Cameron Herold argues leaders should stop trying to "hold people accountable" and instead focus on growing employees' skills. He recommends flipping the org chart into an inverted pyramid—leaders support VPs, managers, and employees who in turn support customers—and investing in coaching, removing obstacles, and teaching practical skills (interviewing, meeting facilitation, product/production management, time and conflict management) so people will self-manage and produce better results.
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So I was talking to a CEO yesterday on a coaching call and we were talking about holding people accountable. And he mentioned a number of times that you need to hold them accountable, I need to hold them accountable. And I realized that most of us have been doing it wrong forever. You actually don't need to hold your employees accountable. What you need to do is grow their skills. Because the reality is people will either hold themselves accountable or they won't. And if you're trying to hold someone accountable to do the stuff they know they should be doing, you probably have the wrong person. Leaders should actually flip the org chart upside down so that the leader is at the bottom, almost like an inverted pyramid where the CEO is at the bottom supporting the VPs, supporting the managers, supporting the employees, and everyone is supporting the customer. So instead of trying to hold people accountable and trying to manage them, what you want to do is give them the skills so that they're better at the job, help them remove obstacles, help cheer them on, help coach them, help develop them. The leader's core job is to grow people, not to hold anyone accountable. So the areas that you want to think about growing your people are things like growing their coaching skills, growing their ability to do interviews, teach them how to be better at running meetings, teach them product management or production management, teach them time management, teach them conflict management, teach them actually how to be more productive in their day. Because if you teach them the skills to be better leaders, they're going to actually get more done. If you help remove obstacles in their day, they're going to get more done. If you help coach them and develop them and cheer them on, they're going to have that energy and enthusiasm. They're going to get more done. So instead of trying to hold them accountable, what you want to do is invest in your leaders to grow their skill sets. They get more done. It's just a mind shift for you. But again, if you're trying to hold them accountable, you're doing it all wrong. Just think about that today.
