Balancing Recognition and Accountability: Leadership in Action

Encouraging employees to take responsibility for their work without sacrificing morale requires careful judgment and sensitivity. Disgruntled employees forced to perform tasks and restricted by company rules and policies are the last thing your organization needs. Therefore, you must find a way to get through to your team members without making them feel obligated.

Great managers are masters of emotional intelligence and use this skill to balance recognition and accountability. Let’s look at some of the ways you can harness this skill with your team.

Accountability starts from the very top. As the leader and manager of the team, you must take the initiative to communicate objectives, standards, deadlines, and resources available. You can do this by providing a detailed project outline to relevant team members to mobilize them to action and achieve your desired results effectively.

Also, working with your team is all about negotiation. Just because you laid the project groundwork doesn’t mean they will automatically agree with your tasks. They may raise concerns like the goals being too high or the deadline looming too soon.

In this case, you need to listen to them and compromise on how to proceed with the project. This will enable you to align your objectives with your workforce and their abilities.

To ensure project success, give your team the best tools and resources to help them get the job done. Remember that some of these may require you to purchase a subscription, so mention this in the project details to keep your clients or stakeholders informed.

Providing resources to your team doesn’t have to end when the project is complete. For example, provide your marketing team with the best learning materials in the form of videos, courses, or even newsletters for further growth and development.

A great way to foster continuous learning is to start group coaching programs where you use a structured approach to tackling various problems and topics. These programs benefit heavily from the involvement of the entire group and through group exercises and projects that will help people learn and develop faster.

Ensure that the content you share makes sense and is relevant to their roles. For example, a curated learning experience can provide a continuous stream of helpful information that’s up-to-date and relevant to all marketing teams.

Regularly review employees’ work and offer guidance or constructive feedback as needed. Use a project management tool to keep track of the project and see if things are moving along nicely. You can also comment on each task and address the team member responsible for it. Pinpoint issues about the task as it progresses so your team members can address them on the spot. This way, you and your team save the time needed to undo the mistake.

A big part of being a good leader is properly monitoring your employees’ performance so that you can provide guidance quickly. Every comprehensive leadership training will teach you not only how to monitor your employees, but also how to use a personalized approach to give the individual the tools and the guidance they need to succeed.

Schedule weekly progress team meetings to inform them of what they did well and reinforce it if necessary. Just make sure that the meetings take little time. Focus on your talking points so everybody can continue working on the project.

While you need to outline the project details, you don’t have to micromanage their every move. Allow employees to take charge of their work and give them ample opportunities to choose their tasks. This not only gives them ownership of the assigned work but also shows you trust them with the project, both of which help boost employee morale.

Championing this approach fosters a results-based culture in your company. This empowers employees to find creative, efficient, and effective solutions to problems without sticking to a particular process.

Another way to motivate people and help them achieve better results is to try giving them financial autonomy. This is best suited for team leaders and the people who have shown that they can be trusted to make the best decisions for their teams.

Financial autonomy means giving them something like a virtual credit card with a predefined spending limit, to be used for purchases that directly benefit the team’s workflow and processes. You can then easily track these purchases and monitor how these team leads are using the available resources to help create a more productive environment.

This way, you’re not only showing them that you trust their judgment and that you’re letting them make the best decisions for their teams, but you’re also setting them up for managerial roles down the road.

If a project is complete, and the client is happy with the results, you must give credit where credit is due. Publicly praise your team during meetings or in company-wide communications.

While not necessary, awarding them bonuses, promotions, or other tangible rewards is also an excellent way to lift their spirits and incentivize even better performance in the future.

Publicly giving praise and acknowledging their contributions is also one of the best ways to boost employee engagement organically and inspire people to commit even more. The great thing is that giving these kinds of incentives can come in many forms, including gamification, which is very popular nowadays.

Even better, gamify your workplace by assigning points to employees for completing tasks and projects. Display their scores in public so everybody can see how many points everybody has, which is a form of recognizing them and holding them accountable for their work. This should also inspire them to do well in friendly competition and help those who need help increasing their points.

Address performance issues promptly and provide support for improvement. Hold one-on-one meetings with individuals so you can confidently assess their performances.

These meetings also allow them to give their feedback about their work. They can share their process of operating at a very high level or provide reasonable explanations if they suffer from underperformance.

This give-and-take relationship allows you and your team members to understand different viewpoints. It’s also a great opportunity to improve workplace communication and work on communicating in a way that promotes growth. This way, everyone—including yourself—can learn from the valuable feedback and improve.

Every organization should acknowledge team members for their contributions. This shows employees that you view them as valuable assets instead of replaceable cogs in a machine.

But to give them proper recognition, team members should also put their weight and deliver the goods for the company. They must have the initiative and mindset to complete the work according to the project details.

The symbiotic relationship between you and your team members starts with imposing your leadership to achieve both. Hopefully, this post clarified what you must do to build a healthy and fair workplace culture.