EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP ACCOUNTABILITY

SETTING THE CONDITIONS FOR SUCCESS

Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to results.

It is the process of clarifying expectations and holding people responsible for getting the desired results.

It involves objectively measuring outcomes against established goals, while rewarding achievement and confronting poor performance.

If you do a Google search you will find that many sources define “Accountability” in terms of assigning blame when something goes wrong, or like a parent checking up on and correcting a problem child. One well-known book (Crucial Accountability by Patterson, Grenney et al) describes it as “resolving violated expectations, broken commitments, and bad behavior.” We have a different perspective.

To be accountable means to be reliable, to take responsibility, and to meet commitments. This is behavior that produces results. To hold people accountable means to expect them to follow through, to reward them if they do and to ask for explanations and remedy the situation if they do not.

Sure, there may be times when a leader needs to confront poor performance in a forceful way, and this chapter offers tips to help you do that effectively. But in our view, a more productive mindset sees accountability as a supportive collaboration, a partnership between leader and followers, rather than a parent-child relationship, to enable people to successfully meet their commitments and goals.

Organizations succeed or fail based upon their results. As a leader, it is your job to create an environment in which everyone understands that achieving excellence is expected, and everyone gets the resources and support they need for maximum accomplishment. And just as the talent in your organization are all accountable to you, you are accountable to investors and to your Board (once you have one) to build a dynamic, successful organization. 

This article will help you establish procedures so that:

• responsibilities and expectations are clearly defined
• people know what is expected of them
• processes are in place to monitor progress toward achieving those goals and therefore “violated expectations and broken commitments” arise as little as possible. 

First: Be accountable to yourself

If you want people to be accountable to you and the organization, you have to first be sure that you are accountable yourself, that you take responsibility for your commitments and follow through. What are you going to commit to do, and what results are you going to deliver, in order to move things ahead?

Do you say in meetings that you will do X and Y, and then do them? Or do you let them slide? Either way – especially if you fail to follow through – people will notice. As I will remind you throughout the book, when you are the leader, people are watching you. What you do or don’t do, how you interact with others, how true you are to your word, how fair your decisions appear to be, set the tone for others’ behavior and for the organization’s culture. 

If you don’t do what you said you will do, no one will pay attention to the next goal and the consequences that you set. If you don’t take deadlines, target dates and meeting times seriously, nobody else will. So, follow through. If you lack discipline in meeting your commitments, the people who work for you will model that, and you will be a negative role model.   
 

Set goals for yourself, your team, and the organization.

Just as you will be asking your teams to set goals and monitor progress toward achieving them, you need to do the same for yourself. Goal-setting – especially writing down your goals and referring to them frequently – is a tried-and-true method of supporting achievement on a personal level as well as for organizations. (See box, “Goal Setting”) You will probably share your organizational aspirations with your team in goal-setting meetings, such things as:

• growing sales revenue 
• Increasing average revenue per user
• reducing customer acquisition costs
• reducing churn rate
• more effectively monitoring burn rate
• raising a Series B round at the highest possible valuation 
• increasing monthly recurring revenue from new sales
• increasing the accuracy of forecasts and performance in preparation for an IPO and ultimately, being profitable and going public. 
• Improve the recruiting process and in order to acquire more experienced engineers

If you are comfortable being a little self-revealing, you might also share some personal goals:

• “I aim to start all meetings on time. I realize that being late isn’t fair to others.”
• “I will try to delegate more and empower people to make decisions, rather than trying to do everything myself.”

People appreciate this kind of honesty and vulnerability; admitting that you are human doesn’t detract from your leadership ability! When people realize that you have these goals, they will help you achieve them. If you make a point of wanting to start meetings on time, they are more likely to show up rather than straggle in a few minutes late. If you say you want to delegate, someone will come to you and quietly say, “You said you wanted to delegate more responsibility. I feel I could take on the XYZ project. Please consider it.” 

