want for your team, then read on for how you can get there:

Set Clear Direction

Before you can create accountability, you have to know what you want your team to achieve. You have to take the time to clearly set that vision out for everyone on your team. And you have to ensure that it's aligned with the goals of the company.

If you’re just taking over a team that has been working together for some time and you want to bring some change, it’s critical that you understand the way things have been done in the past. What was working well? What wasn’t? Why? How do those decisions affect the team today? 

You also need to understand the future goals of the team. Where do they want to go? What do they want to accomplish? Where do they see themselves in six months and in a year? What is the team’s vision? 

Once you understand where your team is coming from and where they’d like to go, you need to clearly and concisely share these things with your team. You can’t assume everyone knows what you want them to be working towards. 

Collaborate on How to Achieve Goals

Once you’ve set the direction, you have to collaborate on how everyone is going to achieve those goals together. This means you need to bring your team into the conversation. 

You should be learning from your team members as often as you’re educating them. You aren’t smarter than the rest of your team, and you don’t know what’s best for the whole team better than they do. You know what’s best for a portion of the team—and that’s great. But that doesn’t mean you should be making all the decisions for the whole team. You want to learn from your team what worked for them in the past and where they want to go. 

You want to understand each other's pain points, issues, strengths, and passions. You should be asking them questions and having conversations, not making unilateral decisions. You have to collaborate with the entire team to establish goals and expectations of how the team will work together and how the goals will be achieved.

Establish a mutual understanding of what success looks like so that every member of the team is aligned and mutually accountable.

Identify and Delegate Tasks

Once you’ve set the direction and have collaborated on how to achieve goals, then identify which tasks belong to which individuals. This is where you should start getting into the nitty-gritty. 

This is a good time to sprinkle in some one-on-one meetings with each person on your team. Sit down with them and ask them what they like to do. Ask them what their passions are and what they’re good at. 

Find out their pain points, frustrations, and areas in which they want to improve. What do they like to do? What do they want to be doing more of? What do they want to be doing less of? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses?

Keep in mind the overarching goal to be achieved, the timing, and who is best qualified to complete each task.

Define Success Metrics and KPIs

Once you’ve identified which tasks go to which people, you can start to define success metrics and KPIs for each task. You and your team must understand what success looks like for every goal you set out. It's also important as a team to agree on how to track work progress on joint deliverables.

Empower the team to determine the timeline necessary to meet the deadline. Identify key milestones and sprints. Document and track team progress publicly.

Success metrics and KPIs are measurements of your team’s performance. They are the standard by which your team will be held accountable. Strive for teamwide agreement on how their work will be evaluated and how their performance will be judged. 

Conduct daily stand-ups, as well as team performance reviews, on a regular basis in addition to one-on-one performance reviews.

Build Trust With Your Team Before Asking for Accountability

Before you can ask your team to be accountable, you must first be accountable to them. This means you have to do your job. You have to show up every day, do what you were hired to do, and be the leader you were hired to be. Prioritize your team as much as you prioritize your supervisor.

It probably also means you have to overcome some trust issues that might have built up over time. Because many of your employees have worked with other leaders, they might not trust you. They might not be willing to give you a chance or follow your lead. They might be waiting for you to fail so that they can say, “I knew it.” 

If you want to earn your team’s trust, you have to be the leader you were hired to be. You have to earn trust with time and effort. And you have to be transparent with your team. Let them know you make mistakes, too, and here are the steps you take when you do. 

Let your team know that you are human and that you are trying. Let them know you have weaknesses that you're working on and that you need support from them.

Conclusion

Building accountability on your team is a long, arduous process. It’s something that you have to diligently work towards. It requires constant effort, vigilance, and patience on your part. But it’s something that is well worth it. 

When you create a culture of accountability when you build a team that holds each other accountable, you can achieve so much more than when you work alone. You can achieve things that you didn’t even know were possible because you were limited by yourself and your own capabilities. And when you do it right, you’ll have an amazing team to show for it. 

Good luck, and enjoy the journey!