 Building responsibility in teams increases team performance and makes working in the team much more enjoyable. Team performance increases because we all do a better job when we want to do the work, compared to when we feel we have to or are scared of the consequences of not doing what is after us. For the manager, increasing employee responsibility reduces the pressure and stress the manager feels and shares the responsibility of reaching team targets across the team. This is a great way to increase team performance while making your job easier. Team members gain more autonomy, more skills development like decision making and problem solving and more interesting roles that will help them progress their careers. For manager and team, what is there not to like? So team members take more responsibility than manager needs to encourage employees to take responsibility and must create a safe environment that rewards employees taking responsibility. Would you take responsibility as an employee if there weren't clear benefits or upsides to you doing so? I wouldn't. To help you encourage employees to take responsibility, we are going through. Firstly, how to give permission to take responsibility. Second, visibly and actively ask for and value team member input. Third, stop telling and start coaching to encourage responsibility in a team. Fourth, protect your team and don't punish learning errors. Fifth, getting the team environment right to build responsibility in a team. At the end, I share 10 factors to increase team responsibility and accountability, so do stay for this. My name is Jess Coles and if you're new here, Enhance.training shares people management expertise, resources and courses teaching you how to build higher performing teams. I've included links to additional videos and resources in the description below as well as a video time stamp, so do take a look at these. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. How to encourage employees to take responsibility starts with how to give permission. Giving permission for your employees to take responsibility is a bit more than just telling your team, please would you take responsibility? A good place to start is setting clear and consistent expectations. Tell your team members the goals and set out what you expect them to take responsibility for. Here an example could be, I would like you to collect at least one million pounds from our debtors by the end of the month. Can you work out exactly who you're going to speak to, how often and the other tactics you're going to employ to make this happen? I will make myself available if you need help at any point. To reinforce those expectations, put the targets on the wall, regularly ask about the plan of action to reach the goal and keep track of results to demonstrate that you are very invested in the goal being reached. Helping effectively when asked is a great way to demonstrate that the goals that you're asking for are a team responsibility too. Another very useful tool is to set out the roles and responsibilities in a formal job specification document. This has several purposes, firstly to clearly communicate your expectations and secondly to provide the employee with official permission to take responsibility which protects them from claims of overstepping their authority. Make it a priority to help the responsible employees do the best job they can and employee knowing they have help and support to achieve their tasks and goals makes it much more likely they're willing to take responsibility. The more responsibility and ownership your team members take, the more likely the team performance will increase. Make it easy for team members to take responsibility. Second, visibly and actively ask for and value team member input. What better way to encourage employees to take responsibility than by asking them to contribute to the ideas and solutions that they will implement. Ask your employees to contribute and be involved in shaping what they work on creates ownership and responsibility for that work. They help to plan it alongside you so feel more motivated to ensure that it is successful. Another great way to increase team performance. Invite your employees to help set team goals. Ask team members to help create solutions to current problems and get them involved in planning how to implement the solutions the team has agreed upon. Regularly and publicly ask team members for their opinions and views. Even more importantly, implement the best of their suggestions or ask them to implement their ideas. Putting their solution into action is a great way to demonstrate that you value their input. The more employees contribute to solutions and team output, the more comfortable team members will be with taking responsibility, which ultimately improves team performance and makes your job as a manager easier. The third action, to give team members responsibility, stop telling them what to do and start coaching them. For employees, it is much safer to do what they are told than to think for themselves, take responsibility and implement a solution that might not work. If they do what they are told, they can always blame you for the failure. This is why many employees ask their manager what to do. You might get questions like, I'm not sure what to do here, please can you help me? Or what would you like me to do? Or I've not done this before, please can you tell me what to do? Or you might even get comments like, it's your job to come up with a solution and tell me what to do, which I've had several times. It is very easy to respond by telling the person what to do based on your experiences with the problems they face. Chances are they already know a couple of solutions that will work. They might even have a better solution than you because they are closer to the problem. If you tell them what to do, then the responsibility for the solution is yours, not theirs. If you respond with questions rather than telling them, i.e. a coaching approach, the responsibility stays with the other person. This is what you want to build their confidence, their decision making skills and their problem solving skills, which in turn will help increase team performance. You might respond with questions like, firstly what options have you considered already? Second, I'm not as close to the problem as you are, what actions do you suggest we take? Third, what problems have you solved that are like this? Followed by what approach did you use? Followed by can you adapt that approach to this problem? Followed by what would that look like? Ask questions and coach rather than telling your employees to encourage employees to take responsibility. The fourth action, protect your team and don't punish learning errors when building a culture of responsibility. Promote psychological safety within your team and building a culture of responsibility is a lot easier. Employees hesitate to take responsibility if they fear that they will be punished if they make errors, if for instance when they are learning a new process or solving a problem they have not encountered before. Remove the fear of being punished for genuine mistakes made while learning and they are much more likely to take responsibility for the work they are doing, which in turns means they will do a better job, thus increasing team performance. When mistakes are made, firstly manage your own reactions carefully. Don't let annoyance, anger, frustration or any other negative emotions show on your face or in your body language. Focus on the positives and help the employee learn from the mistakes and help them rectify the mistakes. Mistakes made from learning and trying new things are quite different from mistakes made through being careless or not trying hard, which should not be accepted. Use learning mistakes to teach, not punish and team performance will increase over time. The fifth action, building responsibility in teams means getting the team environment right. The environment in which the team works is a huge influence on their behaviour. A supportive, open and honest team environment encourages team members to take responsibility and ownership. Environments where mistakes are punished, where there is one rule for the staff and a different rule for the managers, where expectations are not clear and job roles and responsibilities have not been shared etc. Prevents staff taking responsibility. The biggest influence on the team environment is the manager. Through their decisions, actions and behaviours they signal what is acceptable and what is not to everyone in the team. Make your job easier and increase team performance by encouraging team members to take responsibility and ownership. 10 factors to increase team responsibility and accountability are Firstly, set crystal clear expectations for the team and each individual. Secondly, show the team how to reach the goals set. Third, create visibility of performance at all levels including your own. Fourth, promote psychological safety. Fifth, delegate problems as well as tasks. Sixth, encourage team level planning to increase buy-in and motivation. Seventh, always follow up to check how you can help team members do better. Eighth, lead by example with a big focus on your actions, decisions and behaviours. Nine, resolve conflicts quickly and then ten, celebrate successes together. If you'd like to learn more about each of these ten factors then take a look at this video on ten factors in creating team accountability with a link showing on the screen. How to encourage employees to take responsibility is mainly in your hands as a manager. Do your best to create a safe environment which promotes employees taking responsibility and ownership. So in summary, building responsibility in teams is a brilliant way to increase team performance and takes less effort than many other approaches. By taking action to make employees more responsible you are also increasing their motivation and enjoyment of being in the team and you're helping them develop skills that will speed up their career progress. Give team members responsibility and create a safety net to help them do their best job they can. Your team performance will only go up. To recap, the five actions for building responsibility in teams are Firstly, how to give permission to take responsibility Second, visibly and actively ask for and value team member input Third, stop telling and start coaching to encourage responsibility in a team Fourth, protect your team and don't punish learning errors And fifth, get in the team environment right to build responsibility in a team. If you have any questions on five actions for building responsibility in teams to increase performance 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.