A truly world-class organization has a performance imperative—a clear culture of individual accountability. A true culture of accountability is one that rigorously demands accountability from individuals at every level of the company. It’s not enough for certain teams or departments to have this culture while others do not. For an organization to perform to its full potential, every employee must feel personally accountable for their work and consistently deliver on their commitments.

When an organization lacks the individual and group accountability needed to achieve the desired outcomes, it’s your leaders who are the solution. Leaders set and deliver the vision to their employees in a way that not only explains why it’s important, but how they can contribute to it as individuals. Like any other organizational standard, if personal accountability is the expectation, leadership must model it themselves. Without this commitment from leadership, it’s unreasonable to expect that others will hold themselves personally accountable for their work.

The Gap Between Intention and Results

What is personal accountability? It is a commitment to following through on what was agreed upon—or, put simply, personal accountability is doing what you say you are going to do. Personal accountability goes hand in hand with trust; when people follow through on their commitments, they show themselves to be trustworthy. Likewise, when leaders show trust, people are more likely to want to live up to that trust.

Most people don’t intend to drop the ball or let their leaders down when they commit to something. In fact, most people approach their commitments in the workplace with the intent to follow through, and why wouldn’t they? It feels good to succeed. However, slipping deadlines and a growing list of tasks that just never seem to get done are all too common.

This scenario, where intentions are not translating into results, is a familiar one. There may be seemingly good reasons for this—competing priorities, a lack of motivation, an intense workload, and so on— but ultimately, it comes down to personal accountability. When viewed in this light, the explanations that are presented as reasons for failure become excuses for not following through on a commitment.

Of course, there are also legitimate reasons an individual might not meet the expectations that were outlined. It might not be possible in the given timeframe, they might not have the necessary skills, or the budget might not be realistic. These circumstances are avoidable, but it’s not exclusively up to individual employees to identify and communicate these challenges. Leaders and managers must also participate in a way that helps individuals follow through on their commitments. Closing the gap between intention and results will lead to greater personal accountability. Leaders can facilitate this in the organization by embracing a three-step process: defining a mutual understanding of the desired outcomes, assessing whether it is possible for the person to achieve the desired results with their current skill set, and getting their commitment to executing the agreed-upon plan. Let’s look at how to go about each of these three steps.

1. Achieving understanding: setting clear expectations

The first step in ensuring that assignments are reasonable is for both parties to have a thorough understanding of the expectations. Without this mutual understanding, the individual might fail to meet the desired standards, even if they are following through on their personal commitment.

When setting expectations around a particular assignment, include these three important criteria:

• What is the expected outcome?
• When is the due date?
• How should the individual accomplish the expected outcome?

This conversation will be different for every individual. For example, a junior-level employee might need more explanation about how a certain task should be performed. A more senior-level employee won’t need step-by-step instructions, but can contribute more to the discussion about a realistic due date. Tailoring the discussion to each individual is essential when the goal is personal accountability.

In a fully developed culture of accountability, achieving understanding is a two-way dialogue. Employees feel empowered to ask questions such as, “How much time should it take me to complete this task?” And leaders know that they must be prepared with all of the relevant information before assigning a task or project. When accountability is the company-wide standard, individuals know that clear expectations set the stage for success.

2. Getting agreement: adjusting for roadblocks

Agreeing to complete an assignment is more than just a simple yes or no. It requires careful consideration of whether the what, when, and how of the task are possible. When making a personal commitment, it’s not fair to yourself or others to make promises you can’t keep. Even though it’s good practice to aim high and maintain strong standards, taking on assignments that can’t be delivered as expected will slow the project, impede progress, and hurt your professional reputation.

Before making a commitment or assigning a task, take the time to anticipate the obstacles that might arise and make adjustments accordingly. Follow these steps to help come to a mutual understanding and set a realistic goal:

1. Look at the calendar and map out a realistic timeline.
2. Talk to others on the team about their availability rather than assuming they can help; remember that they have made personal commitments of their own.
3. Consider the knowledge and skill set necessary for executing the assignment and compare it against your own. You might have to factor in training or research time if there is a gap between what is required and your current abilities.
4. Carefully evaluate the budget to determine whether it is realistic.
5. Determine what other resources are required and make sure they are accessible.

