The whole idea of having a team, when you’re a small business owner, is to be able to stop doing everything yourself. You train someone to handle it, so you can move on to other things to continue growing your business.
Although it sounds easy, it requires team accountability, which doesn’t just magically happen. But without it, having a team is really challenging and often requires more work than doing everything yourself.
I ran into this challenge a couple of times, and it seemed that the only way things got done was by standing over everyone, making sure they did what I asked. Which felt like a gigantic waste of my time.
So, I started looking for a root cause. I assumed it was me.
What I’ve learned by working with so many business owners over the years is that there are actually two primary causes for poor team accountability. The first is what I incorrectly assumed about my situation. The second is the team.
The only way to solve a team accountability problem is to begin with a diagnosis of the root cause, because the fix depends on the root cause.
When the Owner Is the Problem
Gallup defines creating accountability as “holding everyone responsible for delivering exceptional performance.” Their research also identified it as one of seven core leadership skills for success. Unfortunately, it’s also the lowest-rated of these skills across the board.
Another workplace study found that 82% of managers try and fail to hold others accountable or avoid it completely.
Broadly speaking, there are a few ways an owner creates a team accountability problem without realizing it.
The first is being too permissive. There are several different ways this can show up in a business.
You absorb dysfunction instead of addressing it. Deadlines pass, and you handle things yourself because the conversation feels harder than doing the work yourself.
Standards and ownership blur when things get busy.
Your team gradually learns that follow-through is negotiable.
For two years, I worked with a writer who consistently missed deadlines. I justified it in every way I could think of.
I wasn’t clear enough in my request. Her life is so chaotic right now that, of course, I can’t expect her to deliver on time. She’s such an amazing writer that I need to just deal with whatever I need to do because the clients love her work and are willing to wait for it.
Every single one of those justifications felt generous. And every single one of them was wrong.
What kept me in that pattern was pity. She had confided that she was struggling financially when I suggested that she work with me. I was also afraid of losing the clients who loved her writing. So, I avoided having a confrontation by convincing myself that exceptional talent made difficult behavior acceptable.
I was trying to please everyone except myself and my business.
The failure in accountability was mine. I was the one who set the non-existent standards with her.
The second is actually doing the opposite and being too strict.
When a business owner declares there is only one way to do things and that deviation is not tolerated, the team is run by fear.
So, they perform defensively and only follow rules to avoid consequences instead of being invested in the outcome. Over time, these environments tend to produce teams that quietly quit or push back in ways that look like insubordination but aren’t always.
I’m acquainted with an employee at an automation business. The owner built the business himself. He created rigid processes for his team to follow because that’s the way he built the business. The owner treated his processes as non-negotiable.
Finally, the employee I know reached a breaking point and walked into the owner’s office. He spoke plainly and directly as he explained how the business needs to be organized to continue growing.
The owner respects this employee and took the conversation seriously. He told them that it was something he needed to think about before continuing the conversation, and that he wanted to continue the conversation.
This type of response shows that this isn’t a truly toxic environment and that the employee’s motivation wasn’t to undermine the owner, but to make things better.
Overcorrection from both is a common problem.
When a permissive owner hits a breaking point, they can swing rigid. When a strict owner senses the team pulling away, they can become overly hands-off.
And, of course, overcorrection in either direction creates even greater challenges and makes the diagnosis even more difficult.
The third is stepping back without building the structure to support your absence.
At first, this pattern looks like growth. An owner I know has been pouring their heart into creating something really special for several years. In January, they decided to focus on one arm of the business and let their team be accountable for the other.
Unfortunately, they didn’t provide enough structure with the hand-off. The team began floundering, clients got inconsistent service, and things the owner would normally catch fell through the cracks.
Now, several months in, the owner’s response is to start cutting people, one by one, every few weeks. On top of that, a couple of others have resigned.