Goal Setting

Goal setting is a tool that many successful executives and leaders use to maximize their effectiveness. If you are not familiar with this practice, google “goal setting” and you will be confronted by (as of today) 22,500,000 hits with titles like, “10 tips for setting goals” and “The 4 secrets of goal setting.” Use those sources to make your own goal-setting system.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:
 

1. Divide your goals into various areas of your life, such as Personal (which might include health, learning, exercise, relationships, getting more rest, etc.) and Work/Career (delegate more, be sure to regularly communicate strategic priorities, etc.) Goals for the organization will likely require a separate list, that you may wish to develop in collaboration with others.
2. Write down your goals, and regularly check to see how you are progressing. Consider using goal setting or project management software.
3. Simplify. For each goal area (personal, health, etc. ) list 2 or 3 things you’d like to achieve in a given time-frame. If your list is too long, your chances of success diminish.
   
4. Compete with yourself. Set measurable goals and aim to meet or beat them. Even hard-to-measure goals, such as being more patient and helpful to others, can fit here: you will know when you fail to measure up and can take aim and try again.
   

Step One: Define Success, Set Clear Goals and Measurable Expectations

Setting goals and expectations and establishing measurable outcomes for each objective is the key to managing accountability. Make sure people understand the goals they are accountable for achieving, what they “own” and are responsible for. Everything flows from this. “Well begun is half done” - do this right and you’re on the road to success.

• Define what success looks like. What are we striving for? Employees and team members must understand that they are expected to deliver results, and will be held accountable for achieving – or not achieving – their goals and objectives. 
  

Clear communication is crucial. People cannot read your mind, and they don’t always see things the way you do.

Communicate expectations in clear, specific language. Team members should be able to answer the question, “What exactly am I responsible for? How will I know if I have met expectations?" And that failing to meet their commitments has consequences: “People who don’t deliver on their commitments don’t last long at this company.”
 

Goals should be specific, measurable and verifiable by objective standards, and time specific. Write them down. State goals in terms of desired results and the actions needed to achieve them : what you want done and when you want it.

“Sudhir is very clear with team members when communicating his expectations and assigning duties and he holds them accountable for getting results. He insists that his people set objective and realistic goals and that they strive to achieve the desired results. ”  

Use the SMART formula for your goals. They should be:

S pecific

M easurable

A ctionable

R ealistic

T ime-related

Be crystal clear about deliverables, dates, and who owns what.

Goals should be attainable but still stretch people. They should have a 70-80% chance of success.

Ask, “How will we tell if the goal is accomplished?” What milestones will have been reached? What metrics will show us whether enough progress is occurring or that performance is up to expected to standards.

Ask, “What outcomes could we agree on as a measure of success?”

Be willing to adjust and reformulate goals as the project advances and new conditions arise.

“Joanna will take as much time as necessary to ensure you understand exactly what her expectations of you are. She will then expect you to give her your very best and will not hesitate to let you know if you are not. She is very fair and will work with you if needed.”
 

Set Milestones 

Milestones mark important stages of achievement of a project. Setting milestones provides a way to monitor progress and track where you are in the process of taking an idea from inception through various stages of development to completion. Project milestones help everyone involved recognize and work toward specific goals. They help ensure that projects are completed and delivered on time and turn out as expected and desired.

Setting milestones is like creating a roadmap, or better, a timeline, as each step is designated with a date. Successful achievement of predefined milestones indicates that a project is on track. Failure to meet a milestone indicates that a project is not proceeding according to plan.

Milestones do not have to be only for major steps; achieving a series of minor milestones gives the team a sense of momentum and boosts confidence.

Typical milestones:

• Concept approval or approval of a design stage
• Obtaining funding
• Identifying staffing needs, hiring or assigning people for key roles
• Completion of a project phase or stage
• Product testing started/completed
• Bugs fixed
• Product operational

All projects should have at least 4 major milestones:

1. requirements complete,
2. design complete,
3. code complete and test ready,
4. product shipped/accepted/deployed.
    
   

Engage, don’t impose

Involve talent in goal-setting and creating milestones. Don’t just impose expectations. Get their understanding and input. Set expectations together, through dialogue.

Don’t micromanage. Try to establish a genuine partnership, an attitude of collaborative inquiry in setting and monitoring goals.

Avoid falling into a parent/child relationship of micromanaging – checking up on them too often or looking over their shoulder. When the leader micromanages, team members feel distrusted. Once everyone knows what is expected of them, back off and let them work. 

Micromanaging focuses on process and attempts to control it; accountability focuses on outcome and getting results.

Empower your team to succeed. You are interested in outcomes, not how people get there. Trust them to figure it out. They don’t have to do it your way in order to get good results.

“Genevieve is the exact opposite of a micro manager - which is exactly what makes her so effective. She gives a task and allows completion. She isn't so concerned about making sure it is done ‘her way’ but rather about making sure it is done. She provides responsibility to those below her which is appreciated.”

People are more motivated when they have a say in how goals are set and measured. Motivation rises when they feel that what they do matters, so remind them. Show them how their function and their team contributes to the success of the whole. Get their skin in the game. 

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do.

We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” – Steve Jobs

SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP

The premise of Situational Leadership is that your leadership style should be adjustable and adaptable, relative to the level of “readiness” – competence and motivation – of the people you are responsible for leading. (Some call this “tailoring your message to your target audience.”) The takeaway: it is your responsibility as the leader to figure out the leadership style that will work best for specific talent and team members.

For example, with experienced, competent people who have bought into your goals, a more supportive and laissez-faire style works well, while neophytes will likely require more support and help setting direction, identifying goals, and even figuring out tactics to achieve those goals. 

There are many variations of this theory, perhaps the most well-known coming from Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey, who designated four main styles:

• Directing  – The leader makes the decisions, sets the objectives, directs others on what to do and how to do it, and then closely supervises. This is a very top-down approach, with mostly one-way communication, recommended for new employees or people with the lowest levels of both skill and prior experience.
• Coaching  – Rather than dictate to employees, leadership “sells” their ideas and plans, explaining and persuading, allowing for discussion and input. This is effective for people with more experience and skill, but who may lack motivation or confidence.    Supporting  – Employees have more responsibility for decision making. Leaders are available to provide direction but give more attention to feedback and support.
• Delegating – Leaders provide minimum guidance and follow-up, delegating authority to employees to make decisions and plan strategies for implementation. The more capability they demonstrate, the more autonomy you can give them. The highest level is empowerment: enabling employees to set their own work goals, make decisions, solve problems on their own, and take responsibility for the result.

“Ricardo recognizes his high performers and gives them flexibility in innovating and determining future paths for their projects and careers.”

S1 – Directing: The leader defines roles and sets goals, tells talent what tasks to do as well as how to do them. Communication is primarily top down and one directional. Effective for people with low competence.
S2 – Coaching/Selling: For people with greater competence than S1, the leader serves as motivator and coach.
S3 – Supporting/Facilitating:  A more collaborative relationship in which leader and followers share in decision making. Employees are more competent and aligned, but leader may still need to provide motivation or coach some skills.

S4 -  Delegating: Competent and motivated talent now need little direction or support from leaders, who can delegate tasks and stand back and let talent run with the ball.

Could conclude at the bottom, “Leaders need as many people as possible who are in the bottom left quadrant: self-starting, capable, competent.” 

Step Two: Coach, Develop, and Support

One of the defining characteristics of entrepreneurs is that they have a high need for autonomy and independence. They are often non-conformists who do not like to be controlled or told what to do. As a result, when they take on a role as leaders – often their first time managing anything – they may fail to provide sufficient clarity about purpose and goals to their direct reports. But not everyone is an independent self-starter like they are. One of their lessons is to recognize that both individuals and the organization as a whole need the direction and support that only they, as the leader, can provide.

The amount of direction and support will vary, depending on how experienced and competent a person is. A more capable and experienced person needs less of your attention than someone who is new to the job or to the organization. (See Situational Leadership image below)

The ideal is to have employees who are competent and self-directed. But even someone who is knowledgeable may lack motivation, and your job then becomes to light a fire under them, giving support and encouragement.

The main question you need to ask yourself is, How can I ensure that they have the best chance to achieve the goals we have set together? This is the underlying attitude that will make the collaboration effective and set people up for success.

• Provide the Resources Needed for Success. Needed resources may include
• More team members with experience and domain expertise
• Funding necessary to get the job done
• Information that will enable them to make good decisions and set the right priorities
• Connections who can help, support, and mentor them
•  Invest in training and developing the skills critical to achieving your strategic objectives
• Make sure people are prepared to do the tasks assigned to them. Provide training where it is needed.
• Don’t assume people will always figure it out on their own.
• Successful leaders and their organizations are adept at setting goals and then helping employees attain those goals through training, coaching, and doing whatever it takes to move forward. Setting goals and then throwing people in the deep end of the pool with the hope that they will swim rather than sink – that they will figure it out and come through with results – is not an effective strategy. 
  
