Leaders Must be Accountable Too

Source: ChangeThis.com

David Maister is an accounting profession consultant for whom we have great respect. The following is based on his white paper entitled Accountability: Effective Managers Go First:

• A manager who leads by example will have dramatic impact on any organization. Maister gives the following analogy: “We cannot expect an organization to raise its game, change its direction or pursue new ambitious goals and strategies by saying ‘Charge! I want all of you, the troops, to climb out of your foxholes and go put yourselves in harm’s way.’ Realistically, that’s unlikely to work. Instead of saying ‘Charge!’ we need to say ‘Follow me,’ energizing others through our own behavior.”
• Employees are more responsible when they know others in the firm are responsible.
• Here is what employees expect of their superiors:
  • Practice what you preach.
  • Be a role model.
  • Be honest.
  • Believe in the firm’s values.
  • Be a part of the team, not an aloof boss. Be a coach.
  • Have a long-term perspective.
  • Give constructive critiques. Encourage rather than criticize.
  • Be creative.
  • Encourage teams to work together, not to compete.
  • Don’t abide underperformers.
  • Communicate.
  • Be fair.
  • Make decisions after consulting with employees.
  • Give credit unreservedly.
  • Be a good listener.
• Develop a questionnaire about your own performance based on the list above. Ask everyone on your team to complete it, and have an outside person prepare a report on the results. Then publish your ratings (averages). Have a meeting of the employees. Determine a set of agreed upon standards based on the report. Promise improvement, not perfection.
  
  Promise that if you do not improve toward achieving the agreed standards, you will abdicate your role as manager. That is powerful.
  
  
• If your feedback is not published, employees will not believe the feedback is being used.
   
• Employees are rarely stimulated by detached management. Management must do some of the work. But sometimes management tries to do too much—bringing in the most new clients, doing more client service work than anyone else, etc. Although this might be inspirational, it detracts from the management role.

We believe this digest can help any manager who is introspective about his or her performance. We also believe many managers will want to create a system of accountability and feedback as described in this article and would in that case highly recommend reading the entire article.

From ChangeThis.com, November 7, 2006, http://tinyurl.com/yx8rc4.

For the complete article, click on the following link:
http://www.changethis.com/28.05.AccountabilityManagers