Although this owner sees the problem as resting with the team, what they’re missing is that they created a hole that the team didn’t have the knowledge to fill. The team likely had the capability to succeed, but they weren’t given the guidelines to work the system the owner had built.
To actually grow a business, the owner must evolve along with it.
Could the Problem Really Be the Team?
Sometimes it actually is the team. However, it takes an owner consistently and honestly doing self-evaluation to be willing to accept this when the evidence clearly points to it.
Let’s go back to my situation with the writer. For a long time, I assumed I was the problem. So, I kept adjusting and justifying.
Then she sent me a scathing email complaining that I wasn’t paying her enough and that I shouldn’t be getting any income from her efforts, ignoring that every client she had was because I had found them for her, and I was taking on the admin.
That was when I finally stopped assuming I was the problem and saw what had always been there. The behavior was entitled. There was a fundamental misalignment between what she expected and the working relationship we needed. Nothing I could do would change that.
It was a hiring problem, plain and simple.
During the time that we worked together, I absorbed months of unnecessary stress. Of all the clients she worked with, only one didn’t renew with me after her departure.
Determining whether there’s a hiring mistake in a strict environment requires a different examination. That’s because when a team member pushes back, the owner has to ask themselves if the person is trying to undermine them or telling them something they need to hear.
Understanding this changes the owner’s response dramatically.
In this environment, a genuine misalignment looks like someone who doesn’t respect the business, isn’t invested in the outcome, and who would create problems anywhere they worked.
If, however, the team member is talented and reacting rationally to a system that’s stopped working, that’s an owner issue disguised as a team issue.
Knowing which situation you’re dealing with changes whether the next conversation is about clarifying expectations or ending a relationship.
What Does This Look Like in Your Business?
You’ve got to look for specific patterns because there are myriad ways this can appear. And no matter how satisfying it would be to have a checklist you can use to quickly decide what changes you need to make to improve team accountability, there isn’t one.
Here are some of the patterns to look for:
- If only one person is struggling, that’s just a data point. If more than one person on your team is struggling, then it’s likely an issue with the work environment. It’s also a mirror for you.
- If more than one person consistently underperforms while others don’t, and this continues regardless of how clearly you communicate or how much support you offer and provide, then it’s likely a team problem.
- If your team performs well when you’re there and falls apart when you’re not, you’re missing accountability in your structure. In other words, you are the accountability. This is an owner issue.
- If you’ve recently changed how you show up and interact with your team, watch carefully for overcorrections on your part. Your team is trying to figure out what’s going on and looking to you to demonstrate the new standard.
In addition, many business owners face a combination of issues that can be extremely challenging to unravel.
What Can You Do About Poor Team Accountability?
Lots. As the owner, it all starts and ends with you.
Accountability isn’t a value you install in other people. It’s a response to the environment you’ve created. So, you’re the only one who can change it.
You must consistently demonstrate the behavior you want your team to emulate. That’s because people believe in actions more than words.
The most difficult part about this is letting people feel the repercussions of their behaviors. When you let something go wrong once, it has much more impact than 6 conversations about it.
This is a whole lot harder than it sounds when you’ve built a habit of stepping in.
It also means clarity of ownership without the space for misinterpretation. Expectations, like goals, need to be specific and detailed.
If the problem is a hiring issue, there’s no system that will fix it. Knowing which problem you have is one thing. Knowing what to do about it and doing it is where it can fall apart.
And knowing whether delegation is actually paying off for you is useful because what looks like a delegation failure can actually be the key you need to see that you’re delegating to the wrong person.
If your business has started costing you more than it’s giving you, team accountability is a great place to examine.
If you’re ready to get clarity on what’s actually causing the breakdown in your business, let’s talk. Schedule a 15-minute call, and together we can figure out where to start.
About the Author
Karen Finn, PhD is an author and business growth strategist. Download a copy of her book, The Business Growth Plan, to get insight into the low-cost and no-cost strategies she uses with her clients to 2x-3x their revenues.
