How to Hold Someone Accountable: 5 Accountability Tips

Holding others accountable—coworkers, direct reports, and other employees—helps ensure an organization functions at optimal capacity. At the same time, it’s important to let others hold you accountable as well. Mutual accountability fosters a spirit of collaboration alongside a drive to meet and exceed peers’ and supervisors’ expectations. This helps ensure better performance on both an individual and group level.

For instance, within companies, employee accountability imbues each team member with an innate sense of responsibility. If an employee knows they’ll report on their work to a supervisor and fellow team members, the hope is they’ll be more likely to work as diligently as possible to churn out satisfactory results for the good of an entire team.

Sometimes knowing other people are relying on them is all it takes for a person to achieve their best. Other times, they might need more guidance and constructive feedback to excel. Unfortunately, sometimes negative consequences might be necessary.

When you hold someone accountable in the right way, you foster their growth at the same time. Here are just three benefits of holding others accountable:

1. 1. Better team dynamics: By establishing a company culture of accountability, everyone can feel like they’re on the same playing field. The leadership team must meet the same standards as any other team in this scenario, leading to a democratic and fair environment. When everyone feels positive pressure to adhere to certain standards of conduct and mutual accountability, they’re more likely to do their best to collaborate to the best of their abilities.
2. 2. Greater clarity of purpose: A lack of accountability leads to a lack of direction, whereas a higher degree of accountability translates to a greater clarity of purpose. When you hold employees accountable as a supervisor, you do so with the organization’s overall mission in mind. These regular check-ins help keep everyone on the same page about what their work is for in an overarching way.
3. 3. Improved performance: Greater accountability helps inspire high-performing employees to keep delivering at optimal levels and more average employees to work harder. When offering regular feedback and assessments to employees, ensure they know you have their best interests in mind. Approach accountability as an empathetic guide rather than as a harsh taskmaster.

Mutual accountability can help an organization fulfill and exceed its stated goals and commitments. Keep these tips in mind as a template for how to hold people accountable:

1. 1. Hold yourself accountable. Great leaders only hold people to the standards to which they hold themselves. If you require people to exceed your own level of commitment or hard work, it can lead to a greater degree of defensiveness and resentment among stakeholders and team members. Lead by example. Show everyone you only want them to meet the standards you rigorously adhere to yourself by also holding yourself accountable.
2. 2. Implement consequences when necessary. Consistent bad behavior and poor performance might inevitably become cause for a difficult conversation about a person’s future with your organization. Still, take every step necessary and opportunity possible to give any team member the ability to correct course before relying on negative consequences.
3. 3. Make expectations clear. Team members deserve clear expectations for what’s required of them. If a person doesn’t know what you expect from them, they’ll have a hard time meeting your standards. Ensure everyone within your organization knows how to achieve and excel to their ultimate potential. Giving people the tools they need to succeed—rather than just correcting them after the fact—is a major aspect of accountability.
4. 4. Offer constructive feedback. Check in with your staff on a regular basis to provide them with useful takeaways about how to achieve desired results for your organization. Frame this advice in a constructive manner. Refrain from being pedantic or condescending, as this can feel less like meaningful accountability and more like bullying.
5. 5. Set manageable goals. Give your team goals they can reliably achieve. Hold people accountable according to what they can realistically do, rather than trying to set goals they will have an unreasonably difficult time achieving. Consider setting Strategic, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound goals, or SMART goals.

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