• Make sure you have the right people – in the right roles
• Is current talent capable not only of meeting present demands, but also scaling, growing the organization? If you see that some people are over their heads as growth and success transform the company, you may need to make some changes in personnel.
• This is especially true if you do not have time to coach, train, and develop the people you have. Coaching everyone is not feasible, nor is it necessarily in the organization’s best interest, especially if the timeline is short.
• Letting people go can be difficult for you if someone has been loyal and hard-working, perhaps part of the original team, yet is now struggling to keep up. Possible solution:  See if you can retain the person, but move him/her to a position better fitted to their capabilities, or bring in a more experienced person, from whom they can learn.
• In addition to the right people, you need enough people. You may have one engineer developing a product or feature, but to get it out the door in the time frame you have set, you may need three.
   
  

Determine and allocate the financial resources that are needed

How are you going to pay for those additional engineers? (Or whatever else you need.) Obviously, budgets are a constraining factor. If the project is critical, you may need to find resources elsewhere, such as moving somebody off a non-critical project.  

Step Three: Monitor

Monitoring progress is a vital part of accountability. As the leader, you need to set clear, measurable goals, get the process of achieving those goals started, keep it moving along, and regularly monitor progress. Establish not only a final goal, but interim objectives to mark successful, partial progress.

Consider using OKR software to help set, align, and track progress, which can be very helpful in clarifying desired results, setting up timelines and delivery dates, and tracking progress. We’ll talk about OKRs more fully later in the chapter. Check in periodically, both in an informal way and through the objective measures and metrics you have established, to ensure that things are progressing, and be there to help if people are encountering difficulty. This does not mean interfering or micromanaging.

Tips for effective monitoring:

• It is important to formally and informally review plans and progress. Set up regular meetings as a routine. Tip: Don’t only call meetings when there are problems.
• If you feel it would be helpful, have employees send you progress reports at specified intervals. (See below)
• Set up metrics and objective measures of success and progress. Establish benchmarks. Without data, how will you measure progress? 
• Use tools such as OKR software to determine whether people are hitting the performance targets they have been assigned or have agreed to meet. 
• Establish the expectation that you want to hear about problems before they become serious.
• Create an atmosphere of trust, in which people feel you are there not to judge them but to help them be successful. Then they will not be afraid to come to the boss for help when they become stuck. Otherwise people may hide the difficulties they are encountering.
  

Important:  If problems are not brought up, and the employee continues to be stuck, the leader may become frustrated because expected results are not coming. This may erupt as anger and/or overly aggressive, combative, confrontational behavior. Try to avoid this, by building trusting relationships and encouraging people to bring up problems while they are still minor, rather than letting them grow.  On the other hand, a little “tough love” may sometimes be needed to help the person wake up to his/her responsibilities and get back in focus.

Progress Reports

Progress reports on ongoing projects, made accessible to all stakeholders, can provide continuing, transparent assessments of the project’s status. They are helpful for those directly involved in the project, for you as the leader, and for interested stakeholders who do not have ready access to the project or team.

One of the great benefits of progress reports is that they help to identify problems and risks early, so course corrections can be made in a timely way.

Written reports require some time for reflection and formulating ideas in more depth and detail than a verbal check-in, so we recommend them. Progress reports are not necessary in all cases, but If you feel you’d like to receive reports to be sure the goals you set are being met:
 

• Establish a schedule for reports to be submitted
• You may need to help design the format of the progress report and what it should include
• Designing the report will take a little time, but once it’s done, subsequent reports will just be about filling in the needed information
• If deadlines are missed, ask for an explanation of why, and how the individual or team plans to correct the situation

A typical Progress Report might include some or all of these topics:
 

