What stage is your team in? ( Team Composition Series 3/3)

Teams go through different phases and stages.  Dr. Bruce Tuckman published his 4-stage model in 1965 – Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing and added a fifth stage, Adjourning in the 1970s. The theory explains the predictable and evolving formative periods most teams experience.  As a leader, your job is to recognize what stage your team is at and think about the right interventions to move them along the team development continuum to reach peak performance and achieve more than they thought possible.  

Let’s jump into Tuckman’s five stages:

Stage 1: Forming.  When a team first assembles, there can be excitement, they may not be sure how things will turn out but some know it can be a great experience.  People spend time getting to know each other and understanding each other’s best attributes.  Respect is granted where you listen to others and share your thoughts, some may offer some goodwill and trust.

There should be a high dependence on the leader for guidance and direction during this phase.  Instead of being reactive to problems that come your way, the leader has the responsibility to be proactive and help their team think about what systems and processes are needed to build a foundation for their best performance.   

Here are some crucial questions the leader should reflect on and be able to answer to some degree before getting input from the team and co-creating the collective culture and structure:

·      What is the team’s purpose?  Why are we here and what are we meant to do? What is the vision that inspires people to jump out of bed every day to partake? What have our stakeholders commissioned us to do? What value are we depositing into the world?

·      What are the team goals, objectives, and KPIs? How can we turn the purpose and vision into a quarterly roadmap?

·      What are everybody’s roles and responsibilities, and how can we best contribute?  How can we share that information so everybody knows other people’s job descriptions and so they know who to turn to for assistance?

·      What are the expectations and agreements that will govern our best work?  What are the ways to weigh in and offer best practices and processes to enhance communication and coordination? How do we want to create psychological safety so we can take risks and reach peak innovation? You can lay out the best way to handle conflict and the process for decision-making get feedback and collectively agree on what would be best for the team.

·      What are the style differences?   How can we improve our understanding of individual preferences, strengths, and weaknesses, and increase our knowledge of working with different types of people?  This one does not need to be fully developed and can unfold as the team moves through the stages.

Stage 2: Storming.  In this phase, team members begin to show their entire colors, and conflict typically arises as there are clashes between work styles, beliefs, values, relationships, and personalities.  Decision-making is more complicated as people become more comfortable challenging each other and the leader.  As team members vie for positions to establish themselves in relation to other team members, they second guess coworkers and wonder, "I thought I trusted you, but now I'm not so sure."  If progress is not being made, they have more questions and concerns, assert their opinions and compete for power and attention.  If the team is too big, subgroups and cliques form, and there may be power struggles and blaming of others.   If not handled well, many teams do not move beyond this stage; they stay underperforming, and it turns out to be a relatively disappointing experience.

Leaders can play an essential role in pushing the team forward.  They can normalize conflict and seek to resolve it productively instead of shying away from it.   For example, when a co-worker says or does something that's not aligned with the team culture, step in and ask them to explain their approach and how it matches with the team’s purpose or culture.  You can revisit the original agreements about having an open and safe forum to exchange and pressure test ideas, even if not in alignment with others. Leaders can then allow team members the space to express different opinions and “clear the air.”  If you do not put ideas on the table, you cannot do anything about them.  They can establish and reinforce processes for effective communication, efficient meetings, solving team issues, and building trust to get teams to see that solving these interpersonal challenges is worth the investment.  Leaders can coach members to take ownership of the success of the team and help them design the changes they want to see. Leaders can ask how each member wants to be a resource for others’ development.  They can reconfirm the vision and get people excited to focus on critical collective goals where the intensity of the emotional and relationship issues is overshadowed by something way more meaningful that will have a substantial impact.

Stage 3: Norming.  When you understand that conflicts can arise and resolve issues amicably, you get rewarded with a genuinely healthy working relationship in the norming stage.  Roles and responsibilities are clear, accepted, and appreciated.  The team builds on processes and understands effective working styles.  Big decisions are made by group consensus or another more effective method agreed upon by the group. More minor decisions may be delegated to individuals or small, self-organizing teams within the larger group as responsibility and ownership are distributed.  There is a rhythm of addressing issues and appreciating differences and strengths as people work toward a common goal.  The impact is that morale and productivity increase, trust builds, commitment and unity strengthen and care for each other, and the work grows.  There is general respect for each other and the leader.  The team may engage in fun social activities and people are generally set up to do the work that everybody agreed upon.

