Holding Others Accountable: It Might Not Be What You Think
By Herb Rubenstein and Heather Johnson, MS-Global Energy Management, UC Denver
Introduction
The basic management principle of “holding others accountable” can mean many different things. Citing Victor Lippman’s article in Forbes, he says:
Accountability - aka, effectively handling the "control" aspect of management - is a surprisingly pervasive problem in business.
For some, it’s conducting the annual, six-month or quarterly evaluation and giving a person a score, usually on a five-point scale. To others, it is checking in with them just before a deadline or event to see if everything is on track. For some, it is collecting information on what an employee is not doing well in order to fire them, demote or transfer them, or otherwise show that employee that their work is not satisfactory.
However, even though people disagree with what “accountability” means, there is strong evidence that people do not think most managers are good at it. A Harvard Business Review article cited at,
https://hbr.org/2012/11/one-out-of-every-two-managers-is-terrible-at-accountability
showed a survey in which 46% of the 5,400 managers in their database were rated poorly on this category.
Our view is that most managers actually miss the essence of accountability. We define the essence of accountability as:
Providing support as needed to assist an employee successfully execute a project, reach a deadline, and perform to their potential.
The Key Elements of Accountability
Let’s assume manager A gives employee B an assignment and wants to hold them accountable, in the way we define it. The manager does not want to micromanage, yet does want to do what they can to support the employee in being successful. What are the steps the manager should follow in order to achieve success regarding accountability?
Step 1: Ensure the employee selected has the knowledge, skills, and ability to perform the assignment successfully.
Step 2: Ensure the employee has the time, resources, training, and commitment to perform the assignment successfully.
Step 3: Ensure that the full scope of the assignment, deadlines, expectations, and goals of the assignment are clearly spelled out for the employee to learn and review as necessary.
Step 4: Ensure the employee understands the full scope of the assignment, deadlines, expectations, and how to navigate through the organization to perform the assignment successfully.
Step 5: Ensure that the technology of the company is supportive of completing the assignment successfully.
Step 6: Ensure the team assigned to assist the employee in undertaking the assignment is capable of successfully assisting the employee.
Step 7: Ensure that a reporting system is in place for the employee to let the manager know regularly how the work on the assignment is progressing and any barriers or challenges can be communicated in a timely manner.
Step 8: Ensure that if there are truly unforeseen circumstances causing this assignment to be more difficult than expected, the manager can provide the employee and their team with additional resources, additional time, and whatever is needed to successfully overcome these unforeseen challenges.
Step 9: Ensure the manager stays committed to seeing the assignment is completed successfully and that the employee and the team assigned to the employee know that this assignment is important to the organization.
Step 10: Ensure the manager holds regular meetings in a fair, non-threatening environment so everyone working on the assignment can speak openly about how the assignment is proceeding.
Redefining Accountability
Without implementation of these ten steps by a manager, it would be “unfair” for the manager to play “gotcha” and evaluate the employee as doing a “poor” or “needs improvement” job if the assignment were not successfully completed on time or on budget. Holding others accountable starts with how the person holding the others accountable carries themself, then second, goes to how the employee acts or performs.
On the other hand, it is unfair to the other employees in an organization when one or more employees are not performing up to a proper standard. Trust further erodes when no action is taken by the manager to counsel or try to assist the employee in doing a better job. The intention is not to put all of the blame on employees not performing adequately squarely on the manager failing to follow the ten steps we prescribe. These ten steps are necessary to be fair and hold an employee accountable, but they do not ensure success. Only good work on the part of the employee in conjunction with proper management can ensure success on the assignment. The key being that both the manager and the employee(s) keep open communication as they strive for the goal together.
On the other side of the table, when an employee is actually trying to do their best, the days where managers can sit back and play “gotcha” with their negative evaluations of employees also seem to be coming to an end. PwC, Deloitte, and many other organizations have ditched this pro forma, once in a period, evaluation system for a 100-hour review process designed to support the employee in being successful. This is a great step in the right direction.
It’s also an opportunity to review as a company if the employees with concerns repeat similar narratives about the manager despite being coached. The manager could be undermining the success of the staff with their poor leadership. Having a 100-hour review is designed to keep small problems small. Incremental thoughtful conversations, however brief, lead to a more insightful review of the employee as well as their leadership. Allowing both to stay on track to being successful inside the organization.
Conclusion
However, until managers adopt either our ten-step “accountability” process or an even better one, most managers are going to continue to be graded as being “poor” when it comes to holding others accountable. They will be rated “poor” in holding others accountable either:
a) because they don’t come down hard enough on those who do not perform adequately in spite of proper support by their managers (the ten steps above) or
b) because they do come down on employees for not performing well when they themselves missed some of the ten steps they should have performed to help assist the employee in being successful.
Holding others accountable is not easy. Many errors can be made in the process and they are not easily forgotten or forgiven by employees. The reputation of a manager is often based on how they hold employees accountable.
One relevant example of how one great manager held all of his employees accountable for every meeting the manager held with each individual or group of employees is embedded in the questions he would ask when he walked the halls. What made this fair was that each employee going into each meeting knew they would be asked, or could be asked these questions at any time by the manager.
After the meeting, the manager would come up to an employee and ask these questions:
1. What did you get out of our last meeting?
2. How have you applied what you got out of our last meeting?
3. How has the client benefitted from how you applied what you got out of the last meeting?
4. What are your next steps in this regard?
These four questions presume that the manager held a valuable meeting and the employee received information or instruction in the meeting that was valuable to the employee and the client.
This final example shows the clear responsibility of both the manager and the employee for making “accountability” work for everyone, including the client.