1. Key owners or project manager of each deliverable
2. Project scope (example: one-year project involving 5 departments and $14 million) 
3. Brief verbal summary including
4. Current project status including percentage completed
5. Major deliverables completed
6. Milestones reached
7. Key priorities for the upcoming week/month 
8. Is the project on time and on budget? 
9. Important decisions needed 
10. Project performance rating: red, yellow, or green
11. Green = on target (project deliverables are on track and delivery is on target for projected date)
12. Yellow = at risk (project is X percentage complete and in X phase] 
13. Red = off-track (project is delayed) 
14. Key Milestones: milestones scheduled for achievement since the last report, and performance against those milestones
15. Review: What is the impact of achievement or non-achievement of key milestones for the previous period?
16. Budget: planned expenditure, actual expenditure, surplus, problems
17. Timing: original planned completion date, current planned completion date, actual completion date (for a completed project)
18. Brief summary of key accomplishments for the last period
19. Important risks for next period?
20. Additional issues

When a problem comes to your attention, try to understand what has happened.

• Did the person know and understand what was expected?
• Did you communicate expectations clearly?
• Did they have an effective plan of action? 
• Did they diagnose the problem accurately?
• Did they exercise good judgment?
• Did they not have the skill to solve the problem?

 
Help them analyze and understand the difficulty, but in most cases, you are not the person responsible for solving the problem, you are there to help and to brainstorm with them.

Organize a skip-level meeting.

If you feel the need for a broader perspective on issues within the organization, you might schedule a “skip-level” meeting, where you meet one on one with the people directly involved in a project, for example the engineers rather than just the head of engineering.

Leaders sometimes get isolated from the “grass roots” level of activity, especially in bigger companies, and this is never healthy.

Skip-level meetings should be seen as a common, generic phenomenon, so managers don’t feel they are being singled out to be checked up on. It is okay for them to sometimes attend these meetings, but you need to tell them, “Sometimes it’s important for you not to be there, so people feel free to speak their minds.” (See image, Questions to Ask at a Skip-level Meeting)

My experience is that young entrepreneurs, particularly those with a tech/engineering background, are not strong either in rewarding and praising, or in dealing with conflicts and problems on the team or in the organization. They tend to be conflict averse. They love to solve problems, but not necessarily the human kind that may entail messy emotions, so even if they become aware that a conflict situation exists or is brewing, they may hold back and take no action until forced to by a crisis.   But there are always problems, and ultimately the leader is responsible for getting them fixed – not fixing them yourself, but making sure that issues get resolved and obstacles to progress and productivity are removed. The longer you let things slide, the more difficult it becomes to set them right. So whatever the difficulty, it’s best to deal with it as soon as possible.

“Ingrid rewards her people for their good work and also challenges them to do better, when she believes that their performance is below par. She holds each employee responsible for their own actions. She has rewarded me with a lunch for all the good work I have done. But when there is someone not meeting standards she has no hesitation in reprimanding them.”

Entrepreneurs are also frequently perfectionists with very high standards, and they expect everyone else to do as thorough and “perfect” a job as they do. So just as they are not great at giving critical feedback, they also do not freely offer recognition or praise or celebrate milestones for work well done.

But recognition and praise are extremely important to most people, and they are strong motivators to continue performing at a high level. People want to be respected and valued for their contributions.
Failure to offer praise and reward for people who deserve it, is counter-productive. It’s a missed opportunity for leadership. The research is clear: when people feel valued, productivity and satisfaction increase, and so does motivation.

Did you know this? Research has verified that the most effective ratio of praise to blame, positive to negative feedback, is 7 to 1. How well do you stack up to this formula for maximizing effectiveness?

Bottom line: leaders need to learn both to confront poor performance, and to praise progress and achievement.
“Dennis will be the first one to let you know you have not achieved the ideal result, but he will also be the first one to recognize achievement and he will be the first to congratulate you on it. I find that this is a great motivating tool and pushes employees to work towards their best.”

Tip: Whether you are delivering praise or questioning poor performance, do it yourself, live – not by email, not by delegating someone else to do it. Probably you will not want to do this (especially the tough stuff) but it will have a much greater impact if it comes from you. 

Be on the lookout for individuals who are doing things right, and reward them.

 
A lack of praise and recognition is a strong factor in making people unhappy with their jobs. A study by the Gallup organization showed that those who go unrecognized are 3 times more likely to quit. A study by Heaphy and Losada at the University of Michigan Business School found that the best performing teams used 6 times as many positive comments for every negative one, while the worst performing teams used 3 negative comments for every positive one. Excessive criticism dampens enthusiasm and commitment.

