Do You Want More Accountability From Your Team Members?

To be frank, most leaders spend too much time drilling down into the details of their team members’ jobs.

It’s the leaders job to create an environment that has team members accepting real accountability for meeting their objectives!

How much drilling down, micro-managing, are you doing?

Hold your head high if you’re focusing on the master plan, new initiatives and the strategic picture.

What Delegation Style Do You Habitually Use?

You can be certain that your team members’ behaviour is hugely impacted by your behaviours—the way you delegate projects and tasks and the way you monitor those delegations.

If you’ve got the delegation piece right, you’ll have created team members who meet your responsibility and accountability expectations!

Do you need to alter the way you delegate so that:

• You eradicate the need to drill down into team members’ roles—to micro manage?

• Team members exceed the responsibility and accountability expectations that you have of them?

Perfecting The Art Of Delegation

Here’s what expert delegators do:

• Delegate the objective—not the procedure.
  The most common delegation problems arise when you detail “how” the work is to be done. That’s when you get described as a “micro manager”.Only when you focus on describing your intention for the assignment, do you allow your team member to assume full responsibility and accountability. If your team member isn’t experienced, you might want to suggest a possible approach too.

• Have a dialogue and agree the criteria for the project—the quality, quantity, resources, authority and time frame.
  “Agree” is a key word here. This isn’t you saying “Will you do it in 2-weeks?” and them saying, “Yes”. Instead, have a listening dialogue about these criteria—and notice how the quality of the discussion lifts. (For more insights on listening, see “Listening Without Intent”.)

• Jointly decide the checkpoints.This is a common delegation problem—not agreeing the progress reporting timeline with your team member before they start work.You’ll need to regularly “lean over the fence” to see how your team member’s travelling if you don’t jointly devise a checkpoint plan before the work begins

• Appreciate and acknowledge.Ensure they “get” that you appreciate their help with this. And ensure you give plenty of positive and corrective feedback along the way too.

Your Action Plan

When you enable your team members to use their initiative and act independently, within clearly agreed guidelines, you’re encouraging them to take responsibility and accountability, right?

I look forward to hearing about your successes with your remodelled approach to delegation .

“Carolyn’s coaching style quickly gets to the things that matter most. She’s an authentic and results oriented coach who wants people to do well. She helps identify practical, immediate actions that can be implemented to create significant impact. A key aspect I valued was the practical, hands-on case studies which provided specific strategies to immediately improve my performance.”

– Dr David Harris, Research Theme Leader, CSIRO