Accountability and your team's identity

Enjoying Simple, Not Easy? Please forward to someone else who might enjoy. Did someone forward you this newsletter? Awesome! Please subscribe.

“Failing to hold someone accountable is ultimately an act of selfishness” - Patrick Lencioni

Accountability is the thread which ties the other 3 Pillars of Sales Leadership together. On its own accountability is worthless, when utilized as the 4th pillar it is the rigor which creates a high performing team.

I often see Sales Leaders hesitate to hold team members accountable for missed expectations as they look to avoid uncomfortable conversations. In these instances I always point them to the quote above as a reminder that, if done from a place of compassion for the person you’re leading, failing to hold someone accountable is selfish.

Important Leadership Disclaimer

In order for accountability to be leveraged successfully as a team it should first be woven into your team’s identity to ensure that when you hold team members accountable they don’t feel personally attacked. Underpinning all of your work related to accountability must be a strong understanding that this accountability is rooted in compassion for those you are leading. As in giving feedback, if you hold team members accountable to their actions but they do not believe that you care about them personally you’ll break trust on your team and need to go back to the first pillar as you rebuild from the ground up.

Accountability as Identity

Accountability is fundamentally about ownership. All Sales Leaders should work to cultivate ownership as a key value among their team both as a means of empowering individual team members to control what they can control while also instilling a culture of growth which owns up to falling short of expectations. Falling short of expectations does not indicate anyone is a lesser person rather, it reinforces that each of us has the ability to get better.

My personal leadership philosophy has 3 pillars:

1. Optimism

2. Proficiency

3. Ownership

Whenever I join a new team as a leader for the first time I make sure to share this leadership philosophy with those I’m managing as well as the way that each pillar manifests, tactically, in how I run teams. I then work to weave these 3 leadership principles into the identity of the team while also taking input from team members on the areas they believe are important. The output of this exercise becomes your team’s values which ultimately shape its identity.

Regardless of the number of pillars / values the team decides on (never use more than 5 otherwise they begin to dilute themselves) I always work to ensure Ownership or a similar value is included. This makes it easier to hold the team accountable (and for them to hold me / you accountable) as doing so isn’t a personal attack, but simply a reflection of who you are as a team.

Accountability rule of 3

To ensure you are successful in rolling out accountability across your sales team follow these 3 rules:

1. Accountability should be standardized

2. Accountability should be public

3. Accountability should be consistent

Accountability should be standardized

The way in which you hold your team accountable needs to be standardized. This can look like a specific document used in your 1:1s, a slide team members fill out reviewing progress to your expectations before each team meeting, a Slack message sent in your team channel every Monday, or a spreadsheet with different tabs covering each expectation.

Standardization of the way in which you hold your team accountable (it can be all of the above used at different times throughout the week) ensures that you are objective in reviewing their performance, prevents you from playing favorites, and clarifies your expectations. Standardization of accountability reviews is an excellent place to remove ambiguity and provide greater clarity regarding what you expect.

Accountability should be public

Another reason to build accountability (via ownership or some other attribute) into the identity of your team is because the way in which you review accountability as a team should be public. While empathy and compassion are key to being an effective leader sales is fundamentally a performance driven business (this is a feature, not a bug).

That means you are not doing your team members any favors by allowing them to hide behind poor performance. As a leader, it is your job to shine a light on areas where they are falling short before they become a pattern of underperformance which leads the team member out of good standing and puts their job at risk. Back to the Lencioni quote which led off this post, failing to hold your team accountable is selfish.

Tactically there are 4 ways to make accountability public. While we’ll explore each way in greater detail in a future post here is a primer:

1. As a small group (e.g. team meeting)

2. With an accountability buddy (peer 1:1)

3. Manager to report (1:1)

4. Scoreboard (public, 1:many)

“In the short term, you are as good as your intensity. In the long term, you are only as good as your consistency.” - Shane Parrish

Accountability should be consistent

Keeping your accountability consistent allows you to be successful over a long time horizon. Often in life endurance and the ability to, “just stick with it” differentiate excellent performance from mediocre. The same is true of accountability.

The Marine Corps is not great because a bunch of talented all stars enlist (they let me in so you know that’s true 😀). They are great, because more than any organization I’ve been part of they emphasize consistent execution of well defined systems.

It is not enough to hold your team accountable once, then walk away. If you are trying to build a sales team that can have enduring success quarter after quarter, year after year, consistency is the only way to get there. This means holding your team accountable every week, often at multiple points throughout the week. Discipline, repetition, consistency. Simple, not easy.

What does accountability look like in practice?

The following list is a hypothetical example of how the leader of a Business Development team might weave cadences of accountability into their week. This team has 3 leading metrics they track in addition to their lagging metric of new logo revenue for the quarter.

• Monday - Slack message in team channel which includes actual / target for the 3 leading metrics as well as one sentence on their primary focus of the week.

• Tuesday - A spreadsheet which includes the same 3 leading metrics as above in addition to the team members revenue forecast for the quarter. These are discussed with their manager in a 1:1 where the team member gives the story behind their performance toward their leading metrics.

  • Note, as a Sales Leader this is your most important meeting of the week. Make sure any feedback you provide is focused (1 thing) and immediately actionable.

• Thursday - A standardized slide in a team meeting deck which covers the individuals revenue forecast for the quarter. Each team member shares their pacing with the team and discusses what is going well and has an open dialogue with the rest of the team regarding areas to improve.

We made it, yay!

As far as accountability goes, remember:

• Make accountability part of your identity through ownership

• Ensure your accountability is standardized

• Ensure your accountability is done in public

• Ensure your accountability is consistent

Beyond that, this wraps up the final pillar of The 4 Pillars of Sales Leadership.

1. Build a team culture where your team members are motivated and empowered to perform their best

2. Set clear expectations

3. Show your team “how” to accomplish those expectations

4. Hold them accountable to those expectations

What do you think? For those of you who read to the end of the newsletter and followed along with the other posts in the series I would love your feedback.

How do these pillars align with your own philosophy on Sales Leadership?

Do you lead teams outside of Sales? If so, what’s applicable to your domain and what’s different?

See ya’ll next week.