Many times, dependable, +-consistent and trustworthy people are taken for granted. Create heroes in every role by recognizing excellence at all levels.

Keep a close eye on everyone on your team and find something you like. Search for people doing things right rather than focusing on mistakes.

Help people understand how their efforts are contributing to the overall mission and strategy of the organization. Take time to show them the deeper meaning and purpose of their work.

There are many ways to show your appreciation

Money, in the form of salary increases and stock options, is a tried-and-true method of rewarding employees and team members for making a positive difference. But it is far from the only way.

In a book entitled, “1001 Ways to Recognize Employees”, author Bob Nelson suggests that the top two drivers of employee performance are: “I am able to make a difference at work” and “I have been recognized recently for what I do.” He found that money ranks a distant fifth place. 

Here are a few suggestions that will make your people feel appreciated and motivated:

• Simplest of all: Offer a sincerely spoken “thank you”. Important: For praise to be most effective it needs to be specific. Tell the person what they did that was beneficial and what was the positive impact 
• Recognize heroic efforts, people who have gone the extra mile or who have been essential to the success of an initiative or project. Send them an email or a handwritten note of appreciation, or arrange a personal meeting 
• Offer a paid training or professional development opportunity of their choice
• Take them to lunch 
• Find an opportunity for a verbal shout-out in front of everyone
• A promotion or a move to a different part of the company they are interested in exploring 
• A gift card for Amazon, a favorite restaurant, or a store you know they like
• Free tickets to a ballgame or concert 
• For a significantly large contribution: a paid vacation
• A voucher for a massage or an afternoon at a spa
• Express interest in their personal life, partner, children
• Offer a flexible work schedule, or some time off
  

For more ideas for rewarding your people, a quick Google search brings up, for example, “101 Ways to Reward Employees (Without Giving Them Cash)”, “52 Epic Ways to Reward Your Employees,” and many, many more.   Tip: Don’t offer praise unless it is truly deserved. Any insincerity will be noticed. Praise needs to be genuine and heartfelt and delivered with conviction and emotional connection. A passing, “Good job” means very little. Be specific in praising the behavior that you want to see repeated: “I thought the way you handled the situation with our big customer at the meeting last week was very effective, because you said XYZ and that addressed their concern.”

Reward managers and team leaders for challenging ineffective practices and outdated assumptions, and for finding more efficient ways to do things 

Encourage an organization-wide mindset of excellence and continual improvement. Develop a culture of discipline. Communicate to others that we will not be truly successful unless we focus our efforts on striving to be better – individually and as an organization.

Cultivate a learning organization that continually strives to improve and learn from successes, mistakes and failures

To deepen the knowledge and insights that lead to success, the most effective leaders and their organizations learn from their mistakes as well as their achievements. When projects fail to produce the desired results, try to understand what happened. Ask, “What did we do wrong,” in order to avoid making the same mistakes in future. You can also learn by analyzing your successes to see what worked and what you can carry forward from those victories into new projects. One effective tool is periodic debriefing.

Debriefing: Learn from your successes and failures

 
At the conclusion of a project or even at various stages of progress, conduct a debriefing with your people and discuss what worked and what did not work. Lessons can be learned from both. More than a mere discussion, a debriefing should probe more deeply, inquiring why things happened the way they did, and what can be done to retain positive elements and eliminate mistakes. Encourage people to take part in the discussion with openness and a desire to improve personal, team, and organizational performance.    Here are some suggestions for effective debriefing: 

