Leaders’ Responsibility For Building The Team’s Accountability
Leaders has an essential role in building Accountability across teams. Leaders are the ones who model the way & exemplify it for their employees, not only their way of developing their competencies and technical, personal and interpersonal skills, but also their way for leveraging their morale and commitment towards their job. Seeing leaders taking ownership of correcting mistakes plays a vital role in fostering the accountability culture thus having employees who mimic their leaders and try to become accountable as well.
One critical role of the leader is to save the team’s psychological safety.
Team’s Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is defined as the ability to, “show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status, or career.” The key is that psychological safety helps your team feel comfortable with speaking up and giving their input.
This is essential for giving your team the autonomy they crave to do their work well:
- They will be confident in coming to you early when there’s a problem (instead of when it’s too late, or a big deal)
- You’ll get ideas and input from everyone, instead of feeling like you have to dictate and micromanage everything
- They will be comfortable asking questions and saying “I don’t know” when they need help, making coaching easier for you
Having a team that does those things has a variety of benefits. Gallup found that teams with psychological safety can result in, “a 27% reduction in turnover, a 40% reduction in safety incidents, and a 12% increase in productivity.”
*https://getlighthouse.com/blog/accountability-vs-responsibility/
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