It’s a million-dollar question: can your colleagues count on you?
In today’s professional leadership, there is no singular accountability to yourself. As a leader, you are accountable to your team of colleagues, just as they are to you. Why? Because the goal is a healthy, fulfilling, and prosperous workplace is collaboration!
When teams work together in unison instead of in their own siloed cubicles, they garner greater innovation, productivity and connection. Leaders who harness the powers of accountability create functional spaces for colleagues to be themselves and thrive in their work, which in turn helps executives reach their goals.
This mutual responsibility is put into motion by you and you only.
So what can you do as a team leader to ensure this collaboration holds a strong foundation for your team? Read below to find out.
Fostering Trust and Connection
The first step to encouraging collaboration of accountability within your team is to foster a sense of trust and connection. As a leader, you want to invite this trust and connection for yourself with your team, but also within other team members.
So how do you do this? Here are a few tips:
Keep a culture of empathy at the forefront of meetings
Allow space for colleagues to get to know one another
Foster team-building experiences that are creative, fun and on-topic to work needs
Get to know peers on a personal level. Do they have kids? Is their commute long? What do they enjoy on their off days? Finding commonality brings us together and allows us to see the person behind the title.
Keep accountable, forthright and timely with requests, sharings and questions. Trust is built on the mutuality of respect- being respectful with your team’s time will, in turn, keep them respectful with yours.
Allowing for connection with the team will go a long way in terms of collaboration. Employees will count on you more if you hold a respectful relationship with the team as a whole.
Want to get free coaching delivered straight to your email inbox twice a month? Click here to sign up for Lisa's Leadership Minute... and receive your free digital copy of her straight-shooting book for aspiring C-Suite leaders.
Promote Performance
How can your colleagues count on you if you don’t encourage them? How can you count on them if they don’t encourage you?
Accountability is a two-way street, and collaboration means we are all supporting one another’s rise. A leader is defined by the results their team garners, but a team is defined by the results they see when working together. Implementing high standards of performance and promoting personal ownership will only enhance the corporate culture of your company.
See how the two go hand in hand?
Cultivate Curiosity
As a leader, you can frame your collaborative conversations in the form of a question. When you allow for this, colleagues feel they have had agency in the arrangement, and you receive creative and innovative results! Framing instructions or tasks using a critical thinking question allows for colleagues to engage in their creativity.
When the team is stuck, when something isn’t flowing- return to the curiosity of questioning as a group. Counting on one another means staying interested in inquiring how to be better.
Leadership is about teaching collaboration just as much as it is about guiding.
Bringing it Together
Bringing all these elements of leadership together: trust and connection, promoting performance and cultivating curiosity allows for positive workplace culture. It enhances a team through collaboration. Everyone works together as a full ecosystem.
As the leader, you are a great part of enabling that ecosystem to function. So, can your colleagues count on you? How might you open up the avenues to better connection and collaboration within your company culture?
Companies, creators and teams who have harnessed Lisa’s services in leadership coaching have seen great results. With more confident and collaborative leaders, we create stronger workplaces.
Is your next step creating an atmosphere of accountability and a foundation of collaboration?
Get curious and investigate Lisa’s programs here.