• Decide how often you want to conduct debriefing sessions, and stick to the schedule. Some teams hold a short session every morning (you may not need to participate that often) to review the previous day’s progress and set goals for the day. Once a week, or even once a month can work. One benefit of scheduling – people know it’s going to happen, and begin to gather their thoughts on what to share beforehand. 
• It’s all about learning – not just rehashing, and never about blaming. The underlying thought should be: How can we do better? What can we improve?
• Keep it relaxed and informal: but focused. 
• Ask yourself and the team: 
• Did we hit our objectives? This will be obvious if you set clear targets and established metrics. 
• Why do you think we hit/missed the target? What did we do right? Where did we mess up? In almost all cases, there will be a mix of positive and negative factors. (We were aligned and focused, we put in the necessary time, we jumped in without sufficient planning, we weren’t strongly motivated, etc.) Try to come up with at least 4 or 5 reasons for how things turned out. 
• If you reached or exceeded your goal, acknowledge and celebrate that, and thank team members for their contribution. 
• Take responsibility for any ways you personally failed to meet your own targets or failed to provide adequate guidance and direction. If you do this at the beginning of the session – which means you have to think about it ahead of time – then others will be inspired to speak openly, and you will have a more fruitful discussion.
• Write down, together, what you have discovered, and how you can apply it to future projects. Decide on action steps to implement your findings. Distribute this document to everyone involved 

How to give constructive criticism

• Remember that both praise and criticism can be motivators
  
• Be thoughtful of the person you’ll be speaking to, and weigh the risks and benefits before giving any negative feedback
  
• Start by letting the person know that their contributions are appreciated. Then make a specific suggestion for how to improve their effectiveness. Avoid chit-chat; get to the point
  
• Deliver criticism in private, behind closed doors – never in front of others
  
• Never deliver a critique when you are angry or upset. Take time to cool down but still deliver constructive feedback as soon after the incident as possible. Difficult conversations can morph into lawsuits, so be very careful what you say
  
• Focus on behavior that you have observed and avoid personally attacking the person. This will lead to defensiveness
  
• Be specific about the behavior and the implications of this behavior to the organization
  
• Tell the person that you still have confidence in them and their abilities but emphasize that their performance needs to change
  
• Give them a chance to respond to your statements and really listen
  
• Agree upon the future performance you expect
  
• Establish a timeline for following up on their progress

Recognize that people from some backgrounds may not be comfortable confronting or being confronted with poor performance issues

• It could be cultural: some cultures, such as Indian and East Asian, have more indirect ways of dealing with performance problems, compared to the more direct confrontational style of the West. There are also different corporate cultures, some more laissez-faire than others 
• It could be personal: Some people are tougher than others in their ability to issue and receive strong critiques 
• So be aware of who you are dealing with and moderate your approach – but that doesn’t mean you can avoid facing problems head on.
  

What to do when there is a performance problem

No matter how many precautions you take to set up clear expectations, give firm direction, and set people free to be creative, problems will arise. Results will lag; people will fail to ask for help when they need it; unexpected obstacles will come up and the project may get derailed.

Everybody Gets Stuck  “All people and all work units get stuck. Effective leaders recognize when their team is stuck and either figure out what to do to get it unstuck or get help from others to do so. Although it may be hard to admit that you need help, it is a fact of corporate life.” – Successful Manager’s Handbook , PDI Ninth House, 2010

When someone is stuck and is having difficulty moving forward on a project, or when there is a gap or discrepancy between what you expected and what gets delivered, go into a conversation about accountability with the intention to understand what happened, and to find a mutually workable solution to fix the problem and set up conditions so it won’t be repeated. Don’t be looking to assign blame, or to discipline the person (although that may in the end be necessary) but rather to understand. Try to have a scientific attitude of curiosity: What happened? Why?

Try the following steps to resolve the problem:

1. Meet privately with the person. Advice from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) suggests, “Treat the person respectfully, but don’t engage in small talk to put off the issue. Acknowledge immediately that this is going to be a difficult conversation about serious performance issues.” [reference: “11 Tips for Talking About Poor Performance: How to protect your organization when handling the hard stuff” By Jonathan Segal, https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/0416/pages/11-tips-for-talking-about-poor-performance.aspx]
2. You might begin by saying there seems to be a gap between expectations and performance. Does the person see that, and understand that there is actually a problem?
3. If so, are they motivated to resolve it?
4. Determine whether the problem is due to poor communication, faulty understanding about goals and objectives, lack of skill or knowledge, or they simply don’t have experience with the challenges they are facing 
5. What have they tried, how have they attempted to deal with the problem?   
6. Is it a one-time issue, or a repeating pattern?
7. Does the person agree that a change in behavior or approach will help resolve the issue?
8. Does the person feel he or she has what it takes to overcome the difficulty? 
9. If the discrepancy is minor, ask the person to come up with a plan to get back on track, and put the plan in writing
10. If the problem is major, ask the individual to meet with you to develop a plan for meeting their goals
11. They might need coaching or formal training
12. They might benefit from a mentor being brought in, or a consultant
13. Seek knowledgeable advice. Find someone, within the company or in another organization, who has dealt successfully with this issue, and solicit their help. Ask them how they have handled this problem, what solutions have worked for them, etc. If you value your employee, the expense and time can be worth it. 
14. Avoid being too quick to take the entire task back or assign it to someone else. Give them a chance to make it right – unless it’s obvious they are not able to.
15. Monitor their progress on the new plan.
16. Acknowledge positive steps made.
17. Make yourself available for feedback and encouragement.

