A team-member without a clear understanding of accountability and authority within the team will have to be skilled at either persuading, forcing or bullying other team-members into working along to accomplish the goals.
Systems-Drive-Behavior. Autonomous people are accountable for their decisions. This comes from an organization that has “big enough” managers and people in the right roles with the right accountability + authority to do their work.
If more than 1 person is Responsible for completing the goal, they all have valid arguments, they all are doing what they should be doing….and the because they all are Responsible for the outcome and want to do their best work it causes role confusion.
This may be fixed, somewhat resolved, if we have a single Responsible person…and that Single Responsible person, if confused, had access to the project manager for clarity on the goal.
What are you accountable for? How can others help you in accomplishing your accountability?
Sounds easy right? Try it, then when you think you have the answer randomly ask 5 people who work in your department the same question. My guess is you will not find many responses that are the same. And that is frustrating for everyone.
Can you answer these questions;
Recently I was facilitating a team of 15 – a group that wished to enhance their team skills by creating a culture of empowerment. As I progressed through the training, I saw that when I asked a question and asked the team to spend some time (generally 3-5 minutes) planning how they would solve the … Continued