Think Like an Owner: Mature From Coddling to Accountability

As our company has grown over the years, one of our biggest issues has been that many of our managers focus more on protecting their team than driving success for our customers and business.

It is frustrating because most of these overprotective managers are among our best employees. They are hard-working, loyal people who care deeply about our customers and company. Some even bravely drive into our office on snow days.

But, as managers, they unknowingly prioritize their team's happiness at the expense of everything else.

Five Signs You Are Coddling Your Team

If you are a manager doing any of the following, you should immediately consider your priorities and shift your attention more to your customers.

1) You slant your one-on-one meetings toward your employees' welfare rather than customer satisfaction.

2) You talk to your employees about their career path too early and too often. Your discussion is always about what is best for that individual, not what benefits the customers or the business.

3) You write a glowing annual review and advocate for your employee's sizable raise, regardless of actual performance. This action forces the decision up to higher managers, sometimes the owner, making the annual review process useless.

4) If necessary, you cover for someone struggling on your team, even staying late or working the weekend to redo that person's work rather than holding them accountable. The customer's success is secondary to having a tough conversation that might hurt the feelings of one of your underperforming employees.

5) And, if anyone ever questions one of your people's performance, you whirl into action to shield your employee from all potential hardship, like Kramer defending Lloyd Braun in this classic "Seinfeld" scene.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

C.S. Lewis

The Missing Piece

A few years ago, we had a senior manager whose department needed help with accountability. In one of our meetings, he talked passionately about creating a new reporting dashboard where managers could easily see how their team was doing. "We'll finally give our managers the tools to manage and hold their people accountable," he said in closing.

His comment irked me. I thought about our current reports, which already provide excellent data. I remembered all of the money and time we had spent over the years on management training, including courses specifically about having difficult conversations.

I said, "I am all for a dashboard and better centralizing of the reports; we can always improve. But the reports already exist. A lot of people here, including me, use them every day. Managers can hold people accountable TODAY."

I continued, "But you know what is missing? Why managers aren't holding others accountable? Courage - that's what is missing. I’m not talking about Normandy Beach courage. I’m talking about simply having the will to be firm and have a tough conversation with someone. A rearranged reporting dashboard will not fix that."

Nearly every manager who exhibits the above behavior does so with the best intentions. And it is essential to care and support your team.

As I said in the opening, most managers who struggle with this issue really do care about the success of our customers and our business.

But not holding someone accountable is not grace or mercy - it is cowardice.

Accountability to the Customer

Many people associate accountability with yelling at their team, but it should rarely get to that point.

Accountability is meeting with your employee every two weeks to run through their list of accounts, asking why they didn’t send a status report to a customer last week. Or questioning why your manager is reporting a green project status when a major milestone is at high risk of being missed. It’s asking why your team allowed an urgent ticket to bounce around for a week instead of escalating to the right people and immediately resolving it for the customer.

This type of managerial behavior leads to customer success and makes your team better in the process.

Managers, please have the courage to hold your team accountable to your customers and your business. It’s also the right (but not always easy) thing to do for your team.

Links:

• Be a Jerk (Patrick Lencioni leadership podcast)