All of these steps will help ensure that commitments are realistic and achievable. If you don’t take the time to do this evaluation and adjustment, you will inevitably encounter hurdles that will affect your ability to deliver on personal accountabilities. You can’t predict the future, but you can learn from past experience and thoughtfully apply those lessons to future commitments.

3. Taking action: leaders must be rigorous in their expectation

After confirming mutual understanding, accounting for potential hurdles, and adjusting commitments accordingly, nothing should remain in the way of delivering on an assignment. It is then up to leaders to demand personal accountability to see the project through.

To do so, leaders can measure progress along the way by checking in at previously agreed-upon points along the path to completion. This reinforces that the leader is expecting the promised outcome to be delivered on time and up to the previously discussed standards. Creating mini-milestones also helps individuals stay on track, especially for larger projects that might feel overwhelming. Leaders and employees can then work together to identify any necessary course corrections that will help individuals fulfill their commitments and stay personally accountable.

In addition to delivering on their own promises, there are certain behaviors leaders can display to promote accountability in the organization. When leaders recognize that a deliverable might not be completed as promised, this is an opportunity to provide support and coaching. What productivity or time management skills can be transferred to help an individual follow through on their commitment? What other adjustments might be necessary to ensure that the goal is met? By staying engaged in this way, leaders demonstrate the importance of personal accountability and show that outcomes must be delivered as promised.

Conclusion

Personal accountability is a hallmark of world-class organizations. To create a culture of accountability, leadership must demonstrate it themselves and demand it from others. In order for that demand to be fair, expectations must be clear and agreed upon, and leaders need to participate in the follow-through. All of these skills are teachable and can be honed over time with training and practice.

Individuals at every level, including leadership, can benefit from ongoing training. It’s important to remember that even if you have a strong commitment to personal accountability, you might need to learn how to coach others to do the same. Investing in leadership training equips executives, managers, and supervisors with the skills to help others achieve the highest standards of accountability.

We live in a world of automatic fixes. If your computer is acting up, you run antivirus software to fix it. If you don’t know how to get somewhere, your smartphone can give you directions while you’re driving—it will even make adjustments to get you back on track if you take a wrong turn.

Unfortunately, there is no such automatic fix to help your business strategy identify potential problems and the solutions that would best address them. In an automated world, organizational development is an area that still requires human ingenuity and ongoing effort to achieve excellence.

People, Process, and Tools

Since technology can’t do all the work, you must create an organizational development plan, establish regular checkpoints to assess your progress, and correct your course along the way. To execute excellently, try using an approach called “People, Process, Tools.” It works like this:

1. As Jim Collins advises in his book Good to Great, ask if you have the right people in the right seats.
2. Secondly, ask if you have the best process in place to enable people to optimize their performance. Are systems and processes fluid, or are they creating roadblocks to success?
3. Finally, ask if your people have the right tools to operate at maximum efficiency. Remember that tools and technology make a great servant and a terrible master, so tools are only valuable if they support and enable better performance.

Picture this: You go for dinner at an expensive restaurant. You place your order and wait patiently for 45 minutes, only to have your meal delivered cold. Is this a problem with people, process, or tools?  In fact, it could be any or all of these. If you were the restaurant manager, you would need to dig deeper to determine which area is causing the problem and establish a plan to fix it.

Implementing a System in Your Organization

Even if you think you already know where the weaknesses are with respect to your company’s people, process, and tools, using a systemized approach to organizational development can mean the difference between achieving excellence and constantly patching the holes. Here a few steps to follow:

Assess

Evaluate all areas of your organization and ask the following questions:

• People: What skills and competencies are necessary for each role? Do the people in each position have them?
• Process: Are the processes that are currently in place working? Are there new processes that should be implemented to help you achieve excellence?
• Tools: Does each person have the necessary tools to properly execute their role? Do those tools need to be updated?

