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Avoidance of Accountability

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About this lesson

Avoidance of Accountability is one of the five team dysfunctions. In this case, team members are not willing to confront each other about team performance; team members accept low standards and often fail to even achieve those, creating resentment and animosity among the other team members.

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Quick reference

Avoidance of Accountability

Avoidance of Accountability is one of the five team dysfunctions.  In this case, team members are not willing to confront each other about team performance; team members accept low standards and often fail to even achieve those, creating resentment and animosity among the other team members.  

When to use

When team performance and cohesion is lacking, analyse the team for the five dysfunctions.  If there is avoidance of accountability, apply the corrective actions to improve team performance and cohesion.

Instructions

To address the team dysfunction of Avoidance of Accountability, you must be able to recognize this condition.  The table below contrasts teams that hold each other accountable with those that do not.

Accountability

Tools for Overcoming the Avoidance of Accountability

The following tools are commonly used by teams to overcome the avoidance of accountability.

  • Publication of Goals and Standards: Making things public makes it harder to hide.
  • Simple Regular Progress Reviews: Pulsing the progress provides timely feedback and risk management.
  • Team Rewards: Incentivizes the team members to ensure that all are performing as needed.
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  • 00:04 Hello, I'm Ray Sheen.
  • 00:05 Let's look at another of the five team dysfunctions, avoidance of accountability.
  • 00:12 Let me clarify what I mean by team accountability.
  • 00:15 Recall from an earlier session that we contrasted responsibility and
  • 00:18 accountability.
  • 00:20 Responsibility is what one volunteers for or was assigned to do.
  • 00:24 Accountability is the result of what you actually did.
  • 00:28 So, our focus here is the actual result of each team member's performance
  • 00:32 on the team activities.
  • 00:34 Team accountability is the willingness of team members to confront other team
  • 00:37 members about their performance on team activities.
  • 00:40 We are not talking about performance reviews or
  • 00:42 managerial discipline, we're talking about team member to team member interactions.
  • 00:48 That means that we are talking about peer pressure on the teams.
  • 00:52 You're probably taught that peer pressure is bad.
  • 00:54 Peer pressure to adopt silly or
  • 00:56 destructive behavior is normally unhealthy.
  • 00:59 But peer pressure by team members, setting standards for team performance and
  • 01:03 making it clear to others that they need to conform can help the team.
  • 01:07 It may be something as simple as on-time attendance at team meetings.
  • 01:11 I'm currently working on a project with several other consultants.
  • 01:15 Each of us has a role to perform, and to put it bluntly,
  • 01:18 I'm behind on completing my tasks and getting my part of the project working.
  • 01:22 The other members of the team are now regularly checking with me
  • 01:25 to make sure that I stay focused and complete my activities.
  • 01:28 They are holding me accountable for my results.
  • 01:32 Now, several of us have worked together before.
  • 01:34 We've established trust and confidence in each other to the point where they feel
  • 01:38 that our relationship and our camaraderie is strong enough that they can ask me hard
  • 01:42 questions about my performance and I feel that I need to buckle down and
  • 01:46 actually get busy or I will be letting them down.
  • 01:50 A term that is sometimes used for this type of camaraderie and
  • 01:52 peer pressure to get someone to improve their performance is tough love.
  • 01:57 The team members don't let poor performers off with mediocre work.
  • 02:01 They expect the highest level of performance of themselves and each other.
  • 02:06 To bring this dysfunction of avoidance of accountability into sharper clarity,
  • 02:10 let me contrast teams that practice accountability and
  • 02:13 teams that avoid accountability, at least, in terms of team characteristics.
  • 02:18 When teams practice accountability,
  • 02:20 underperformers on the team feel pressured to improve.
  • 02:23 They don't want to let the team down, so they strive to meet the expectations.
  • 02:28 Also, team members are checking on each other and
  • 02:30 that provides early indication of when a team member is having a problem.
  • 02:34 The team can then react in a proactive manner to resolve the issue.
  • 02:38 Team members have respect for each other's expertise and contribution.
  • 02:41 That's why they don't feel resentful when someone points out a problem,
  • 02:45 they know that the respect is still there.
  • 02:47 Finally, the team doesn't play games around reporting progress or
  • 02:50 acknowledging problems.
  • 02:52 All that nonsense and bureaucracy can be bypassed because everyone is open and
  • 02:56 honest about their status and issues.
  • 02:59 Now let's contrast that list with the list associated with avoidance of
  • 03:03 accountability.
  • 03:04 Rather than the camaraderie and
  • 03:05 friendly peer pressure to perform, team members are resentful of each and
  • 03:09 have a different performance standard, either higher or lower.
  • 03:13 This has a tendency to encourage mediocrity
  • 03:16 as everyone aligns their own performance with what they perceive to be the lowest
  • 03:20 level performance among other team members.
  • 03:22 Naturally, performance suffers, deadlines are missed, deliverables are not done
  • 03:26 correctly, the goal and objective of the team are not achieved.
  • 03:30 When a team is operating like this, the team leader often becomes the bad guy.
  • 03:34 They start hammering on team members to perform, but
  • 03:37 as team members look around at the low performance of others on the team, they
  • 03:41 just began to feel that the team leader is singling them out for persecution.
  • 03:46 Needless to say, the team leader's job has now become much more difficult.
  • 03:51 Obviously, the picture I painted about the avoidance of accountability is not good,
  • 03:55 so what can be done to overcome this problem?
  • 03:58 The best thing can be done is to eliminate ambiguity about goals and standards and
  • 04:01 how they apply to each and every activity being done by team members.
  • 04:05 Shining the light of expectations makes it harder to hide and
  • 04:09 the team members who have bought into the team goals
  • 04:11 will be much more likely to start holding themselves and others accountable.
  • 04:16 Developing the characteristic of team accountability is difficult for
  • 04:20 a team leader.
  • 04:21 If they take on all the discipline, then the team won't.
  • 04:24 However, if they wait for
  • 04:25 the team to step up, the goal objectives may suffer until the team responds.
  • 04:30 Many people today have never been in a position where
  • 04:32 they were ever held accountable, so they don't know what to do or to expect.
  • 04:36 The team leader may need to model this appropriate behavior.
  • 04:41 Some of the tools that I have used over the years to help build team
  • 04:43 accountability include a crystal clear public publication of all team goals and
  • 04:48 objectives.
  • 04:49 No one can hide, and no one can use the excuse that they didn't know the standard.
  • 04:53 Incidentally, this is a lot of work for the team leader,
  • 04:56 to cascade the team level goals and standards down to the team task level.
  • 05:00 Another approach is to rely on simple frequent status reports.
  • 05:05 The mantra becomes that old saying, what have you done for me lately?
  • 05:08 Each team member reports to the entire team on their near team activities and
  • 05:12 results.
  • 05:13 This may actually cause a little bit of shaming,
  • 05:15 but most people do not like to stand up in front of the others and look stupid, so
  • 05:20 they change their personal performance.
  • 05:22 As one changes, others change and
  • 05:24 soon the peer group is expecting everyone to step up to next level of performance.
  • 05:29 The third approach is to provide no individual rewards or
  • 05:32 recognition, only team rewards.
  • 05:34 For this to work, you need to let the team know upfront and
  • 05:37 you need to follow through when they achieve the performance goal.
  • 05:41 Teams that suffer from avoidance of accountability are never able to reach
  • 05:46 sustained high performance.
  • 05:48 Fortunately, there's several tools to encourage accountability.
  • 05:53 When that is your team's dysfunction, start using some of those tools.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Lack of Commitment
05m:37s
Inattention to Results
05m:10s
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