by Dan Gregory @DanGregoryCo @TheBehaviourRpt #Culture #Performance #Change #Leadership
Quite often, when being briefed for a keynote speech or training program, a leader will share with me that they just want their people to have a greater sense of “ownership and accountability.”
Of course, they’re not actually giving their team any REAL ownership - there is no exchange of shares or a stake in the business. In fact, what they really mean is, “Can you make my people more obedient and self-managing so I don’t have to work so hard at making them work hard?”
I tend to sound out this little observation with my “inside voice,” as I’m not so sure this level of radical transparency is quite what they’re after in that moment of time.
All that being said, it is actually possible to develop a team and culture that does seek personal responsibility, that will have a sense of pride and ownership in the work that they do and can hold themselves accountable to high standards and expectations. However, it requires rather more than the occasional inspirational keynote speech (no matter how awesome 😂).
So, how do we create a culture of ownership, responsibility and accountability? And just as importantly, how do we make it more than just lip service or corporate rah rah?
Link it to culture
Perhaps unsurprisingly, influencing a culture starts with culture.
One of the great things about culture is that it provides us with a level of unconscious competence or autonomous performance and behaviour. When cultural expectations and conventions are well understood and believed to be important, congruent behaviour tends to show up quite automatically. People who’ve been raised in a particular ethnic culture, for example, don’t typically have to think too much about how to “act that way.”
So, rather than telling people what to do or how to behave, demonstrate who you are helping them to become in the process. In other words, “Start with WHO.” The more this aligns with who they already consider themselves to be, the more consistently they’ll show up with exemplar behaviours that support their cultural identity.
ie. Cultivate ownership by linking it to who they believe themselves to be culturally.
Link your values to their values
Leaders have long understood that simply telling people what to do is neither an effective leadership model, nor does it typically lead to self-sustaining engagement.
Research out of the Universities of Pennsylvania in the US and Bonn in Germany suggests that rather than trying to create a sense of purpose, or a WHY that your people are expected to buy into (an ego-based strategy), rather, link your organisational purpose to their personal purpose as individuals and a community (a people-focused strategy).
In other words, demonstrate how the desired behaviour or performance aligns with what they already believe to be true or else hold in high esteem. The truth is, it’s actually quite difficult to make someone care about something new, and far more efficient and effective to show them how something new is congruent to what they already care about.
Allow for co-creation (actually, insist on it)
The corporate world often talks about co-creation as a tool for amplifying creativity and innovation, however, it’s also a particularly useful tool for increasing ownership.
A top-down leadership style where team members are simply expected to adopt a leader’s new ideas and strategies is far less likely to generate a sense of ownership and accountability than a culture where team members work with leadership to co-author strategy and executional details and metrics.
It also reduces resistance to new ideas and initiatives. It’s a lot harder to throw a spanner (or wrench for my North American friends) into the works, when you’re a co-creator of the program and your reputation is linked to its success.
Guiding questions and stories
There are two famous stories of success that both owe their origins to the same question - one is New Zealand’s “giant slayer” strategy to win the America’s Cup from the far better resourced US team, and the other, that of the British Olympic rowing team’s preparation for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.
Regardless of who holds the greatest claim to the question in question, the results produced provide a valuable lesson in cultivating ownership and generating autonomous decision making and performance.
The question both teams embraced was, “Does it make the boat go faster?”
This “guiding question” was used as a strategic sense check and as a source of internalised permission to act. If what you were doing made the boat go faster, you were empowered to move forward. If not, you were probably not acting in alignment with the team’s strategy.
This strategy of guiding questions allows you both to impact strategy by providing clarity and responsibility, but more importantly, it allows your culture to be self-correcting and empowering - meaning the team goes faster also!
Giving responsibility to get responsibility
One of the reasons leaders often fail to get responsibility from their teams, is their reluctance to give it in the first place. The metaphor that is often used is that of helicopter or lawnmower parenting - where parents undermine their children’s resilience and decision making skills by removing obstacles in their path and micro-managing their environment and behaviour. The same holds true in how we manage our teams.
Often it can be difficult to trust a new team with responsibility - especially in critical or high-pressure situations, however, in the same way that they will grow through discomfort, so too does our capacity to lead in discomfort.
What this really boils down to, is the fact that in order to build a sense of responsibility, we need to give it and trust it and to then use the results as an opportunity for learning and growth.
Develop self-awareness around your leadership
Once in an interview, I was asked what I believed was the most critical skill or capability for leaders to develop. Whenever I’ve been asked this in the past, I’ve suggested investing in understanding what drives the people around us.
However, more recently, I’ve changed my opinion and now advise first seeking self-awareness.
My reasoning is this - your past and your personality show up in every aspect of your leadership. Every relationship pattern you’ve adopted, based on your place in your family, the role you played in your friendship group at school and even how you approach, or have experienced, more intimate personal relationships, shows up in your leadership style.
So, if your people aren’t showing up with a sense of ownership and accountability, it might be useful to consider what it is in your personal leadership behaviours that makes proactivity, taking responsibility and innovating a risky proposition for them.
The truth is, leaders don’t shape culture, we simply influence the social and physical environment in which it emerges. In other words, a team that doesn’t act with a sense of ownership and accountability, might just be responding to what we’re not saying, as much as what we say.