Holding Your Team Accountable Is How You Care About Them
Owners ask for accountability and then avoid the conversations that would create it. Caring for people and holding them to a standard are the same job, and the mission is what makes both possible. If you are waiting for a problem on your team to sort itself out, you have already decided, and someone else is paying for it.
Almost every owner who sits down with us says some version of the same thing. I want more accountability. I want a culture of accountability. I want my team to be accountable to each other, to our people, to our customers. Here is what I believe: it starts at the top. It cannot happen any other way. People have to see a leader who does what he says and does it for the right reasons. And it goes both ways. Being willing to be held accountable, to take care of your people and look out for their best interest, is what lets you turn around and hold them to the same standard. What owners want, and what owners do, are often two different things. The same owner asking for a culture of accountability refuses to do anything about the one person dragging that team down..
Before anyone will let you hold them accountable, they have to know what they are being held accountable to. That is the work owners skip. We look for four things in a business before we touch systems, processes, org charts, or leadership teams:
Values, so the culture has something to stand on;
A vision, so everyone knows where we are going;
A Why, the reason that vision is worth everyone’s best effort.
And a mission, so everyone knows whether we won or lost the day.
The why carries more weight than owners expect, because a why is the basis for relationship. For Axiom (and I believe for every business) the why is the reason the business exists at all. Here, we believe a small business changes the world around it more than almost anything else can. The team inside that business gives more of their waking life to the business than they give to almost anything else. During those 40+ hours per week the business gets to instill values, show them what servant leadership looks like, and pull them toward something ambitious enough that they grow on the way. Those team members go home as better spouses, better parents, better neighbors. That is the first way a business changes the world. The customers, vendors and community at large are all downstream of the transformative work a business does for its team members. That’s what we believe at Axiom. That is our why. Every business has a why whether they articulate it or not.
Your why is visible from the outside
Here is what owners underestimate: your why is visible from the outside. People hear it in how you answer the phone. A podcast guest recently told me about his fence being replaced. The old one was 22 years old and patched together after the hurricanes. He called the company a neighbor recommended, and from the first phone call he felt like he was talking to someone who knew him. The estimator showed up on time. The estimate was in his hands the next day. The crew arrived at seven in the morning and worked, and when they came back to finish, they were there at 6:45.
Then his wife noticed the slats on the old gate that they had decided to keep didn't match the new fence. He called, they asked him to text a picture, and a guy was out there the same day putting new slats on a gate nobody had asked them to warranty. He'll refer that company for the rest of his life, not over a fence, but because every interaction said the same thing about what those people believe. You can't fake that. If it's in the phone call, it's because it's in the owner.
Here is where owners lose the thread. They treat caring about people and holding them accountable as if the two pull in opposite directions. They do not. Being willing to be held accountable, and to hold someone else to it, is how you take care of a person and look out for their best interest. Nothing resolves itself on its own. If you don’t prioritize caring for your people, things don’t get better. If you’re waiting until you’ve cared enough to have a hard conversation, nothing changes. It just gets worse. Waiting is a decision, and someone else (probably one of your A players) is absorbing the cost while you put off a hard conversation..
The conversation itself is easier than the anticipation of it. Starting is the hard part. Once you start, the nerves go. Do not get animated. Do not raise your voice. Start with owning the fact that you may not have cared enough, that you’ve let some stuff go on longer than you should have. Be calm, be specific, and explain how what is happening does not fit the mission of the company. Name what has to change. Be honest about what happens if it does not. Then end on a positive note, because you should want this person to succeed, and they should leave the room knowing it. If you cannot bring yourself to end on a positive note your gut is telling you that you are just prolonging the inevitable.
Separate the three problems
Separate the problems, because they are not the same problem. A skill gap is one thing: say so and go get the person the training. The wrong seat is another: look for the seat they're good in. Conduct that affects the team is the one that's hardest, and it needs a specific conversation. “You're good, I want you here, but this has to change. Here's the standard, I need you to meet it, and if you can't, I have to make other arrangements.” That last one is the job only you can do, and doing it well is how you protect everyone else.
When one person becomes a problem, the owner can insulate himself from that problem in a way nobody else in the company can. I have seen owners relocate someone across the building, put someone in a department insulated from them by two layers of management, or just pretend that the chaos being created doesn’t exist. In the meantime other managers are stuck dealing with a toxic team member without the authority to solve the problem. Co-workers are kept from doing their best work. And the owner’s status as a leader takes a big hit. People don’t respect a leader who buries her head in the sand and leaves others to deal with the consequences of her inability to lead.
Own Your Part
When this happens in my business, and it has, it is my fault. I made the wrong call on the hire or the process didn’t do what it was supposed to do. I allowed the person to sit in the wrong seat or I didn’t empower someone else to make the necessary changes. I held on too long, or didn’t pay enough attention. I was too optimistic, or I didn’t look at the data. I avoided the hard conversations, or I left them to someone else hoping the problem would go away.
