Has working from home diminished team accountability?

For most of us we are experiencing quite a shift in the we and team's work. Our team members are for the most part on remote work arrangements which present leaders with new challenges. Managing the accomplishment of work that’s necessary to achieve goals and holding virtual and remote team members accountable is just one of those challenges.  

For now, in person one to one and Leader led team meetings that inspire ownership and action are gone, so how can we foster environments where clarity, ownership and accountability are ever present? 

1. Be relentless in your mission to provide absolute clarity on the goals and what the targets are for the team  

In a work from home environment, establishing direction becomes even more critical to achieve alignment and commitment. Teams must become more intentional about creating opportunities for team conversations that involve debating, discussing, agreeing, and documenting what the team is trying to achieve together.

To put this into practice, leaders should pay more attention to developing agendas that frame meaningful topics and send them out before team meetings. During meetings, focus on clear and powerful questions, and generating discussion and exploring each team members perspectives. Check for understanding and restate often the goals and outcomes. 

Gathering perspectives, and refining goals and tactics leads to greater clarity and alignment on priorities and targets.

2. Be clear about who has ownership over what   

In a work from home environment, ambiguity regarding responsibilities and who is executing what can be an obstacle to achieving genuine commitment. 

3. Be active in giving support  

The nature of work from homework environments makes it easier for members to feel disconnected from their leader, team, and organisation. To counteract this, leaders need to be even more intentional about maintaining relationships and showing support while their team members are busy advancing priorities. Here are several tips:

• Proactively check-in: Show sincere interest in the progress and challenges team members are experiencing. 

• Practice and model resilience and attention to personal wellbeing: Demonstrate to your team the importance of setting boundaries and maintaining personal well-being by encouraging discussions about those behaviours and demonstrating that you are engaging in them yourself.

• Share new information often but appropriately: As you learn about organisational decisions or actions that affect the work priorities of your team, think about when and how you can share and discuss these developments so that you and the team have the bandwidth to digest the information and act on it.

• Move barriers and obstacles: Continually scan what resources are needed and how to get these to your team .  

When team members feel supported, they’re more likely to stay engaged and committed to following through with their individual contributions to the goals of the team. 

4. Maintaining alignment 

The risk of misunderstanding individual work accountabilities is more likely to happen in work from home environments, where clear communication can be a challenge.    

If you have not already done so, consider how you can exploit dedicated spaces and systems for keeping team efforts on track, accountability is simplified. MS Teams, Padlet, Trello, SharePoint sites are just some that work well

5. In a work from home world, use trust and engagement to leverage thinking around alignment and priorities

To be effective in creating environments where accountabilities shine through, trust and engagement with team members trumps checking tactics. Focus more on aligning teams to the value of the work that is being undertaken and tap into the unique motivations that can propel someone towards accomplishment of goals.