There is comfort in knowing that each group member s resolve to assist others heightens awareness of their responsibility for their own actions. Dan is consistently late in delivering his portion of projects, which leaves the rest of his team scrambling to cover his work or extending the deadline at the last minute. His fellow team-members stew with resentment primarily because they've worked so hard to complete a quality project and now feel deflated and disappointed. Dan s peers can continue their mad rescues ad nauseam, but their codependent behavior serves no one neither Dan nor themselves. Dan has no incentive to change as long as the group shores him up, and the group sells itself short by compromising their reliability and the quality of their output.
Accountability requires clear communication throughout each project.
As a group, digging deep to discuss each individual s possible roadblocks, planning for contingencies and agreeing to communicate delays as quickly as possible helps to solidify expectations for performance. Of course, a skillful leader will make sure that performance priorities and expectations are clear, and include regular performance progress discussions so that issues don't become chronic to the point where they negatively affect the team and the organization. Accountability and integrity require that, when a team member has accepted a job and is receiving a paycheck for that job, he does his best to fulfill his role in an excellent manner. An attitude that service can be rendered in seemingly mundane activities is a practice that can change your life. Constant phone calls, conversations reiterating the same information, mulling over details of a project phase that won t be officially addressed until much later.