Leaders can create success in this stage by empowering behaviors that allow people to be on the same page, giving and receiving feedback for development, sharing leadership responsibilities, and managing change collaboratively.  At this stage, groupthink can seep in; there could be the temptation that members could feel that they need to get along to go along because there is the fear of going back to the conflict stage when things were not fabulous.  The leader can be on the lookout for this unhelpful development and invoke processes to draw out multiple perspectives and normalize productive disagreement, leverage the strengths of each, take quick action, settle conflicts, and maintain a positive, productive climate.

Stage 4: Performing.  This is an incredible work experience where you are thriving on multiple levels producing excellent results, and having great relationships; it is a 1 + 1 = 3 type of equation; it's an intoxicating feeling.  The team is more strategically aware; knows clearly why it is doing what it is doing.  They have a high degree of autonomy as they go after the shared vision; they tend to overachieve and collaboratively make decisions with the leader.  Even with a high degree of freedom, they know they can depend on each other at any point.  Disagreements are resolved within the team positively, and necessary changes to processes and structures are made by the team regularly to serve the evolving needs best. They are comfortable asking for help and offering it because it is about the team-first approach, and there is a level of safety where people can bring their authentic selves, both their successes and struggles.

A leader can foster this successful stage by allowing even more flexibility in team roles, so people feel like they are being challenged. Leaders can create future leadership opportunities, offer development and support to help people achieve their career aspirations.  Leaders can leverage the learning and spark additional team creativity to attain new heights as they collectively advance. Leaders can also pay attention to momentum building and stalling moments. Daniel Pink also offers some interesting research about midpoints, which is the phenomenon of how teams tend to lose steam mid-project.  With this knowledge, leaders can offer galvanizing interventions to work with this dynamic to keep the momentum unbroken.

Stage 5: Adjourning.  This was added by Tuckman two years after his initial research.  Adjourning is the team’s break-up, hopefully when the task is completed successfully, its purpose fulfilled; everyone can move on to new things, feeling good about what's been achieved and ready to contribute elevated skills to their next body of work.  From an organizational perspective, recognition of and sensitivity to people's vulnerabilities is helpful, particularly if members have been closely bonded and feel a sense of insecurity or threat from this change.

Leaders can mark the occasion and adequately reflect on all the excellent work capturing each person’s contributions and making them feel proud for being a part of a memorable experience.  They can create hope for the future that they have skills and abilities and effective work practices that they can transfer to their next project.

 As a leader joining a new team, it is useful to find out what stage your team is in because if you enter their high-performing stage and treat them like they are in the forming or storming stage, they will be unhappy. It’s helpful to begin with a lot of listening and observation so you can spot where they are.  You can ask questions such as - what’s happening on the team, where is everybody, what are the best aspects of this team that you want to leverage going forward, what tweaks would you like to make, if any, to do even better work, how can I be most helpful to advance the team?  Instead of thinking you have the right diagnosis, they can tell you what they want without knowing the details and history.  Once having a deeper understanding, you can co-create the work together so all parties have a stake.

These five stages can progress and regress depending on team makeup, leadership, and client work changes.  When that happens, it is helpful to revisit the forming stage, even briefly, so you can put together a clear roadmap that will add eventual speed to the process. Knowing where your team is and how to support them will allow them to do their best work.

Quotes of the day:  Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is a success." – Henry Ford

Q: What stage is your team in?  As a leader, how would you like to support your team?  As a team member, how would you like to contribute? Comment and share with us; we would love to hear!

 As a Leadership and Team Coach, I partner with leaders and teams to cultivate a flourishing team culture, contact me to learn more.

Bruce Tuckman’s Team Model

team types -which ones are needed? ( Team Composition Series 2/3)

In the last blog, we talked about the definition of a team. This blog will focus on the types of teams depending on the degree of interconnectedness – ranging from independent on one side to dependent on the other, and all the shades in between.  Identifying the kind of team you have can help better nurture it in an intentional way to achieve maximum value.

Let’s jump into 3 kinds of teams:

1. Independent Team.  A mainly independent team is where all members can perform the same basic tasks independently. They may be able to help each other, perhaps by offering advice or providing moral support, but everyone’s success is primarily due to their efforts.  It is about getting what you need by yourself.  In the workplace, it could be teams who work independently and get their job done, and at times they can collaborate to enhance their performance, but they do not necessarily have to in order to complete their tasks.

