MBA2224 How To Hold Your Team Members Accountable

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But a few months and even maybe a few weeks down the line, things start to break down. Things are not at your level of expectation. They're not done right or not done at all. This leaves you frustrated as anything. You're wondering if you made a bad hire, if people are out to get you. If you're not cut out for this, well, I'm here to tell you it has nothing to do with any of that. It most likely has to do with knowing how to hold people accountable. You see a lot of people confuse delegation with disconnection, right? Yes, you should delegate your tasks, yes, you should hire out. But you still have to lead your team, you still have to coach them, and most of all, hold them accountable for what they are supposed to do. In today's lesson, I'm going to share with you what has worked for us when it comes to holding our team members accountable. How to make sure the most important things they need to get done are done right and to your level of quality so you don't keep hiring and firing hoping to get some sort of superstar out of nowhere. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Holding your team accountable is all about expectations. Your expectations of them and their expectations of what their job is all about. Listen, most people that join your team that are hired for a job, they want to win, they want to be successful, they want to do a good job. But doing a good job is not a binary thing. It's not like from one day to the next, they know exactly what they're supposed to do. They're going to be faced with challenges, they're going to be faced with life, with unexpected curve balls. And you got to help them navigate with it. It's your job to try your best to make sure they know what they need to do day in and day out to be successful. A part of that is holding them responsible. First, you have to hold yourself responsible. What does that mean? Well, you're the business owner, right? You're making the hires. So it's your responsibility to make sure they have everything they need to be successful. It's also your responsibility to recognize that they're never going to work the same way you will. You're the business owner. Your life is on the line here. You, by nature will be working at a different rate, figuring things out, solving problems at will. That's why you're the business owner. You know how to do things on your own and make it happen. Your team members, on the other hand, they're going to need some help, and that's okay. So the first part of accountability is letting them know what it means to win, right? What do they have to do so they're successful? This is often known as KPIs key performance indicators. Many people go into too much detail when it comes to KPIs. Really, what I like to do in our team is have a few core KPIs for each position, meaning what are the few things your team member has to do to be successful? What are the most important things? If they do these things, basically they're okay, they're doing all right. And usually it's about four or five things. And the reason why I like it to be five or less things is because it allows them to focus on a few things. Just focus on these things. As long as you do these things, you're okay, you're doing a great job. Plus, when it comes to holding people accountable, they're going to be responsible for these things. There can't be too many things, okay? There can't be too many things they have to keep track of. So most people, they get to this point, they have KPIs, they hire somebody, say, hey, this is what you got to do to do this job properly. Go ahead and do it. But that's not holding somebody accountable. That's just telling them what they have to do. Holding somebody accountable is like holding them by the hand throughout the whole journey and giving them the responsibility to show you their work. Too many people are prompting their team members, hey, show me what you got. Show me what you got. What did you do? What's your results? No, you got to create the cadence where the team member comes to you and shows you the results. So in our team, we like to have at least weekly show your work moments. What does that mean? Depending on the position, there's going to be moments throughout the week where they have to show their work. They have to say, yes, I've done this. Here it is. I've hit this metric, I've hit this goal, I've done this. And here's the explanation. For example, our head of customer support, cj, every week she fills out her own scorecard or she has a key metrics for customer service like customer satisfaction, quality assurance, average response time. It's her responsibility to plug in these numbers in the dashboard. It's also her responsibility to explain the numbers every single week in a standup meeting. This means she needs to say, hey, this is why we didn't hit our target this week. This is the challenge we had so that you can have the opportunity to coach them and say, hey, okay, here's a few things you should try to improve your numbers. But CJ also explains the numbers when she does hit her targets so that we know what we're doing right so we can continue to do that. Part of holding her accountable is putting her responsible for what she needs to do to be successful. The metrics themselves, now that's on a weekly basis, but once a month we meet as a team and she presents how her team's doing in her all hands meeting. She'll also meet with us on a regular basis, maybe every quarterly with one on ones and of course her annual evaluation. So there is constant moments or constant opportunity for her to learn to grow, to ask questions, and to take ownership of. Of what she's supposed to do. Now, it's your job as the manager to craft these moments of accountability, whether it's a weekly meeting and it's live in person or on a video call, or it's