In Part 1, we discussed how meeting hygiene can help hold people accountable. This installment will focus on the facilitator's role in accountability.

How to Hold Employees Accountable: Part 2

Best Practices

• Have a scheduled check in at the midway period.

• Make sure all deadlines are realistic.

• Remove any barriers to task completion.

• Kill action items that don’t make sense anymore between meetings.

• Task the action owner with giving a status update.

One of the most important factors here is being able to kill action items when they are no longer relevant. What you choose not to do is just as important as what you choose to do. Part of the facilitator’s job is to make sure time is used efficiently to progress the overall objectives. If action owners are dedicating time to tasks that no longer help the progression of the overall goals, then they are not doing their job.

How do you decide this? The first and most obvious, the action owner can recommend killing the item. If the facilitator can’t reply with the reasons why that task is still important, then it’s time to kill it. The argument for the action item needs to be stronger than “My boss said so.”

If it’s not suggested, but the facilitator’s friends and others are asking, why they are doing this again, or how this relates to such and such, then it is time to reevaluate the purpose of the task. Ask the action owner and anyone involved in assigning said task. Don’t be afraid to delve into the meaning of all aspects of work.

Monthly Process Review

• Ask yourself and others if the standing meetings are working
• Are you getting better at completing tasks and moving forward?
• Evaluate what’s working, what’s not, and revise accordingly

Consistent reviews are important. There’s a difference between evaluating your progress and second-guessing yourself. A good facilitator will want to make sure that the team is always moving forward in the right direction, not just working for the sake of working.

Establishing and maintaining a culture of accountability is vital for the long term success of any company. If you would like to talk about how better accountability could benefit your company, free to reach out to our experts through the form below.

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