Some sports examples include bowling and track and field.  In bowling, each person is responsible for knocking down their pins, all contributing to the team’s score and purpose of winning, but essentially individuals do not need to be collaborating at the moment to get their job done.  Similarly, in track and field, players can do different events, and while their efforts contribute to the overall result, they do not need to coordinate to do their job.

Similarly, teachers do not need to collaborate with their coworkers to conduct their lessons and maximize student potential.  Of course, closer teamwork can be beneficial because they can share the most effective pedagogical approaches, build stronger lessons that make connections between subjects, and discuss how each student learns best for a customized approach.  It is also helpful to be aligned with coworkers and have similar norms for students to help build a robust school culture, but they can still teach their classes without depending on coworkers.

2. Dependent Team.  This is when the work of one teammate depends on the work of the others.  It’s like putting together a puzzle, each person has a piece, so they need to problem solve and make decisions together, or the puzzle cannot be completed.

In sports, relay and rowing teams are good examples.  If you are running a 4-person relay race and one person decides not to participate, the whole team suffers and likely would not even be able to compete.  Instead, the way for the team to win is for everybody to perform at their best.  In rowing, members are usually at the same skill level and can move at the same pace because of the high degree of coordination and dependability. 

In corporate, I see this a lot with leadership teams.  They need to come together to align on a vision and commit to getting their teams to carry out the mission and vision to meet the needs of the stakeholders.    

3. Interdependent Team.  This is when team members work together to fulfill a goal, have defined tasks and roles, and depend on each other’s efforts to achieve outcomes.  There can be a range of interdependence with dependence on one side of the spectrum and independence on the other.  Some of their work at specific points can require working individually, and other parts can mean working collaboratively.  For high interdependent teams, the work is integrated; none of the members have separate work.

In sports, baseball and football are common examples.  When playing defense in baseball, there is a higher degree of interdependence; the fielders need to coordinate their positions, catches, and throws to prevent baserunners from advancing.  They share information about batter tendencies and adjust their field position in response to that data.  When on offense, if you are first at-bat with nobody on base, there is some independence.  But, that can quickly transform into interdependence when more baserunners hop aboard as there is a degree of unspoken coordination; the trailing runner cannot advance more than the lead runner. Football is similar; when on offense, there is a high degree of interdependence.  The quarterback connects with receivers by throwing the ball to where the player should be, while the other players will run routes to draw out the defense.  When everybody does their jobs, it works well.  On defense, teammates depend on each other to be in the right spots and make the right moves to stop the opponent from advancing.

This is common in cross-functional teams.  For example, developing a new product requires input from the researchers who need to understand the customer’s needs, the engineer who builds the product, the designer who makes the product look good, the marketer who knows how to brand the product, and the salesperson who knows how to sell it.  Getting those people on the same page initially can make a big difference because they each have knowledge that can enhance the overall product.  While they may work independently a good portion of their time, they know how to quickly come together, exchange information, and accomplish a collective purpose.  If you have departments who do not talk to each other, you get disunity and subpar products, you get a dysfunctional team.

So, Which Kinds of Teams Are Best?

While all teams should understand their roles, responsibilities, norms, and agreements, it is helpful to know what the situation demands and the types of teams you may need as they each offer strengths and weaknesses.

Faced with an interdependent task, you need to have a cohesive and highly communicative team that understands that the team goal is primary and trumps any individual agendas.  They know their impact on each other, the actions that build trust, and how to have harmony.  Interconnectedness requires a higher level of coordination, cooperation, knowledge sharing, and quality time to extract each person’s best.  They will have to meet more frequently because one person’s work impacts another’s.  Interdependence is the invisible glue that engages the team and holds them together.  It sparks motivation and energy as they sync up for efficiency and innovation.  As Keith Sawyer describes in Group Genius, “there is a sort of group flow – a state of peak performance that comes from close work, shared commitment to the goals, and pride in the team.”  Moreover, in today’s VUCA world marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, teams see new challenges pop up all the time so they need the creativity, imagination, complexity of knowledge, and skills that no one individual can bring to the team.  The interdependent team coordination is crucial to solving today’s most complex challenges.

If it is a job that does not require close coordination and knowledge sharing because there are independent goals, then independent teams could be the best way to get the work done in the initial stages and then come together at the end to collaborate.  They still operate in a team environment and can check in with each other at any point to gain assistance and offer support, but do not need to be in daily communication because it could distract from their deep work initiatives.  Teams can fail when you give them tasks that could be a better fit for the individual, no need to force blanket collaboration all the time on all functions, which can be counterproductive. It all depends on defining those crucial moments of collision for peak collaboration and then a divide and conquer approach with opportunities to check in with each other along the way to make sure there is the same drive for alignment.

