 Creating team accountability makes your job as a manager a lot easier. No more fighting each day to get the team interested and motivated to do the tasks needed to reach the team goals. And no more having to check constantly that tasks have not been forgotten about, deprioritised or delayed. And it is a pleasure to work in a team where team members support each other, work together to achieve goals agreed, know why their contribution is important and are confident in delivering. To help you in creating team accountability, I am sharing 10 factors important in creating accountability at work in any size of team. For each, I give you practical tips for you to implement to create team accountability. My name is Jess Coles and I've had a 25 year management career in corporate and household names through to SMEs, from professional level through to board director level. Creating team accountability has been critical in my teams delivering more than ask for, in winning best team prizes and in creating a great place to go to work each day. Do visit enhance.training to make use of all the free resources we offer to save you time and effort as a manager. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. So firstly, what is team accountability? What does accountability really mean in the workplace? Accountability is a willingness to accept responsibility, to proactively complete tasks, to work towards and deliver what was agreed. Team accountability expands beyond the individual to encompass ensuring the team meets its commitments, to support other team members and to appreciate and rely on strengths within the team. So the first factor in creating team accountability is to set crystal clear expectations. Communication of expectations is a challenge for us all. What might be really clear to us may not be clear to others. Once we've set clear expectations, managers then have the challenge of keeping those expectations in the forefront of everyone's minds until the goals are reached. Here are six steps to set the scene for creating accountability at work. Firstly, work out exactly what you want to achieve and why and how this helps achieve longer term goals. The more time you spend on this step, the less you spend on the rest. Secondly, clearly articulate what is needed in more than one way. Write down the messages, read them out to yourself, improve and then repeat the process. Third, then articulate the goals to the team clearly, verbally, in writing, in pictures, by gamification etc. Fourth, explain why the goals have been chosen. Fifth, take the team through how they can help reach the goals or ask the team to do this step. And then sixth, repeat these messages again and again until the goals have been reached. A question for you. If the expectations are not important enough for you to repeat and constantly be focused on until the goals are reached, how are they going to be important to your team? The second factor in creating team accountability is to show the team the how. Having clear goals are great. Everyone knows where the team needs to get to and can work towards achieving the goals. But what if one or more team members weren't sure of how they were going to achieve these goals? Maybe they couldn't see how their job impacts those goals. Maybe they were not able to join the dots between the current position and reaching the goals. Maybe they could see some of the steps but not all of them. Or maybe they got stuck on a particular step. Make the time to check in with each person to show them how their areas of responsibility impact on the team goals and to show them how they can achieve what is needed. Talk through each step. Work out the problems and plan solutions. Create a roadmap of tasks and many projects. You could do the thinking and solutioning. Or to create better accountability, you could coach your team or team members through each area we've just been through. Whether you tell or coach, both methods require your help, support and involvement. The third factor in creating team accountability is to create visibility. Imagine playing or watching a complicated sports game with no scoreboard. You have to guess the score all the time. Would you know who won? Would you know who was ahead or behind during the game? It would take work and effort to keep up with the score. It would be far easier to have a scoreboard so you know the score at any point in the game by simply looking. Creating visibility is in effect adding a scoreboard to your team's activities. Some steps to use visibility to drive team accountability include. Firstly, work out what to measure for progress against your key goals. Secondly, set up the processes to collect data, to collate it and then to present the results to the team. Third, create multiple communication methods. Some examples, use a whiteboard on a wall, or email out a dashboard, or discussion of progress in team meetings, or use discussion in one-on-one meetings. It could be newsletters to managers or other stakeholders, or it could be creating games with fun prizes for reaching milestones along the way. There are so many ways to share progress. Make it fun and memorable. The fourth factor in creating team accountability is building psychological safety. Psychological safety means an absence of interpersonal fear, enabling people to speak up without negative consequences, to share ideas, thoughts and solutions, and to respectfully challenge others. Psychological safety is crucial for the performance of teams. 89% say it is essential for leaders to create a safe, respectful workplace, and that's per Pew Research Centre. When creating a culture of accountability, leaders should start by understanding their own emotions and fears, and how these impact on their actions, then turn outwards to supporting others. Eight ways to promote psychological safety on your team to foster accountability include. Firstly, make the time to reflect on what is going on within yourself and around you. Secondly, show vulnerability and empathy with your team members. Third, actively ask for questions and feedback. Fourth, show you value and appreciate ideas and solutions. Fifth, own up to mistakes and be okay with mistakes made by others. Sixth, be open and honest, promote transparency. Seventh, actively listen to others, and eighth, foster support for others within the team. Remember, work on your own self-awareness first, and then work to implement these behaviours within the team to build psychological safety. Essential for creating team accountability. The fifth factor in creating team accountability is to delegate problems as well as tasks. Delegating tasks requires you to have articulated the goal, worked out the problems, devised solutions, and created a plan of action. Then you delegate tasks by telling the team members what to do. This process treats them more like resources or robots, and implicitly tells them you don't yet trust them to do these steps. Delegating problems only really requires you to articulate the goal clearly, or pose the right question. Then you are asking the team members to work out the problems, devise the solutions, and create a plan of action as well as do the actual tasks. Delegating problems gives the team members much