Tip:  Don’t fixate on problems so much that you neglect to acknowledge and reward achievements. 

Accountability and the Three Pillars of Leadership

Visionary Evangelist  – Visionary Evangelists are passionate about turning their vision into reality. They can therefore be demanding, and focused on their own agenda. They can also be prone to micromanagement because of their obsession with excellence and a desire to control all decisions about product. They usually believe their way is the best, or even the only way. Because they tend to be overly optimistic, their goals and timelines are often unrealistic.

Because they are extremely self-starting, they often fail to recognize that others need more support and direction. They tend to throw people in the deep end.

They have high expectations, but they often don’t take the time to define or communicate them. They set high goals for others (as well as for themselves) and get frustrated and sometimes angry when others don’t perform as well as they would like.

They often don’t follow through in a disciplined manner or set up a systematic process of check-in and monitoring to ensure that accountability happens.

They need to either learn to create those structures, or bring in a Chief Operating Officer or someone with a Manager of Execution profile to help them.

Relationship Builder – Relationship Builders are the most socially skilled. Naturally warm and friendly, they easily engage people in the goal-setting process, and try to generate a coherent, harmonious work environment.

• They are free with praise and generous with support and coaching.
  

• They create the kind of warm and friendly atmosphere that everyone likes to be around, but may lack a strong enough drive for successful outcomes. They tend to be overly informal and easy-going and don’t set up a clear expectation that people have to work hard and produce results.
  
  Because they strongly desire harmony and for everybody to get along, they tend to avoid confronting people when there are problems, such as failure to meet promised deadlines, and thus they may fail to hold people accountable.

• They are often too trusting that people will keep their commitments, so they don’t monitor carefully or verify progress toward performance goals.

For Relationship Builders, whether they admit it or not, harmony and being liked are often more important than results. It is hard for them to be demanding and to make tough decisions when performance is sub-standard. Providing negative feedback, or disciplining people when it’s needed, is hard for them. Rather than deal with problems when they are small, they take a “wait and see” approach. Sometimes problems do sort themselves out, but often they only grow and become harder to deal with. 

Manager of Execution – Managers of Execution are the best of the Three Pillar types at holding people accountable. They are the most focused on results, and best organized. Their process is the most structured and methodical. They have an easy time setting goals, metrics, and milestones – it comes naturally to them.

• They expect commitment and hard work from the people they’re delegating to. They take their responsibilities extremely seriously, and expect their people to do the same.
  
  The problem is that they can be so focused on driving for results that they can be insensitive to what people are experiencing and what may be in the way of their achieving results. They don’t really listen to the reasons why somebody may be struggling, or pay enough attention to internal barriers or motivation, they just want the job to get done.

• They can be overly demanding and critical, only focusing on what’s lacking, what’s not being done – they give very little recognition for work well done, and very little praise.
  
  Like Visionaries, they are prone to micromanaging because they are worried about mistakes, and losing control, and are overly focused on the details.
  
  Rather than working collaboratively to create mutually acceptable goals, they tend to impose their goals. And they can be intimidating: they don’t create an environment that allows people to feel safe in sharing what they don’t know or that they are stuck.

• They are often lacking in empathy and compassion.  And like Visionary Evangelists, they are strongly focused on doing it their way.
  
  In an “accountability conversation,” when performance is inadequate and results are lagging, the skill sets of Relationship Builders and Managers of Execution are most important.

Leaders need to be able to relate to employees in a non-threatening way to reach a resolution of problems, and at the same time to take a tough-enough line if a person has been lacking in motivation, effort, or application. 

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