Shining the lights of accountability.
In Chapter Fourteen of her book “The Firefly Effect Build Teams that Capture Creativity and Catapult Results”, Kimberley Douglas characterizes the three lenses of accountability. Firstly, personal responsibility is characterized as being truth worthy, living up to our personal commitments or our words, and being trusted by our colleagues. Personal accountability comes into place when a person does not respect their responsibility, and there is a need for that person to be answerable for their actions. Moreover, personal accountability can be seen as having control over our own actions and reactions. Therefore, it means not acting like a victim of a situation -why is this happening to me?-, but taking ownership of the situation -What can I do to improve this bad situation?. I believe that it is important in an interdisciplinary team that each team member is accountable for themselves, as it would promote a positive and growing environment. However, in some cases, it might be hard for team members to execute personal accountability as it is not an intuitive task. Therefore, it is the team leader’s role to show the example, and reinforce personal accountability within the team. To do so, Kimberley Douglas suggests that a good leader should delegate tasks, clarify what success should look like, and outline the specific rules and targets. Moreover, explaining the reasoning -the why- behind the task at hand, might also be impactful. Finally, a good leader should be able to focus the team’s collective accountability. To do so, the leader can remind its team members to focus on the competition outside of their organization, instead of within the team. Kimberley Douglas mentions that bringing the team together, talking about the team’s commitment, goals, and what has already been positively accomplished, are good ways of building a team collective accountability. I believe that a good leader should be able to foster these actions in order to overcome challenges and accomplish the goals.
