Getting Your Team To Take Accountability

by | Aug 17, 2020 | Blog, Team


I recently rewrote my mission statement for Foot Traffic and it is to help growth minded small business owners make more time and money through automations and systems.

When I look at everything I do it comes back to systems.

We are launching our new book – The Implementation Code really soon – I am so excited for you to read what I’ve been working on for months and months and it is about a system for managing your time and getting the most out of your day so you don’t have to work 24/7.  The goal with implementation code is using systems to get your time back.

Once you have it back, you will now focus on creating a marketing system —- Foot Traffic Formula is the marketing system we teach to help you make more money and stop trading your time for dollars.  We do this through sales and marketing funnels.  Once you start making money, it's a good thing but it leads to other problems…. And to solve that our

 Powerhouse program teaches an infrastructure system where we help you build out your team, create all the systems in your business to help you run your business and stop having it run you.  Powerhouses are using our scaling systems.  

I love systems because it gives you freedom.  Period.  And I know right now you are listening and you want more freedom with your business.

So today we are going to talk about building your team and getting them to take accountability and remove things off of your plate.

The problem is small business owners will start to delegate and unfortunately things start to slip through the cracks.

So today we are going to work through a few things you need to be doing to make sure you can hand things off and trust that they are actually getting done.  

What’s crazy to me is more than 75% of small business owners are solo entrepreneurs.

That statistic alone will tell you why 80% of businesses fail their first year.  How in the world do small business owners think that they are going to wear all the hats and get everything done.  No wonder why they burn out.  You just can’t do everything yourself.

Delegation is not an option it is a necessity for your small business.  

A good project management tool is a must for all small businesses.  We’ve used Monday.com for years and have found it incredibly effective for delegating and most importantly following up and holding accountable. 

Remember accountability doesn’t have to mean micromanaging.  You’ve got to be able to trust your team to help you.  Now that can feel scary because maybe they are new and haven’t earned your trust, well using the right project management tool will help you build trust and make sure things don’t slip through the cracks.

Some interesting stats to share…

  1. According to Gallup data, 47% of workers received feedback from their manager “a few times or less” in the past year. 26% of employees strongly agree that the feedback they receive helps them do their work better. 
  2. 91% of employees feel that accountability is one of the most important things they’d like to see in their workplace. 82% of those same respondents felt that they have no power to hold anyone accountable in the workplace.
  3. 25% of leaders surveyed feel that 10% to 20% of their workers avoid accountability.
  4. 84% of employees say the way leaders behave as the single most important factor influencing accountability in their organizations, yet just 15% of leaders have successfully defined and broadly communicated their key results.

 

To build that trust,  I want to give you 5 tips for getting your team to take accountability 

  1. Write it down
    • And I don't mean on a piece of paper, in fact where you put it is really important.  You want to use technology to hold your team accountable, HOWEVER, the right piece of technology is key.
    • Voxer – can be dangerous.  I hear a lot of people using this popular audio app to help them delegate to their team but using an app like that is no different than saying to your team member while passing them in the hallway “hey can you get this done by “Friday” now you have to hope they will write it down and remember you’ve assigned it, even worse, you have no recording of asking that if they do lose it.  Using this kind of technology can actually increase balls being dropped.
    • When I delegate, I only delegate in MOnday.com, not email, not text, not voxer
    • Side note – Have the person that does the task create a system for it, we record our systems via loom video and then save it inside of our monday boards for someone else to reference later.  Sorry as a systems girl i had to throw that little quick tip in there. 
  2.  Assign every task to only ONE person
    • I know this seems obvious but half the time I hear one of my clients complaining about balls getting dropped its because they made a blanket statement of 
      1. Can someone do this
      2. Or we really need to start doing this
    • They use sentences like that and expect someone to magically know they want them to do it
  3. Set crystal clear expectations and set them up for success

They can’t read your mind…. So you need to….

    • Give it a deadline
    • Tell them what to do next
      1. Tag me in Monday.com when it is done
      2. Is the project really complete or is there a hand off to someone else…
        1. What is The hand off, meaning you might be done creating 30 social media captions but does the next person know they can take over
      3. I hope your project management software has automations because that is one of the biggest features in monday.com that i love.  When someone changes the status of a project to done, it can notify the next person in line, time for you to do your part of the project
      4. Tell them what to do with progress….. So for instance we leave the “status” section gray and only putting “in progress” or “working on it” when they’ve started the project
      5. We know what smart goals are and we set them for ourselves but do we do it for those we delegate to
        1. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timebound

     4. Pick a day to review and make sure your team understands when and what it should look like 

          • Are you reviewing or is a manager?
          • Who is reviewing the manager reviewed it?
            1. I know I know this sounds like so much work but that is how you hold someone accountable.  
          • are you giving deadlines that mean something or teaching them to tell you if there are struggling or have been stopped and need support
          • Best question is – how can i support you hitting the Friday deadline?

    5. Review errors and mistakes

      • So you keep hearing me say balls being dropped.  So when something goes wrong.  Assess where the problem was.  
      • Did I  write it down?
      • Did I assign to one person?
      • Did I give clear expectations?
      • Did I have a follow up system in place?

 

Without accountability, management is not existent. 

I hope you have found this helpful and you can start seeing why accountability and a good project management software is key.

I’m partnering with Monday.com to help spread this message to help small business owners combat the chaos in their business.

If you want to try out monday.com with a 14 day free trial go to www.stacytuschl.com/monday

I know you’ll love it as much as I do!  Let’s build systems together to help you make more time and more money doing what you love.