Today, Friday the 13th, January 2017, is National Blame Someone Else Day. So, basically, if you don’t want to take the blame for a mistake or failure, simply point the finger at someone else.
While the spirit of the day is supposed to be in good fun, unfortunately, way too many people make everyday “Blame Someone Else Day,” don’t though?
Even with many tenured employees, accountability is seriously lacking, so this isn’t only a problem for your newest staff. In fact, a lack of accountability can be found at pretty much every level in the organization. It’s a real problem that leads to unhealthy conflict, damaged relationships, increased mistakes, decreased productivity and more.
Luckily, as a leader, you can foster an overall culture of accountability with these simple actions:
- Be accountable yourself. If you consistently blame situations, circumstances, people or other “stuff” for your own mistakes or failures, employees will follow suit. Admit your own failures, but use them as lessons for your employees. Explain what you learned and what you will do to overcome the problem or prevent it going forward. Those lessons will help prevent your employees from making similar mistakes, while also teaching them that failure is inevitable, but good can come from it.
- Share your organization’s vision and mission often. When you announce a change, plan a project, or delegate work, explain exactly how those actions support the vision and mission. People need to understand how their work contributes to the overall picture and how their failure to meet their personal goals hurts the organization.
- Set goals with employees. When your employees have a say in their personal goals, they will be more likely to take ownership of them and work to meet them. Each year, meet individually with staff to talk about the goals you have for them, listen to the goals they have for themselves, and create a list of short- and long-term goals. Then offer them the space and autonomy to meet those goals on their own. Definitely check in to monitor their progress, but don’t micromanage or hound them. Also set team goals … as a team. Your employees have insight, perhaps that you don’t have, about what’s important and what everyone should focus on to improve how the team functions.
- Remove obstacles to their success. You should truly want every employee to reach their targets this year, even if that means paying out big bonuses or incentives. So provide them with everything they need, including training, resources, information and time, to ensure that they can reach their full potential and exceed their goals. If they don’t have what they need to succeed, it will be all too easy (and justifiable) for them to blame a lack of resources or knowledge for their failures.
- Evaluate accountability during performance reviews. If after all that, employees refuse to take responsibility for their work, grade them on it. Make it a component of their evaluations that affects whether they receive salary increases, bonuses and promotions. Doing so emphasizes how critical accountability is in the workplace and on your team.
It will be well worth your time because employees with high levels of accountability are more prone to produce better, accurate, higher quality work; solve problems on their own; make stronger decisions; easily meet their deadlines and the requirements of the job; work well with others; and more. So take the time to make coaching accountability one of your top priorities.
#BlameSomeoneElseDay
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