One of the heavy parts of managing an engineering team is the sense of responsibility that says you are now accountable for holding your team members accountable. And there are several reasons that the whole concept of accountability can feel heavy.
Here are two big ones:
The first is the idea that accountability means figuring out who to blame when something goes wrong. But that’s not what it is at all. Rather, accountability is simply the quality of meeting commitments. And that distinction is important to understand when we look at the second reason that accountability can feel heavy.
That second reason is one that Patrick Lencioni covers in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Lack of accountability is a byproduct of three other layers of dysfunction. Often people can’t be held accountable because they never actually make real commitments. Instead, a fear of conflict kept them silent behind a facade of artificial harmony while other people proposed and finalized strategies and schedules without them. Underlying all of that is often a general lack of trust, in which team members feel, for whatever reason, that it’s not safe for them to voice their true opinion.
What makes this especially hard is that the very conditions that foster that lack of trust make it extremely risky for anyone to reveal to you that there is a lack of trust. That can make it nearly impossible to even diagnose the real root issue on your own. I’ve been there, and I know how stressful that is.
Leaders who try to manufacture accountability without addressing the underlying factors will only create anxiety. But when you create an environment of trust that invites healthy conflict and hearty commitment, then you’ll have the conditions that allow teams to hold themselves accountable for meeting their own commitments.
And if you’d like help to identify what might be in the way of accountability for your team, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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