Author Susan Gerke believes that while some teams think that they are independent or interdependent, most teams are dependent because each person’s work is tied to overall outcomes and pay performance.  And if you’re focusing on goals at a team level and rewarding that, teams should understand how to work as a more dependent unit since there is significant reliance on one another.  At times, individual goals can be met as long as it is in service and aligned with the team. For example, you may have a running back in football who is just 100 yards away from a lifetime record.  Sure, you would like to get the ball to them as much as possible, but if the opposition gains strength and has double coverage on the player, the team would abort that goal of helping that individual and do what is best for the entire team to secure the win, and if it happens that he gets the ball and achieves his personal victory, so be it, it is still a win-win.

When you know the mission and vision of the team, you can design the team with the right level of interdependence so you can combine the individual resources into a collective pool that could be allocated strategically to offer the best and most innovative results.  Tapping into the resources of many will position you to solve the hardest challenges better.

Quote of the day: "It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed."  -Napoleon Hill

Q: What kind of team are you?  What do you look for to do your best work?  What level of interdependence do you need?  Comment and share with us, we would love to hear!

[The next blog in this series 3/3 will focus on the stages of teams] 

 As a Leadership and Team Coach, I partner with leaders and teams to cultivate a flourishing team culture, contact me to learn more.

Teams form around a purpose

What Is A Team? (Team Composition Series 1/3)

The word team is frequently used to describe any group of people loosely working together. The term is often evoked even when there are divergent agendas and little reliance on each other.  There are leadership teams, management teams, work teams, cross-functional teams, and more. Depending on the kind of team you are, you can make decisions to determine how to run it for maximum success and to meet the complex business demands in the modern workplace.

A team is not a bunch – a group of people who coexist.  If we find ourselves on the subway with a bunch of people, we are merely occupying the same space; each person is independent of everybody else, some traveling in the same direction and some not, but there is no kind of coordination.  We may not have much in common and are just in the same place at the same time using the same resource.  Of course, if the subway broke down in between platforms for an extensive period, there could be the potential for a team to form as more coordination would have to occur for all people to reach the same goal of getting out safely. 

A team is not a group – a collection of people who can have some common interests but are not aligned toward the same goal.  For example, maybe a leadership coach is working with a group of lawyers in different industries or companies, which can have many overlaps in their practice such as in their experiences, skills, and challenges.  Still, they are not working together to achieve an outcome so there is no need to align.

A team is not a pseudo team, described by Michael West and Joanne Lyubovnikova as “A group of people working in an organization who call themselves or are called by others a team; who have differing accounts of team objectives; whose typical tasks require team members to work alone or in separate dyads towards disparate goals.” There is usually an inability to collaborate effectively and the sum of the team is less than the parts; they could be performing even better independently.

A team, defined by Jon Katzenback, a recognized expert on teams is “A small number of people with complementary skills, who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals and shared approach for which they hold each other mutually accountable.” Peter Hawkins, author and expert on teams adds “and which has ways of effectively meeting and communicating that raise morale and alignment, effectively engaging with all the team’s key stakeholder groups and ways that individuals and the team can continually learn and develop.” In other words, real teams consist of a group of people working toward a common purpose and have a degree of interdependence in a shared context.  There is defined membership where they combine resources, competencies, and bandwidth as they carry out their collective mission and achieve outcomes.  They accomplish tasks that are too large or complex to be done by anyone.  A team only forms in response to a purpose and to stakeholder needs and usually operates within a system.

The best teams synergize; they know that the output of a team will be greater than the sum of individual contributions.  They complement each other, collaborate, coordinate, communicate effectively, have team spirit, and subordinate their personal goals to the larger objectives if they are at odds.  There are clear roles, well-defined outcomes, and norms or working agreements for peak performance.  They know why the team exists and have aligned that purpose with the organization, and to a degree, their own.  Ideally, they can connect that mission with having a meaningful and positive impact on others.  Author David Burkus argues that the definition of a great team has three qualities – intellectual diversity (diverse thinkers), psychological safety (the comfort in expressing your ideas), and a purpose or noble cause.  While each team includes different ingredients that make up their success, there are underlining commonalities.  To read more about successful team ingredients, feel free to read my blog on the topic.