more scope too. Firstly, spot problems as far in advance as possible. Secondly, create solutions for those problems, and thirdly, organise and plan the implementation of the solutions. You are helping create a whole bunch of skills and getting individuals to contribute a lot more, which in turn helps them to feel trusted and valued. So delegate problems as well as tasks, and be on hand to coach and mentor the team members to find and implement the solutions, which is great for creating a culture of accountability. The sixth factor in creating team accountability is to encourage team level planning. Just think about yourself. Do you try harder when it is your plan or when it is somebody else's plan? Ask your team to plan how to overcome obstacles, to create solutions to problems, and to work out the steps needed to implement successfully. Working on solving problems together as a team, firstly, strengthens team member relationships. Secondly, increases appreciation of the talents and ideas of others. Thirdly, fosters teamwork. Fourth, increases problem-solving skills of team members. And fifth, increases ownership and accountability at work. These are all great for creating team accountability. And as a manager, you have a vital facilitation role to play to set the right tone, to encourage the quieter members of the team to get involved and to dampen down the more dominant members and to keep the team focused on solving the right problems. Try to be the last to add your ideas and solutions into the mix when asking your team to plan solutions. The seventh factor in creating team accountability is to follow up. Successful managers spend time following up on the activities, tasks and problems that team members are working on. Successful managers do this too. Firstly, remind team members what is important to you and the team. Secondly, to check if help is needed, with creating solutions, with getting the right resources etc. Third, to develop team members as opportunities to pass on skills and knowledge arise. And then fourth, to check on progress. Less successful managers don't follow up much or they do so in the wrong way. Follow up to help and develop first and foremost and follow up regularly. The eighth factor in creating team accountability is to lead by example. As a leader or manager of a team, big or small, you set the tone and rules through the decisions you make and how you personally behave. Your team is watching your every move so they can understand what is OK and what is not. Spend time reflecting on the messages that you are sending through your decisions and actions. Can you achieve the same goal by taking a slightly different approach which will send better messages? For instance, if you expect your team to come to you to make decisions, or you make decisions when your team members ask you to do so, creating team member accountability will be a lot harder. Instead, if you ask for your team members to make decisions first and then confirm those decisions, or you sidestep attempts by team members to pass their responsibilities to you, you'll be able to create team member accountability a lot more easily and quickly. So work hard to manage yourself and how you interact with team members to keep their responsibility and accountability with the team member and not take their decisions away from them. And more generally, work on the do what I do rather than work on the do what I say with your team. Lead by example when driving team accountability. Make sure you hold yourself accountable and deliver against your own goals. The ninth factor in creating team accountability is to resolve conflicts quickly. Every team will have conflicts. Everyone is different, you know, with different skills, different views and different backgrounds. Some conflict is inevitable. How you manage conflict within your team is key. If the conflict is open, good-natured and respectful, you can harness the different viewpoints, opinions and backgrounds to create well-thought-out solutions to difficult problems. Encourage everyone to work towards a collective goal in a constructive, collaborative way while actively listening and considering everyone's input. Facilitate, encourage positive behaviors and jump on negative behaviors while leading by example. There will be times when conflict becomes negative and disruptive. As soon as you spot the signs, firstly, sit down with each party and actively listen to their viewpoint and position. Secondly, bring the different parties together and facilitate their understanding and taking in the other's viewpoint. Third, facilitate the parties reaching an agreement that both accept as a resolution to the conflict. And fourth, help enforce that resolution if the parties struggle to do so themselves. And as a manager, look for the signs of conflict and manage conflict between team members carefully and considerably. Proactively manage any conflicts that arise. The tenth factor in creating team accountability is to celebrate success together. Praise, recognition, acknowledgment of work well done and positive reinforcement. These are important to creating accountability. Taking on ownership and accountability is to take on some risk. Providing an equal upside seems pretty important in my view to creating accountability. Otherwise, why would team members take ownership? The research confirms how important celebrating success is. High performing teams praise over five times more than they criticize. And generally, to keep team members happy, you need to praise them three times more than criticize. Taking the time to celebrate success together is hugely important. So, some ideas to help you. Firstly, look for great results, great behaviors and great decisions by team members. And secondly, when you see them, praise them. Praise them in one-on-one meetings, praise them in team meetings, or by the water cooler, or by email, or through giving prizes, or by putting their picture on the wall as employee of the week. And thirdly, organize team celebrations. Organize team social events when they've passed milestones or hit certain deadlines. Or organize experiences as prizes to share together. Use your imagination and work out multiple ways of celebrating success on an individual and on a team level. Creating team accountability includes genuinely and regularly celebrating team successes together. So in summary, we've gone through ten factors in creating team accountability. These are not exhaustive. Implement as many as possible when holding employees accountable for their work, their behavior, and their actions. Implement these factors to be quicker and more successful at creating team accountability. As a quick reminder, the ten factors in creating team accountability are firstly, set crystal clear expectations. Secondly, show the team the how. Third, create visibility. Fourth, promote psychological safety. Fifth, delegate problems as well as tasks. Sixth, encourage team level planning. Seventh, always follow up. Eighth, lead by example. Ninth, resolve conflicts quickly. And then tenth, celebrate successes together. And if you have any questions on the ten factors in creating team accountability, please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.