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Accountable

Is Accountable for Personal Actions, Models Integrity and Ethical Behavior

Activities/Tips

Develop a Code of Conduct for your organization. Establish clear responsibility for the implementation of the Code of Conduct.
Encourage discussions of accountability, integrity, and ethics within your workgroup. Address issues and dilemmas that arise from these discussions.
Before leaving work each day, identify what tasks have to be accomplished the next day.
Trust comes from honoring your commitments and promises. Have a method to follow-up on your commitments and promises to ensure they have been completed.
Analyze your work by listing your 5 most important responsibilities. Determine what unacceptable performance and outstanding performance would be in these areas. Set personal goals for yourself in these areas.
Determine how you can go the extra mile in the things you do: more time, better quality, taking care of a need that hasn’t been seen or addressed, etc.
Provide information on your successes and failures with equal candor.
Determine if you are spending more time and energy protecting your employees or holding them accountable. Decide if any employees get different treatment and why.
Determine your values and then make your decisions based on those values.
If you change your mind on an issue, explain why to those who are involved.
Share the credit with your employees. In fact, give the credit away. Your supervisor will know your role in the success.
If you have lost trust and don’t know why, ask those involved for feedback.
Admit your mistakes.
Model high ethical standards and recognize co-workers who demonstrate the same.
To build trust, set up “one-on-one” meetings with employees to build rapport. Talk about the employee’s career interests, what work they enjoy, and what they see as their challenges.
If you don’t know the answer to a question, tell your employee(s) “I don’t know, but I will find out.” Do whatever you can to ensure it doesn’t appear you are withholding information.
Examine your current assignment practices:
1. Make a list of each employee’s work assignments. You may want each employee to make a list to ensure you have the complete picture.
2. Analyze the distribution of the assignments. Do some employees get more or less than others? Do some employees get more of the “dirty” work?
3. Ask the employees for their opinions.
4. Make adjustments to the work assignments.
5. If employees want more challenging assignments, set the expectations for what they must do to get those assignments.
6. Review your criteria for assigning work to ensure you are treating everyone fairly.