asynchronously where they mark things to do and they write down some notes and say, hey, this is what I got done. For example, we just wrapped up a workshop called Win the Year, and one of our team members, Cindy, who's head of marketing creative, created a workbook for us for the course. In order to hold her accountable, I asked her to create the workbook, but also to present the workbook so that we can critique it, help her improve it. So she shot a video on her screen saying, hey, this is the workbook I came up with. These are the things I'd done. These are the little features of the workbook, how you can fill in the blanks. What do you think? She's got to stand by her work and be proud of it and present it. We can go back and say, hey, awesome job. Love all these things. A couple tweaks here, a couple changes here, and we're all good to go. As you can see, I'm not completely hands on, and I'm not also completely hands off. About 90% hands off, and my 10% hands on is they're just a steer to ship, to just move things in the right direction and also give the praise and recognition that is required to keep them going, to motivate them. Now, a question that some of my clients and students ask is, what do you do if a team member doesn't do what they're supposed to do? Like, you show up to the meeting and they don't have their numbers, they don't present their numbers. They're not ready. They didn't do the work. They're not holding themselves accountable. Well, I always say there's two options in this situation. You can either one, let it slide, or number two, insist on what you asked for. One holds them accountable, the other doesn't. One is easy, one is hard, okay? The easy way is just to let it slide and just forget about it and say, oh, it's all right. And that doesn't hold them accountable. That doesn't help you or them. Now, you don't have to be mean about it, but you have to insist on what you asked for and say, hey, okay, you didn't fill out the numbers. We're in the meeting now so that we don't waste everybody's time. After the meeting, I want you to record a video with everything filled out and explain those numbers and send it to everybody. This reinforces that, hey, this is a non negotiable. I need you to do this. This is part of your job. It also reinforces that this is not fun and comfortable to not be ready. I have to do extra work now and record a video and I kind of feel embarrassed in front of my colleagues. That's enough friction to get them to do it the right way the next time around. Now, a lot of people are a little bit uncomfortable with this kind of confrontation, but there's no reason why it has to be mean or again, nasty. You can just have a smile on your face and say, hey, listen, this is really important for the team. I know you can do better than this. How about you fill in the numbers later, record us a video so that we're all up to date. That's it. This is your responsibility as a leader. And often when you're confronted with these types of options, one that's easy, one that's hard, the hard one is usually the right one.

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To wrap up today's lesson, holding people accountable on your team is essential if you want them to perform at a high level. Every single time. You have to train people on what you expect. One thing I learned over the course of my career, you got to show people what you mean. Let me explain. When you say to somebody, I want things done right, I want things to be done perfectly, everything has to be precise. These words have a different meaning to everybody, right? Perfectly precise. You have to show them what you mean. You have to hold them to the standard that you expect. Otherwise you're going to get their version of right and perfect and precise and no one's wrong here, right? Everybody has a different perspective, different standard. But it's your responsibility as a leader to show them what you expect. I'll give you one more good example. The editor and the sound producer of this podcast, Carl, joined our team around 350 episodes into the podcast. We're well over 2,200 episodes now. But when he joined our team, Nicole, the producer of the show, who was editing every single episode up to that point, had to help Carl come on board. Now Carl is a professional editor. He knows how to do this, but he doesn't know at what standard and what style Nicole expects as the producer. So Nicole would ask him to re edit episodes over and over and over until it was exactly the way she would do it, the standard that she expects. Now Carl, bless his heart, was patient with Nicole and was okay with all these iterations, but he now does it better than Nicole has ever done it and she admits this all the time. But we would never get to that point if we didn't insist on holding Carl accountable. And now he's the editor and sound producer and engineer of an amazing award winning podcast. Thanks so much for listening to that podcast, the $100 MBA Show. If you love it, you hear hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode and get access to over 2200 episodes in our archives. Whether you're on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher Radio, hit follow and make sure you follow us so you never skip a beat. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. So many things can get done with a smile. So many messages or hard conversations can get done easily if you have a smile on your face. People can accept what you're saying. People can accept your feedback and your advice. It's just much easier to swallow when somebody is being pleasant about it. You don't have to be confrontational in order to be taken seriously. You can do it in a nice way, in a pleasant way, in a caring way. You'll feel better and so will they. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication, and you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.