Create a Path

After you have identified the weaknesses in each area, create a path forward by answering these questions:

• People: What specific competencies does each employee need to develop or hone in order to be successful in his or her role?
• Process: What steps will you take to improve ineffective processes and/or implement new ones?
• Tools: What steps will you take to ensure that each person has the tools they need to succeed?

After you have generated your answers, create clear milestones, schedule training if necessary, create committees, and make the necessary purchases to help you achieve those goals in the stated time frames.

Use Checkpoints to Correct Your Course

As you create your organizational development plan, make sure you create checkpoints between milestones to assess your progress so you can make adjustments as needed. For example, you might find that a particular employee has a more robust skill set than you originally thought, making them a candidate for a future leadership role and putting them on a new training track. You might also discover new tools or processes that you were previously unaware of, making it possible to create a new milestone. Whatever the appropriate course correction may be, you won’t necessarily realize it unless you take a step back and look at the bigger picture of your progress.

Take a good look at your team. If you could improve in just one area, would it be the people, the process, or the tools? If you’re not sure how to get started, download our free resources, The Ultimate Guide to Organizational Development, to learn more about how to assess your current status and create a path to get from where you are now to where you want your business to be.

If a key executive member—including you—left your organization tomorrow, would your company crumble? The long-term success of a business depends on the sustainability of leadership. If your company is currently successful, it can be assumed that your leadership program is effective. However, many companies do not invest in the resources to prepare future leaders for future roles.

Developing a strong leadership pipeline can help your organization not only achieve immediate success, but also ensure that success over a longer period of time. To help grow your leadership strategy, consider these five techniques.

1. Mentoring and Coaching Initiatives

Coaching and mentoring are crucial components of an effective leadership pipeline. That’s why it’s important for your strategy to engage existing senior leaders so that they devote time to nurturing potential leaders across your team. Establish a mentoring program and make it responsibility for leaders to coach employees through both formal and informal mentoring sessions.

An effective coaching program emphasizes the connection between the coach and the student. Your leadership team must first take the time to connect, to understand, and to build trust and respect with their team members. Once this is established, it’s far easier to share industry insight and expertise, instruct on important organizational operations, and share role-specific hard skills.

2. Leadership Development Programs

Implementing a leadership development program allows you to cultivate leaders from within your organization so that you have a stable of prepared, talented individuals who can step up when need be. While many organizations have programs that either cater toward senior-level employees or require team members to apply for consideration, think about offering leadership training to your entire organization. When you keep the program open, you create a pool of candidates to fill open positions.

For front-line professionals with no direct reports, leadership training can help develop individual potential and overall leadership strength for the future. These programs drive focus, improve efficiency, and maximize individual contributions to the organization. For mid-level leaders, or those who display focus and confidence in their assessment and coaching techniques, leadership programs help develop their own capabilities in order to tap into the potential of those they lead.

3. Real-World, Real-Time Experiences

On-the-job training programs should be supportive and challenging. To truly groom leaders, offer them more and more responsibilities over time and challenge them with new situations and assignments. Much of what individuals learn happens in real time, so encourage them to work through situational problems to experience real-life workplace situations. Ultimately, it’s your executive team’s responsibility to offer team members the necessary training and resources to be successful.

4. Regular Feedback

According to a Gallup study that measured how Millennials want to work, regular meetings and consistent feedback improve engagement and performance. The survey found that 44 percent of Millennials are more likely to be engaged when their manager does meet with them on a regular basis. Despite these benefits, only 21 percent of Millennial workers meet with their managers on a weekly basis. Your team members want feedback; it’s up to you to provide it.

Relevant, on-the-job training can mirror real-life situations. Without feedback, however, employees are left to assume that their behavior is acceptable. It’s clear that feedback is an essential motivator in developing leaders. Be aware that this applies to both negative and positive feedback. On one hand, a leadership team that does not correct poor employee performance can’t expect change. Conversely, without positive feedback, employees are not provided with the opportunity to flourish and grow.

