As leaders, we receive the most attention when things are going wrong, whether we know it or not. Yet when the proverbial sh*t hits the fan, our teams need certainty more than ever. Certainty can be found in many forms such as clarity, direction, comfort, safety, and security.
However, when inevitable uncertainties present themselves in the form of challenges, losses, rejection, failure, and judgment, personal accountability matters the most. You need personal accountability to lead from the front and pave the way for how you want your team to realize their potential.
Here are five ways we can embrace personal accountability for maximum leadership impact.
Be the example you want to see
Leaders have an opportunity to demonstrate the difference between responding and reacting to uncertainty when things go wrong. When we react, we are emotional. The higher our emotions the lower our intelligence. A leader can instantly break all forms of trust with their team if they become an emotional reactor.
How does a leader respond instead of reacting? By immediately accepting the situation and seeing what is within their control and what is not. One of the reasons that people react emotionally to uncertainty is that they are much slower to accept the situation and move on.
By responding with immediate acceptance to uncertainty our intellect remains high because our emotional intensity is low. This is the essence of being the example you want to see in your environment. Research has shown us that team members respond strongly to the example set by a leader, according to Guth et al 2007 and Gachter et al 2012.
Set the standards
Be quick to stamp out behaviors we don’t want to see and be quick to reward behaviors you want to see more of. According to a research article published in The Atlantic, the broken window theory from the criminology world suggests that “visible signs of disorder and misbehavior in an environment encourages further disorder and misbehavior, leading to serious crimes.”
Setting behavioral standards in any business follows the same theory. We are continually teaching our team how to treat us and others by what we are willing to tolerate and not tolerate. Set the standards for others by having those very same standards for ourselves.
Be consistent
Let’s not confuse consistency with perfection. Consistency breeds trust. Without trust we have nothing. Our message, energy, and emotional state need to be consistent. This can be easily misunderstood.
Allow the space for people to have fun and enjoy themselves, while also making it clear when it’s all hands on deck and time to focus. This is very much like a wicketkeeper in cricket. He or she is relaxed and sharing a joke with a teammate, but when the ball is thundering down the pitch, it is all hands on deck and super focused on what is happening.
If we create this consistency of when to be on and when to be off, it breeds trust, a sentiment backed up by Patrick Lencioni in his well-regarded book The Five Dysfunctions of A Team.
Make people better people
As leaders, we need to care for our people as people, not only for the role they play. I believe that one of the highest levels we can attain on our impact is to make our people better people. Helping our team members improve across all their roles in life is a high-class endeavor for all good leaders.
As Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Caring leads to a genuine connection. When we have a genuine connection, we then take inspired action which leads to a high level of results. According to R. K. Greenleaf, the power of servant leadership and caring for team members goes beyond their work roles. This is very effective, creating loyalty and high performance.
Commit to completion
This means as leaders we are all in. Ironically, we will also know when it is time to let go, move on or simply hand over. A leader who has this “commitment to completion” in their mindset, brings a deep sense of certainty to any organisation or team. Jim Collins emphasis this in his seminal book Good To Great.
Certainty is one of the most attractive qualities of any great leader. By embracing this personal accountability component, our certainty must always exceed any team member’s doubt. As long as our certainty exceeds other’s doubt, we are leading and in control, but the moment their doubt exceeds our certainty, this can mark the beginning of an end.
