Leadership & Accountability: What You Allow, You Endorse
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What you allow, you endorse.
It’s that simple. As a leader of a team or organization, any negative behavior or performance issues that you allow to take place without corrective action are things you are personally endorsing to the rest of your team. By letting it slide, you are essentially saying, “I allow this; this is acceptable and welcome here.”
This is accountability in it’s purest form. Allowing poor performance or behavior is such a dangerous thing to do as a leader because:
a) It sets the tone and the bar for what’s acceptable. Whether you set these high or low, people will follow suit.
b) It showcases your substance and mettle as a leader to watchful eyes (your team). Do you say one thing and allow another? Do you have the courage and ability to address and face challenging situations? Will you hold people accountable?
c) It is uniquely up to you to address those issues as a leader. It falls to you first and is your responsibility before anyone else’s.
Accountability to the Team
You are the one who sets the standard for what is acceptable on the team, how the team shows up together, and what is required and expected of each person. These things must be established and you must hold your people accountable to them.
“It’s not about holding people accountable to you, personally. It’s about holding people accountable to the other members of the team.”
And, it’s not about holding people accountable to you, personally. It’s about holding people accountable to the other members of the team and what everyone is collectively committed to.
For tips and tools on how to do this effectively and establish a clearly articulated culture and set of expectations, check out our blog about creating culture step by step.
When you hold people accountable, you are communicating: “This is our culture and the way we all show up together. We’re collectively committed to this and anything outside of these guidelines doesn’t fly here.”
Fierce Conversations
This topic is absolutely one of the most challenging aspects of being a leader — and one of the most important. It is crucial to be able to have direct, courageous conversations to address performance and behavior issues.
For guidance, I highly suggest reading the national bestseller “Fierce Conversations” by Susan Scott. There is a reason I plug this book all the time: it’s brilliant.
Equip yourself with the tools and capacity to effectively have these kinds of conversations as a leader. Which doesn’t mean barking at people and threatening their jobs. It means earnestly and collaboratively coaching people into greatness and helping them be more successful. Or getting them off your team.
Manage Up or Manage Out
If you have a toxic or high-drama person on your team who constantly under-performs or has a terrible attitude, who gossips and bad-mouths others, or people have quit their jobs because they don’t want to work with this person, you have to do something about it.
If you don’t then the damage to your organization, other employees, and your reputation as a leader will be great. The longer you allow it, the worse it will get. You’ll lose customers, cripple performance, and your best people will leave.
A great article from Medium.com’s The Startup blog makes this point very plainly: “High performers quit toxic work cultures.”
“As a leader, you must have the courage and skill to coach people into greatness, or make the difficult call and get them off your team. ”
As a leader, you must have the courage and skill to coach people into greatness, or make the difficult call and get them off your team.
Do everything you can to give them the opportunity to change, and if they won’t then get rid of them. Stop paying someone to destroy your culture and organization.
Coworkers can’t fire each other, and toxic people don’t just quit, this uniquely falls to you.
To be an exceptional leader you have to adopt this mindset and take responsibility for this. Do not allow anything to take place on your team that you wouldn’t stand up on stage in front of the entire company and say “I personally endorse this.”
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This article was created by keynote speaker Galen Emanuele for the #shiftyestribe. Free leadership and team culture content centered on a new focus every month. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Shift Yes Tribe at http://bit.ly/JointheSYT