Good leaders have teams that can be held accountable.
They will focus on the positive ways that accountability can motivate their team by giving them purpose and a sense of accomplishment.
The all-around opinion is that Micromanaging, on the other hand, is bad.
Before we go into that in more depth, let’s set out the core differences between micromanaging and accountability:
- Micromanagement is a management style whereby a manager closely observes or controls the work of their employees. In a nutshell, this drives home the message that you do not trust your team to do their jobs properly which can lead to unfulfillment and ultimately a disengaged team.
- Accountability means taking responsibility for your actions and being proactive with your work, progress and coming up with solutions to remaining accountable. The Journal of Experimental Psychology found that people who believe they are being watched will perform poorly. They get distracted, stressed and ultimately focus on the fact that they are being observed rather than on their tasks. Therefore holding people accountable and giving them autonomy is a much better management style.
Accountability doesn’t mean that your team can go off and do whatever they like, however. They still need to be managed and therein lies the difficulty that most managers face.
How do you manage without crossing the line into micromanagement?
Let them play a part in their own objectives – When you get ready to put your action plan together, include your team in that process and have everyone play a part in assigning ownership and accountability. This also gives you the chance to come up with really clear, feasible expectations, and measurable goals and objectives.
Take away the stigma – By talking about accountability openly during team meetings and so on, you can normalise it and get people comfortable with the idea. It isn’t a negative thing; it is simply the ownership of a project and its outcomes.
Communicate – Keep updated on where your team are with their tasks and how well they are meeting their objectives. If you can all play a part in spotting issues early on and deal with them expediently, then you will encourage your team to be more proactive and engaged with their own accountability.
Give them what they need – How are you measuring their KPI’s or objectives? Whatever it is, make sure your team have access to the information they need so that they can see their own progress, helping them to be more accountable.
Management training is a really great way to improve leadership styles and confidence. At Reality HR, we host several management training workshops a year that our clients love. One of our clients said recently:
“As a result of Reality HR’s comprehensive Introduction to Management training course, my new managers now have greater confidence…Staff who attended this course also benefitted hugely from having the same trainer for the entire programme. That consistent, trusted relationship allowed them to flourish and move forward as more assured managers. I’ve worked with Reality HR since 2014 and I’m definitely planning to continue using them for the professional development of my staff.” Paul Calverley, Parallel Translations