In order for a business to be successful, you first need someone who can intelligently make decisions. You cannot just come up with an idea for a business and go from there without a plan. Or in the case of an already established company, you cannot just propose a project or a business plan without someone taking charge of it. Someone needs to be in charge and that certain someone needs to be accountable. What you need is a leader who is willing to take responsibility.
Anyone can be a leader. The question is, how good of a leader that individual is going to be. That person needs to inspire the team and must display the right discipline to accomplish tasks within the given time-frame. But being the leader is not always about being able to accomplish goals with the team. It is also about taking responsibility if things do not go as planned. Without a sense of accountability from leaders within the organisation, it will spread to the members of their respective teams and will cause negative results to the company as a whole. To put it simply, it is not all about success, but also about taking charge of the failures. So here are a few things that you can do to foster accountability within your company.
Drive For Results
It is really challenging to stay in focus if you are in an organisation. If you are constantly reminding everyone in your team which tasks are critical or must be prioritized and which ones they are responsible for, accountability can lose its meaning. What you should be doing instead is to define what results you are looking for and give your team a fair amount of freedom to get things done. It creates less stress and you would get better results.
Have A Clear Vision And Direction
If you have been in a company or an organisation for many years, you may have noticed that some individuals tend to go after multiple goals at once and end up failing. Most likely, they started with one goal but something new popped up which caught their interest. Instead of staying on the path, they tried going on two different directions. This is the complete opposite of having a clear vision and direction. If the a leader acts like this, you cannot expect the team members to be accountable when they don’t even know what they are aiming for. Know what the goal is and stick to your plan.
Empower Your Team
People who think that they don’t have enough training will avoid making any big decisions. Being confident is part of being accountable. Empower your team and be as positive as you can. Once they are confident, they will gladly take responsibility for any positive and negative results in their work.