Over a quick lunch of poke, brown rice and kale salad, a young freelancing colleague talked excitedly about the project she was working on. She and 2 friends had developed a podcast and this year they were moving from bi-weekly to weekly editions. She talked about how much work they did together in a one hour meeting, and, somewhat sheepishly she said how much fun they were having doing it. They will even get their first revenue check from advertising next week.
I told her that this was exactly what my Vistage speaker, Greg Bustin, had been describing this week in his talk about accountability. When Greg asked Vistage Members to recall a great team they had worked on, several components were consistent across all teams.
Clear goals
Clear roles
Mutual trust
Clear deadlines
Fun
For many people in the groups, they went back 3, 10, 19 years to highlight a great team. For this young colleague, this was all taking place in real time.
As leaders, we need to consciously create the atmosphere where great teams can functions. How clear are we on our goals and our expectations of our people? When projects don’t go well, do we look for who to blame or what prevented success?
If you want more on Accountability, Greg has a book: Accountability: The Key to Driving a High-Performance Culture. If you could do only one thing this week, think about clarity. Where are you falling short?
Illustration courtesy of http ://wwwguamnesty.org.uk/