Leaders play a tremendous part in the success of a team.  While they have their vision, they know how to collect meaningful input from the members to shape it collectively.  Great teams do not just happen; there has to be a degree of intentionality and thought in the design, purpose, values, and contribution of individual strengths.  Doc Rivers, NBA championship-winning coach and recipient of the NBA Coach of the Year award uses the South African concept Ubuntu to drive and define his team, which means “I am because we are.”   It is the idea that there are no solitary humans because a person is who they are as a result of their interactions with others.  He says, “the better you are, the better I am.”   The best leaders strike a balance in coaching teams for who they are today and who they will be someday and extracting the best from each to advance the team unit as a whole.

When you are building a team, there are many considerations to design the best kinds of teams, which look very different than groups and bunches.  What type of team do you intend to build?  What will be the philosophy that governs your team?  How will you learn the stakeholders’ needs for you to be successful? How will you incentivize your team to collaborate?  These are the kinds of questions that pop up in the formative stages of a team.

Quote of the day: "None of us is as smart as all of us." -Ken Blanchard

Q: What does a team mean to you?  Comment and share with us; we would love to hear!

[The next blog in this series 2/3 will focus on the types of teams]

 As a Leadership and Team Coach, I partner with leaders and teams to cultivate a flourishing team culture, contact me to learn more.

What’s distinct about your team?

What’s The Best Way To Address Accountability? (Accountability Series 3/3)

Having an accountability conversation to let somebody know where they stand is essential for an excellent culture.  It should not just happen in one conversation where all your stored information comes out at once, but it should be communicated through multiple interactions. And, as the recipient, while it may not feel good at the time, it is a gift to have that valuable information to know exactly where your performance stands.

Here are some steps to consider when thinking about an accountability conversation:

1. Check in with yourself.  When a work issue is causing you stress, a typical first instinct is to point outward and blame others.  But if you want to have a productive conversation with someone who appears not to get it, first consider if you may be contributing to the problem (even unintentionally).  Instead of asking, “Why aren’t they doing your part,” you can ask a series of questions to look internally first, such as “Is there anything I can do differently to help? Have I been clear about my expectations?  Have I asked what I can do to help?  Have I taken time to brainstorm and review processes?  Have I built an accountability plan with them?”  Self-awareness is a leadership superpower and reflecting on this may help you recognize any unhelpful patterns. 

2. Use the Accountability Dial.  Author Jonathan Raymond offers the accountability dial as a helpful framework to keep others accountable.  There are five steps: mention, invitation, conversation, boundary, and limit.

A. Mention. A brief comment or piece of feedback that you noticed that you want to check in and get more information.  It can be something that might be counterproductive.  For example, “I noticed that the proposal that went out today had aspects that were a little unclear.  If I was the customer, I think they would have had a hard time figuring out what we meant based on our previous meeting.”  The mention can also be empowering – I loved how you kept that meeting on track; I know how distracting it was to keep pace with the conversation going on in the chatbox or off to the side.  It is best to mention right after the event and not wait for the quarterly or yearly meeting.  The mention is about offering a piece of data you notice that is either helpful or hurtful to the person to have timely feedback so they know what to do more of or what to do less of. 

B. Invitation.  This is about asking the person to connect a few mentions and get their take to put things into context and learn about that fuller picture.  Three different isolated mentions on the same topic can help them see a pattern.  For example, if your team member is constantly missing deadlines, you could begin by saying, “I’ve noticed that you seem to need a little more time to get the work done lately (or insert another behavior).   What’s the pattern here?”  They may not have been aware that they have been late in different aspects of the project; let them make that connection and give any additional context that can get at the root challenge.  To test to see if there is alignment on expectations, you can have them provide a self-assessment of what quality of work would look like and what standards would need to be met.

C. Conversation.  It is a one-on-one discussion to learn even more about what’s going on.  You brought information to their attention in your mentions, and in the invitation, you welcomed them to think about their behavior in the big picture.  The goal of a conversation is to listen, remain genuinely open to their take on things, and restore the work instead of casting blame.  It helps to assume positive intent and come from a place of curiosity and support and not a mindset of hostility where there are unhelpful and untrue assumptions being tossed around.  You can start with any of the following:

· The expectation was X and Y was delivered, what is behind this misalignment?  

·  There is a conclusion I have drawn based on your behavior, but I know I only have a snapshot and that there is crucial information I may be missing, so would love to learn more from you.

· Your performance fell short of the goals we set together. I would love to know the barriers that got in the way and what we can do differently going forward.

· Help me understand the disconnect of where we set the goals and where we fell short so we can do things better next time.