5. Cross-Departmental Learning

Silos and turf wars impact even the strongest organizations. That’s why it’s up to your current management team to create opportunities in your leadership pipeline for different departments to work together. After all, executive leaders must actively engage with all employees. When departments collaborate and communicate with each other, they gain a greater understanding of the role of other team members and how they function, as well as a more comprehensive overview of how the entire organization functions.

Below are some ideas for cross-departmental learning:

• Team building events
• Peer mentorship
• Cross-departmental project teams
• Job shadowing assignments

Not only can cross-departmental exposure help future leaders understand your company as a whole, but it can inspire ideas for their own roles. This type of learning can improve productivity and ensure that individuals have the right amount of diverse work experience to step into leadership roles.

Individuals who communicate effectively can achieve far more than those who give confusing feedback or struggle with an awkward communication style or poor message delivery. It’s one of the reasons most organizations list strong communication skills among the competencies one working in the modern workforce needs to be hired or secure a promotion. In a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), employers rated verbal communication skills as the most important skill sought in job candidates.

Strong communication is more than a buzzword. It’s a powerful tool that can make a difference in an individual’s overall performance. To become effective communicators, individuals need to master a range of communication techniques and behaviors; one of which is patience.

What Does It Mean to Have Patience in the Workplace?

Someone who has patience in the workplace has both the ability to listen and the ability to deliver the message directly to the intended recipient in a way they fully understand and connect with.

These two skills are very closely linked. If you have the ability to let the person finish speaking through until they are done, without interrupting, then you will be able to understand more clearly what’s on their mind and why they feel the way they do. When you interrupt you cause them to change direction, and then respond to what you said rather then finish what it was they were about to say. The better you understand what they were thinking, the better you are able to respond to them where they are.

Alternatively, when you’re speaking and they interrupt, let them! This gives you additional information as to where they are coming from, and what’s really important to them. This is difficult when we want to finish what we are saying, but if effectiveness is your objective then it is more effective to let them interrupt than to finish what you have to say. What they’re really thinking about is what they’re going to say when you’re done anyway.

As we grow to appreciate the importance of really effective communication, rather than simply the sense of relief we feel when we’ve said what we want to say, even if it’s not been heard as well as we would like, then we should be willing to be patient. This patience when listening, or patience when being interrupted, pays big dividends if you are then able to better understand your listener and tailor your message accordingly.

Developing Patience Through Training

Communication skills influence how employees interact with each other and with customers, as well as how they approach problems and deliver feedback. Improving communication may involve some simple concepts, but achieving it will be a challenge if individuals don’t know how or what to change.

Training that provides the necessary communication skills and knowledge will help employees at every level of the organization become effective communicators and show patience to their colleagues, superiors, and direct reports. It is not a skill that employees can learn by just reading, watching a video, or listening to a presentation about it. Instead, employees need opportunities to learn how to become better communicators by doing, and what better way to do this than by learning through experience, otherwise known as experiential learning. Experiential learning teaches skills and behaviors by presenting individuals with a low-risk opportunity to learn and practice face-to-face techniques in an engaging experience that seems completely unrelated to their lives at work. By engaging in experiential learning, individuals begin to understand why the skills and knowledge being trained are so important in the workplace, how to improve them, and how to apply what they’ve learned back on the job.

Mastering excellent communication requires patience. Both patience as the organization who wants to see it developed in its people, but patience as the one who is communicating with others every single day. Though through intentional effort on implementing practical training solutions, organizations can make this a reality.

Your organization’s strategy carries more impact when it can be executed. Authors of the notable book on strategy execution, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, wrote in Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, that “execution is a specific set of behaviors and techniques that companies need to master to have competitive advantage.” It’s true that you need to have the right strategy in place to achieve organizational goals, but you also need to have the right behaviors and tactics in place to execute that strategy.

