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Dear Managers: Accountability Starts With You
One of my LinkedIn connections posted a quotation picture that resonated with me for many reasons. James Robilotta, a speaker who travels the country with motivational and leadership talks, shared the following:
“Stop holding people accountable to expectations they didn’t know you set for them.”
It resonated with me because so many poor leadership and management experiences I’ve had were due to not knowing what I was being held accountable for.
For instance, at one of my jobs, during my first one-on-one with my new supervisor, I asked explicitly what metrics I was expected to demonstrate to show I was meeting goals.
Nothing was shared.
Fast forward three months and I was expected to develop a quarterly report with the information I had not collected and had to figure out in 48 hours how to create this data.
And I went back to my supervisor, with my first meeting notes in hand, and said that because I had asked for this information weeks prior, and nothing was shared as part of my onboarding, I wasn’t going to do anything extra to deliver the metrics.
I strongly believe that in order to be the best employee we can be, we must hold our managers accountable. And…
