During reconfigurations and pivoting of the past two years, businesses and their teams have faced challenges no one could foresee. One of the biggest changes has been employees working remotely.
Your cohesive teams shared office space on a daily basis and have now become siloed individuals working from a kitchen table, closet, or a garage. Prior to the pandemic, teams were meeting in cubicles, running into each other in the hallways, participating in team meetings. They were able to connect and have water cooler conversations.
Your Teams Look Different Now: Accountability In Virtual Teams
- Some employees have never met their teammates in person.
- The team camaraderie developed by sharing office space is no longer in play.
- You’re expected to be a team and function like a team – and do it virtually.
So, how can you hold each other accountable? How can you best engage with each other’s strengths? How can a leader keep checks and balances on team roles and responsibilities – now that you have a new business landscape that changes on a dime?
It Isn’t Business As Usual
Leaders are feeling empty and isolated. They’re trying to figure out how to move forward in a connected way. Most team meetings and conversations seem transactional instead of collaborative. Transactional leadership or team communication leads to a breakdown in trust. It’s easier to blame when trust is lacking.
Figuring Out Team Communication
The wall of electronic communication provides an opportunity for employees to hide. There’ve been countless times when a leader says that conversations and disagreements have gone on way too long in the Slack channel. Team members may be reluctant to pick up the phone or they simply aren’t noticing when they need to have a conversation.
We’ve moved away from shared interest to more of a self-interest focus. These types of electronic interactions lack connection. It’s far too easy ‘to read into’ a word choice or brevity in a message. Team members create stories that are inaccurate and untrue. These stories are dividing rather than uniting.
Clear Team Roles and Responsibilities
Ultimately, individuals on the team are responsible for proactively moving the business. Roles and responsibilities have been assigned, but clarity may be missing.
As a leader, what happens when your company is growing so fast that you aren’t aware that role clarity is lacking? After all, your attention is on the bigger picture.
The other day a client was discussing the fact that their team had grown fast. There were places where role definition hadn’t been addressed and it was obvious that one leader didn’t know their responsibility versus someone else’s responsibility. This lack of clarity began to cause team interactions that weren’t helpful. The discussions were under the guise of ‘taking responsibility’ or ‘being accountable’. The conversation didn’t land well with the other leader in the meeting. It didn’t feel right; and they weren’t certain why.
Blame Can Masquerade as Accountability
While coaching with this client and digging into the nuances of the issue, the client realized that they felt blamed by their teammate. With so much pressure to produce, team members can place blame even though they think they are asking for accountability.
Blame happens when someone assigns fault to someone else when an outcome is not met.
Accountability happens when ownership is taken by an individual when an agreed upon outcome is not met.
Take Ownership
Ownership is a leadership term that’s been taught over the past decade. Take ownership of your mistakes. The buck stops with you. Your team will notice when you lead by taking ownership. This concept is highly helpful and necessary for healthy teams to exist. Teams learn by example.
And what happens when, taking ownership and accepting accountability aren’t the right choices?
Accountability Isn’t Always What’s Needed
When conflict occurs, leaders benefit from stepping back and examining the source of the conflict. Maybe, it isn’t always that two people aren’t getting along. It could be that the focus of growing the business has made it necessary for roles and responsibilities to be redefined.
Today’s new landscape requires companies to make changes quickly. What used to work well, even just two years ago, may now be obsolete. Perhaps by pivoting and moving we’re all adjusting to roles having been blurred – and this is the source of conflict. Lacking clear role definition can lead to poor relationships and blame. With team members working remotely, this can be exacerbated.
Engaged Leadership is Key
Leaders are struggling with their teams working virtually. New approaches need to be taken.
- Take a fresh look at how you can accurately evaluate your team on this new playing field.
- Look at how you can support your team in a way so that teammates don’t feel the need to blame or compete with others.
Leaders are moving fast. It can be easy to miss the miscommunication and lack of connection that’s occurring between team members. As leaders, we need to stop and reassess.
- When an outcome is missed, avoid placing judgment.
- In the areas that the company, or a process, has grown quickly notice where clarity may be needed and guide employees to adapt with ease.
With clear role definition, teammates can be clear about what they can or can’t accomplish. Rather than placing blame, they can move forward with self-proclaimed accountability. Accountability creates a healthy team and a strong cohesive structure that everyone can rely on and build from for the success of the company. Positive outcomes will occur, and team morale will increase.
Want to learn more about building accountability on your team? Visit our Corporate Programs page.
Robin Miller, PhD is an Executive and Leadership Communication Coach. She specializes in executive communication using the Advanced 360LiC Assessment and leadership team interpersonal communication.