You may discover that they are not “lazy,” “incapable,” or “unreliable,” but rather, that they are unclear on organizational goals, and therefore, are not properly prioritizing projects.  You may discover that they need more feedback to do their best or that other obstacles hold them back.  In Crucial Accountability, Kerry Patterson et al note that 70% of project managers admitted that they would be late because deadlines were initially unrealistic.  While none of these factors entirely excuse a broken commitment, lack of initiative, or follow-through, acknowledging what they have said, understanding the underlying issues, and noting where they are coming from can give you a clear idea about how to move forward, even if it means you disagree.  This is an excellent opportunity for you to be supportive and offer positive reinforcement.

If you do not learn anything valuable and they are just slacking for some reason, you need to deliver the truth.  Talk about how their behavior is impacting the company.  You may say, “I know you do not intend to take the team sideways, but when you do not return emails on time that have action items in them, it makes life harder for the rest of the team and more difficult for the customers and stakeholders.” Pointing out their specific behavior always works best when you have built trust and demonstrated that you care.  Maybe they did not have any idea of their impact or did not think it was a big deal, but now understand, and do not want to be the person everybody chases, so they are ready to make some adjustments.  You can also use the contrasting approach, which shares what you are not intending before the feedback.  For example, “I’m not saying it was wrong for you to disagree with me in the meeting, we need to hear everyone’s view to make the best choice, but I think the team listened to your tone as attacking, and it would be better to address your concerns with me privately or in the meeting with a curious and positive manner, how do you see it?”

It’s essential to leave the conversation where you both understand what the underlying issue is, how to address it, what success looks like, what needs to be done, by who, and by which date to achieve it.  Having that type of clarity and mutual agreement on how to move forward can be a game-changer.  You can also have them suggest that they are planning to make changes and even ask them if they are open to trying some new strategies.  You can reassure them that you want them to be set up for success and get one last confirmation – “does this all seem doable given other things on your plate?”

D. The Boundary.  If the conversation and feedback did not change their behavior, you need to have another conversation, and talk about the boundary or the limit.  The boundary is the idea that even though they have been working on something and made some change, it is not enough or not to the desired standard.  I know this can be uncomfortable, but you are providing feedback in the spirit of helping them grow.  Not addressing the behavior would send a message that you approve of their behavior which can continue to harm the team.  The outcome could be that you monitor a specific behavior change you want them to show in a reasonable time frame.   

E. The limit.  A clear consequence and the last step before the person is dismissed. In the conversation, you tell the person you have tried everything you could – coaching, mentoring, feedback, and other supports.  Where we go from here is on them.  They can take the weekend and tell you if they want to stay and present their plan of what they are prepared to do that has not been tried or if they want to go because it is not the right fit for them now and they want to move on.  Two things can likely happen – they can reflect or talk to others to have that wake-up call to realize they can be better and move into another gear and come back and show this newfound initiative, or they will select out.  When you have determined that the person cannot meet the expectations, don’t delay, let them find another place where they can thrive.  As a leader, it is not about keeping everybody happy, it is about keeping the organization humming along where people can achieve their best, and a crucial part of that is emphasizing accountability and maintaining standards of excellence; that’s part of what keeps morale high. 

Raymond stresses that the Dial is not a linear process – it can be turned up and down depending on the situation.  For serious issues, you may jump immediately to the conversation or even the limit.

You can also use a more simplified 3-step framework for accountability which would be to communicate the expectations and observations, follow-up to make sure the expectations are communicated right and are being met, and make the consequences clear. The consequence can be positive or negative, if they are exceeding an expectation, they could get certain recognitions. A common pitfall is that most managers do not do step 1 or 2 well but then go heavy on the consequential in an annual review because they have 6-12 months of stored feedback.

When one team member’s behavior and work performance negatively impacts another, you need to hold the person accountable.  An excellent tool to use is the Accountability Dial, which starts with mentioning the behavior, inviting them to see patterns, having a conversation to learn more, showing the boundary, and utilizing the limit.  Keeping people accountable is the kind thing to do because not addressing their unacceptable behavior would be perpetuating the cycle of failure and wreak havoc on all those involved. 

Q: How do you initiate your accountability conversation for maximum results?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

Quote of the day: "When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice." ― Brené Brown

"When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else." David Brin, Author 

As a Leadership and Executive Coach, I partner with others to help with all kinds of accountability, contact me to learn more.

The best cultures embrace accountability conversations