Dysfunction 4: Avoidance of Accountability, page 212.
- Accountability is the willingness of team members to confront their peers on performance or behaviors that are potentially detrimental to the team.
- The dysfunction comes with the unwillingness of team members to tolerate the interpersonal discomfort that accompanies calling out a peer on his or her behavior, and the more general tendency to avoid difficult conversations.
- Members of great teams overcome these natural inclinations, opting instead to “enter the danger” with one another.
- Team members who are particularly close to one another sometimes hesitate to hold one another accountable precisely because they fear jeopardizing a valuable personal relationship.
- Ironically, this only causes the relationship to deteriorate as team members begin to resent one another for not living up to expectations and for allowing the standards of the group to erode.
- The most effective and efficient means of maintaining high standards of performance on a team is peer pressure.
- There is nothing like the fear of letting down respected teammates that motivates people to improve their performance.
A Team That Avoids Accountability
- Creates resentment among team members who have different standards of performance.
- Encourages mediocrity.
- Misses deadlines and key deliverables.
- Places an undue burden on the team leader as the sole source of discipline.
A Team That Holds One Another Accountable
- Ensures that poor performers feel pressure to improve.
- Identifies potential problems quickly by questioning one another’s approaches without hesitation.
- Establishes respect among team members who are held to the same high standards.
- Avoids excessive bureaucracy around performance management and corrective action.
Suggestions for Overcoming Dysfunction 4
- Publication of Goals and Standards:
- Clarify publicly the exact items that the team needs to achieve, who needs to deliver what, and how everyone must behave to be successful.
- The enemy of accountability is ambiguity.
- It is important to keep disagreements in the open so that no one can easily ignore them.
- Simple and Regular Progress Reviews:
- Give people regular feedback on their behavior and performance.
- Team members should regularly communicate with one another, either verbally or in written form, about how they feel their teammates are doing against stated standards and objectives.
- Team Rewards:
- Shift rewards away from individual performance to team achievement.
The Role of the Leader
- The most difficult challenge for a leader who wants to instill accountability in the team is to encourage and allow the team to serve as the first and primary accountability mechanism.
- Sometimes strong leaders naturally create an accountability vacuum within the team.
- This accountability vacuum creates an environment where team members assume that the leader is holding others accountable, and so they hold back even when they see something that isn’t right.
- Once a leader has created a culture of accountability on a team, however, he or she must be willing to serve as the ultimate arbiter of discipline when the team itself fails.
Connection to Dysfunction 5
- If teammates are not being held accountable for their contributions, they will be more likely to turn their attention away from collective results, towards their own needs, and to the advancement of themselves or their department.
