Peer-to-peer accountability

Team communication. Simple, yet difficult. All this week, we have been exploring how you as a team leader can improve your team’s communication.

We started with an overview of Patrick Lencioni’s The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team model, which we use in our Confident Communicator workshops. We discussed a way to build the foundational element of team trust, which enables a team to engage in creative conflict, which creates the ability for everyone to commit to a decision. We have arrived at the hallmark of high-performing teams, accountability.

What an overused word. To most of us, it’s meaningless.

Let’s use Lencioni’s definition: Accountability is the willingness of team members to remind one another when they are not living up to the performance standards of the group.

Think about the best sports, musical, acting, or other teams and groups you were part of as a kid. Which were the most effective and enjoyable? I’ll bet the best teams were the ones where the members could say to one another, “Come on, you can do better.”

On the best teams, it’s not just the leader who holds teammates accountable. But, at the same time, for peer-to-peer accountability to be part of a team’s culture, it has to be modeled by you, the leader.

What’s the number one reason we don’t hold our teammates accountable?

According to Lencioni, it’s “the understandable hesitance of human beings to give one another critical feedback.”

If you want to create a team that communicates well, it’s vital to make it clear that when teammates fail to give peers constructive feedback, they are letting them down personally.

Holding back hurts the team AND the teammates themselves.

Team effectiveness exercise

Here’s an exercise you can do with a team that has already built some level of trust, comfort with conflict, and commitment. Warning: this is not for new teams or teams where there isn’t enough trust built.

The idea is to set aside a few hours, perhaps in an offsite, and have everyone on the team write down the answers to two questions about every other member of the team.

• What is the single most important behavioral characteristic or quality demonstrated by this person that contributes to the strength of our team?

• What is the single most important behavioral characteristic or quality demonstrated by this person that can sometimes derail the team?

• When everyone is done, it’s time for the fun, and the leader goes first.

One by one, everyone reads out loud the qualities of the leader that contributes to the team. The leader can not counter, react, or explain. She must simply listen (and ask for clarification if needed).

It’s remarkable how consistent the comments are, and truthful.

After all everyone comments, only then should the leader gives her reaction, which is usually something like gratitude at how thoughtful and genuine team members were and how grateful she is to hear how she helped the team.

Then it’s time for the constructive criticism. One by one, the team members provide their feedback directly to the leader, who holds her comments until the end.

In our experience, what is said is usually consistent and delivered thoughtfully, with compassion. When finished, the leader gives her reaction, which is usually something like, “Yep, those are definitely my areas of improvement.”

And the room is dumfounded that they have all just given their leader direct feedback.

After the leader has been a role model in how to recieve feedback, it’s time for the rest of the team to hear it straight from their peers about how they each can improve. The same rules apply.

With this exercise, everyone on the team, even the difficult ones, are often genuinely flattered by the specific positive feedback they’ve received. So is the clarity and simplicity of what they each need to do to improve.

More importantly, however, the team has started to be able to hold each other accountable.

It’s important to follow up in a few weeks or months, to ensure everyone is working on their own areas of improvement, and to continue working in a safe space to hold each other accountable.

Simple, yes. Daunting, sure. But this exercise can yield powerful results in your attempts to create a culture where teammates hold each other accountable.