Good leadership has never been more important than it is now. Regardless of which organization, firm, company, or working body you oversee or manage, you have a responsibility to be open, transparent, and accountable to both your subordinates and others who have a stake in the leadership role you oversee. Having great power comes with great responsibilities as the popular adage goes and that involves making sure you set a good example for your peers and those people who look up to you.
While what you’re in your own role should not reflect on how others in an organized company, firm, or agency to do their own roles, but you can have an outsized impact on the effect you have on other people you work with by setting a good example for them. What do I mean by setting a good example? There are several ways, including the fifteen I have listed below to do that in a leadership role in the working world and for which will not only help you as a leader but help the workplace that you are both developing and managing.
- Own Up to Your Mistakes – Acknowledge personal errors without deflecting blame to your subordinates. This sets up a culture where it’s okay to fail, but it’s crucial to learn from it without being chastised.
- Communicate Transparently and Consistently – Keep team members in the loop about decisions, challenges, and updates on a weekly or at least a monthly basis. Transparent communication fosters trust and accountability. Avoiding gossip, rumors, and other loose talk is a key role of a leader to make sure that doesn’t override official guidance.
- Set Clear Expectations for Everyone – Define what success looks like in specific terms for each person’s performance and hold everyone, including themselves as the leader or CEO, to those same standards.
- Lead by Actual Action(s) – Demonstrate work ethic, punctuality, proper dress code and overall professionalism each day. Leaders who practice what they preach inspire others to do the same. Always be willing to put in serious work relevant to your company’s mission and not just sit in meetings all day when you could be pitching in to help with the big picture, especially for a smaller organization when you may not have as many employees to solve problems that come up each day.
- