I’m always amazed watching the grace and composure of Tom Daley and Noah Williams when performing their synchronised dives. Talk about performing under pressure and teamwork! At the Olympics this year they both looked cool as cucumbers as they tumbled through the air at 35mph and cut the glass-like water, getting well-deserved Silver medals.
It got me thinking about the interesting strategies that Olympic coaches use to motivate their athletes and build accountability, one of the core beliefs in our M.A.G.I.C Framework.
How to build accountability
Tom Daly famously trains for 5-6 hours a day, 65% of which is on dry land (weights, strength conditioning, gymnastics, ballet, yoga, cardio) in order to build a strong core for diving, and 35% in the water. As a top performing athlete he’s highly emotionally motivated to succeed, but this isn’t always the case for employees within a business who might see themselves as functional ‘cogs in the wheel’ and might not be as closely invested in the company’s vision. How can a leader create the same level of accountability from their employees that Daley displays in his daily training?
The answer is accountability, the glue between an action and a result. Being responsible for your actions, performance and (sometimes – as we are only human!) your mistakes, makes you more of a desirable person to work with and is what accountability is all about. When you share openly what you are focussed on, how far you have come, what challenges you have seen along the way – this all builds trust with others. And where people trust more, it breeds an increase in commitment, creativity and happiness.
Measuring what ‘good’ looks like
Often we think of job descriptions as just an itemised list of things we agree upon when hiring someone. But a job description is more than that – it’s a set of expectations for a person in a role, which can be used at the end of a quarter to determine whether or not an employee is performing according to their definition of ‘good.’
Good for an Olympic diver is not the same as good for an Olympic boxer. Equally, different companies and roles will require different definitions of good. For example, Deliveroo is transaction based and prioritises speed of delivery, whereas The Ritz may prioritise personalised customer service that is memorable and delights their guests. They’re both ‘good,’ but at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Having clearly defined KPIs based upon the employee’s job description ensures that there’s a common language and set of expectations that as a leader you can refer back to, in order to create accountability.
If you and your team also know that in your culture, all of this gets shared openly – through transparent goals and objectives ( in any form – Goals; OKRs etc) – then this keeps accountability by allowing teams to see progress, having alignment and translates your purpose into meaningful steps for people to progress against. You encourage a sense of individual responsibility for performance and a sense of “ I progressed this far today but didn’t manage to get to x”, rather than a dismissive uncaring ‘I didn’t do it because I was waiting on x, y or z!”
Accountability allows people to control their own impact on the business and make it a more positive one, thereby reducing the likelihood of the dreaded micro-management: a no-no for your team’s motivation and a constant drain on your own time.
Feedback is key
Which brings me onto my last and most important point – feedback. How close or far is your employee from your definition of good? For Daley and Williams, this can be quantified by their diving scores, with an exact breakdown for where they were or weren’t synchronised, or created too much backsplash, etc.
Many leaders tend to ignore problems and resort to worst case scenarios – firing their underperforming employees – without taking the proper time to implement feedback loops and understand why they’re underperforming. This could look like weekly one on ones, quarterlies or messages on Slack.
This seems obvious but you’d be surprised by the number of leaders who simply don’t focus on the fundamentals that propel a company forwards. Most employees want to do a good job, but many don’t always know what they should be prioritising or how that matters to their personal job progression. Creating feedback loops allows for clearer communication and expectation setting that allows employees to thrive in their individual roles.
Need help creating better accountability in your teams? Drop us a line via hello@thehrhub.co.uk or give us a call on 0203 6277048. If you don’t want to speak to anyone but would like to learn more, read my book The MAGIC of HR.