"In a very real way, ownership is the essence of leadership. When you are 'ridiculously in charge,' then you own whatever happens in a company...As a leader, you are always going to get a combination of two things: what you create and what you allow. Dr. Henry Cloud: Boundaries for Leaders.
The only way to change something is to own it. So I’ve learned to own the failures that happen under my leadership. But not to live with them. I want to own them because I want to change them. And by far, the most significant failure we can experience as a leader is to fail the people we are meant to serve.
Little turns
New leaders often overcorrect. The first time my kids drove the boat they always steered too hard. Rather than focus on the horizon they zeroed in on the path right in front of them. As the boat would swing wildly from one side to the other they would get more and more frustrated, usually because a sibling was critiquing their ability to captain the boat. But an experienced captain has a much subtler touch, such that those in the boat never notice the slight course corrections. Leaders do the same walking into a new role or a bad quarter. Change everything. Clean house. Reorganize by Friday. Instead, be still and just listen. How far off course are you really? The tiny course corrections rarely upset anyone. They don’t cause chaos. You don’t lose valuable time. And more important, you don’t lose the invaluable confidence others place in your leadership.
Plenty of people want the title of leader without the work. But the work is mostly the hard, quiet parts nobody thanks you for, the parts that require more patience than most people have.
Patience begins with people. Every person on your team goes home to someone. What happened to them at work today shows up at that dinner table tonight, in how they talk to their spouse, in whether they have anything left for their kids. Your business is affecting family members and neighbors you have never met. This doesn’t mean we are patient with non-performance or behaviour toxic to the culture. These things have to be addressed sooner rather than later. But there is a big difference between “you need to change or else” and “I believe you can do better, and I’ll do everything I can to help you, but you have to help yourself before anything is going to change.” I sat in one of these conversations with a CEO and he said it extraordinarily well”
“Things have to change, but I can’t change you. If you don’t want to change that’s OK. But you’ll have to do that somewhere else.”
The goal of leadership
I lost my dad last year. It was hard, but in the last few months I found two things were true at the same time. I didn’t know what I would do without him, and I knew I was ready. He had done the work that only he could do. The proof of that work was what I would be able to do without him with me. That is one of the clearest pictures I have of what I am trying to build for the people I lead.
We should want our most capable team members to say, the day after we walk out for the last time, that they would rather have us there and that they are ready to do it without us. Through watching us have hard conversations (and even experiencing being on the receiving end of a few of them) they know how to own leadership failures. By seeing our impatience with nonperformance in the midst of extreme patience with people they know the who is more important than the what. By learning to sense the small, imperceptible course corrections they are now more comfortable behind the wheel. Don’t get me wrong. The thought of NOT working alongside the extraordinary people I get to spend so much of my working time with is depressing. I want us to work together forever. But I have learned to maintain a loose grip. My biggest desire is that whatever they do next, inside our company or outside of it, they are more ready, more capable, more intentional because I’ve done my job well.
Nothing fixes itself
So start with the thing you already know needs saying. The person you haven’t dealt with. The standard you let slide. The conversation you have carried around for a month. None of it gets smaller while you wait. Own the situation so that you can change it. And demonstrate along the way that your motive is the future of the people who give you so much of themselves.
Key Takeaways
Accountability starts with the leader. Your team has already priced how long you tolerate what everyone can see.
People hear your why in the small things: how the phone gets answered, whether the crew shows up on time, whether you fix the thing nobody asked you to fix.
Nothing on a team resolves itself. Postponing the conversation is a decision, and someone else pays for it.
Be patient with the person while being impatient with the conduct.
When you insulate yourself from a problem, you hand it to the people who cannot walk away from it.
Get them ready for the next thing, and provide enough opportunity so they can pursue it without having to leave you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I open a hard conversation without making it worse?
A: Calmly and specifically. Do not get emotional or animated. Own your part of it first, without any qualification. Explain how the current situation cannot continue, name what has to change, and be honest about what happens if it does not. Starting is the hardest part.
Q: How do I tell a skill problem from a conduct problem?
A: A skill gap is a training conversation, or a signal that the person is in the wrong seat and might be excellent in a different one. Conduct that is affecting the rest of the team is a values conversation, and it needs a clear expectation and a real consequence.
Q: I manage a team inside a larger company. Does any of this apply to me?
A: It applies directly. Leadership supersedes titles. Even if you have no direct reports, you lead by serving those alongside you and above you. Opportunity follows leadership, not the other way around.
Q: What if they just take everything they’ve learned here and go somewhere else?
A: Your best leaders need future opportunities to stay engaged and excited about their work. If you can’t provide those opportunities you need to send them on with your blessing. But you also have the choice to let go of some control, empower them with more responsibility and let them pursue those opportunities inside your company.
Q: Can I be friends with the people I lead?
A: You should care about them deeply, know their families, and enjoy the work together. But they already have friends. What they need from you is a vision worthy of their best effort and a leader committed to their growth, even if it involves some hard conversations along the way.
References and Downloadable Resources:
Grow With Purpose podcast: More conversations for owners and leaders who lead with purpose.
Listen to the full conversation: Episode 196 on the Grow With Purpose podcast