In a PWC strategy and execution survey, 55 percent of executives expressed concern that their company lacked the proper focused on strategy execution. Furthermore, the researchers behind the survey found in many of the surveyed companies, that their “strategies often just aren’t implementable and aren’t designed to win.” To “win” and effectively move from a great strategy to executional excellence, you’ll need to evaluate your processes and leadership behaviors to assess whether you’re properly equipped to execute your strategy.

Using the Sterling Silver CordTM  to Achieve Strategy Excellence

Strategy execution—predictably getting the right things done in the best possible way—requires great skill, commitment, and rigor. A useful tool for helping individuals achieve executional excellence is the five-step Sterling Silver Cord™. Through these five steps, individuals gain useful techniques for moving from strategy (through plans, checkpoints, and innovations) to tactics, resulting in executional excellence.

Step 1: Identify the strategy. Picture a cord with five nodes along its length. Imagine this represents five disciplines a leader must excel at when faced with a challenge. Whether it takes 5 seconds or 5 months to decide upon the right approach depends on the magnitude of the challenge. Ultimately, your chosen approach becomes your strategy.

Step 2: Develop plans. To bring the strategy to life, it’s helpful to visualize the desired outcome. By developing a clear picture of the goal to be accomplished, everyone involved with the strategy and its execution gains a complete understanding and can agree on what the outcome will look like once executed.

Step 3: Visit checkpoints. When you’re going full steam ahead toward execution of a goal, it’s helpful to periodically review and critique your progress. As you visit checkpoints along the way, you’ll have opportunities to evaluate the need for course corrections and recalculate the timing of upcoming milestones.

Step 4: Innovate. As you’re moving along the path toward execution, unforeseen obstacles may appear that put the desired outcome at risk. At this stage, you’ll need to innovate—with new ideas or the addition of new resources—to move the strategy and plans back in line. For example, the execution of a new product launch may be progressing nicely, until a new user feedback report comes in. This new information might require making a design change or adding some new product functionality to ensure a successful execution that meets the needs of your customers.

Step 5: Execute tactics. Strategy, plans, checkpoints, and innovation will set you up for success, but you haven’t yet reached the finish line. To execute means to get the task done, whether you’re the one employing the necessary tactics or you’re working as part of a team. No matter the tactical actors working toward execution, consistently making it happen closes the loop of executional excellence.

Strategy Excellence as a Key Principle of Leadership

Getting things done is an important principle of leadership because without execution, your organization can’t meet its obligations to customers, shareholder, or employees. The Sterling Silver CordTM highlights the reality that there are specific behaviors leaders can exhibit to drive executional excellence throughout teams and the broader organization. Leadership development can help individuals learn and practice the behaviors required to achieve executional excellence, so that strategy becomes more than just a great idea—it translates into action.

Achieving employee engagement is a commitment that starts with leadership. Every leader in the organization has an impact—good or bad—on the teams they lead, and this influences individual engagement. Factors such as the overall success of the business, an individual manager’s leadership style, and specific issues on a team can all affect employee engagement. In order to get every individual to contribute their best efforts, leaders must have the ability to recognize the factors that cause employees to participate and those that cause them to disengage.

Engagement isn’t magic—it’s craft. It requires open communication, clearly articulated goals, and unambiguous expectations. Therefore, if you are wondering how you can improve employee engagement, building strong leadership skills will be key to success. Here’s how they can support the achievement of your goals:

1. Improving Engagement through Communication

Leaders must learn how to communicate clearly and effectively. This includes sharing goals, strategies, and the rationales behind decisions so that employees can understand why they are asked to do certain tasks. It’s also important for leadership to share success stories, both at the individual and organizational levels. For example, recognizing individual achievements on a team can be very motivating for everybody in the company. It’s also important not to assume that everybody in the company is aware of successes at the organizational level, such as awards, news items, or charitable donations.

Within the organization, communication between leadership and employees should be two-way. When employees have the opportunity to provide honest feedback to leadership, they become more engaged because they believe that their opinions matter. This can be accomplished through employee surveys, one-on-one conversations, and small group discussions.

