The Silent Team Killer

I’ve got a very simple question for you today: Who are you not holding accountable? If there’s somebody that you can identify right now, really think about it. Be honest with yourself. Who can you do a better job of holding accountable? It might be one person, it might be a couple. You might say to yourself, "You know what? I’m just not very good at holding people accountable. I need to hold my whole team accountable."

Well, it always starts with one person, but I want to give you even a little bit more of a nudge, alright? I want to encourage you to have that conversation, but I want to hit you with a little bit more ammunition on this topic. 

There are certain tangibles that, if you're not holding a person or multiple people accountable on your team, you're not doing as well as you can. You are absolutely not doing as well as you can in terms of sales, profitability, cash flow, and work quality, which leads to Google reviews.

If you're not holding your team accountable, some or all of these areas are absolutely suffering. They could be better, even if they’re good now. Think about how much better they could be with some accountability.

Here’s the other thing, and I think it’s even more of an issue: the intangibles. 

Think about your A-players. Think about those best players on the team. If you're not holding somebody or some number of people accountable and they see this—and they will see it, I guarantee you—they're going to start to care a little bit less and work a little bit less hard. I've talked to so many people who have a manager or an owner that doesn’t hold people accountable, and they're very frustrated by that. The best performers on the team want to see a consistent, high degree of accountability.

So again, A-players are going to work less hard. They're going to care a little bit less, and the bigger issue is they’re way more likely to leave. They’re way more likely to leave the team and find something else that works better for them. So you don't want to lose your A-players, right? You want to lose the bad apples. You want to lose the weak links. Don't lose your best players because you're not holding people accountable.

What do you do about it, and why is it such a challenge? Well, I think for a lot of people, they just don't like confrontation. Most people don't like confrontation. The other thing is it's very easy to just not do it and hope that things are going to work out for the best. And I'm sure you've heard the saying, "Hope is not a strategy."

So what do you do about it? You have what will probably be a difficult conversation, but I've got a way to make it easier. I've got a guide that I can send you to help you prepare for this conversation. And in so many cases, in this 10- or 15-minute conversation, things start to turn around because the person never had the opportunity to hear from you, as the leader, what you specifically expect from them. And in this conversation, you're going to have that talk. And again, so many times I've had clients go through this process, and it's really made a big change.

So, have the difficult conversation, start holding people accountable, and things will improve in your business. I guarantee you. If you need any help, don't hesitate to reach out: [email protected], and I'll see you in the next video.