Practical strategies for improving employee engagement through communication include:

• Committing to consistent, periodic updates about the organizational big picture
• Scheduling regular feedback sessions between leaders and employees that go beyond just an annual review
• Implementing technology (messaging apps, internal social platforms, etc.) that will foster better communication among peers

2. Improving Engagement through Clear Goals

Sharing organizational goals helps employees understand their roles in achieving them. You can then use these larger goals to formulate attainable objectives at the individual level. Setting individual goals that align with organizational objectives fosters better engagement by highlighting exactly how each employee is contributing. This practice also gives every employee something for which to be accountable.

Articulating a compelling vision not only ensures individual alignment with organizational objectives, it also instills a sense of purpose among employees, which contributes to greater job satisfaction.

Practical strategies for improving employee engagement through setting clear goals include:

• Writing down the most important organizational goals and posting them in a place where every employee will see them on a regular basis
• Frequently referencing company goals in internal communications
• Having each employee set individual objectives based on the common company goal, and using those goals to coach against
• Following up on each person’s goals throughout the year and seeking ways to support their success

3. Improving Engagement through Unambiguous Expectations

When it’s not clear who is responsible for what, it’s easy for employees to disengage. On the other hand, when individuals know that they are accountable for specific outcomes, they are more likely to fully engage to meet those expectations. Leaders can demonstrate accountability through their own behavior by always delivering on their commitments.

Practical strategies for improving employee engagement through unambiguous expectations include:

• Defining the expected outcomes, including timelines, for each employee objective
• Tracking progress with regular check-ins between managers and employees
• Publicly recognizing individuals when they meet the defined expectations to reinforce the desired behavior

Conclusion: Improving Employee Engagement Is a Process

These three approaches work together to improve employee engagement. Using effective communication to create individual goals and define expectations gives employees a clear path forward. They know what is expected of them and, equally importantly, why they are doing it. Engagement starts with leadership, and if your leaders don’t yet have the necessary skills to deploy these strategies, it require updating your leadership development program.

The New York Times recently published an article on Google and its quest to “build a better boss.” Google’s quest to build its leadership skills is critical given Eagle’s Flight’s own findings that individual employee contribution can be 30 to 40% higher when working for a world-class leader.

Imagine! Simply by improving leadership skills, every one of your managers’ direct reports’ contribution can be increased by as much as 40%! That’s 40% more contribution for the same employee salary – every year, year after year. What an incredible boost to productivity.

The Google quest also highlights the fact that leadership is not in fact one skill but several. Google’s research identified “Eight Good Behaviors.” To be a world-class leader, one cannot just learn one or two behaviors and become proficient in those. One must be proficient in each one individually while having them working in harmony with one another.

Building a Leadership Web

Learning to be a world-class leader is like creating a magnificent spider’s web. It’s done one strand at a time and requires patience. Like a spider web, each leadership strand must also be interconnected and serve to reinforce the whole. At Eagle’s Flight, our approach to leadership development is an integrated one, linking together content from each learning module. For example, being a good coach and providing specific constructive feedback requires a leader be a good communicator in both listening and in sharing information.

World-class leadership qualities like Google’s “Eight Good Behaviors” must be taught in such a way as to work together in tandem with one another. Here’s how the eight behaviors link to Eagle’s Flight’s integrated approach to leadership development:

1. Be a good coach: Outcome-based Leadership
2. Empower your team and don’t micromanage: Leading an Empowered Workforce
3. Express interest in team member’s success and personal well-being: Leader’s Triad
4. Don’t be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented: Leader’s Imperatives
5. Be a good communicator and listen to your team: Insightment
6. Help your employees with career development: Accelerating Performance
7. Have a clear vision and strategy for the team: Executional Excellence
8. Have key technical skills so you can help advise the team: Powering Team Performance

When Eagle’s Flight designs a world class leadership development initiative, we cover our clients’ most crucial competency areas first, and then, as the strands of the web are developed over time, we link the leadership competencies together to reinforce the nature and importance of an integrated web.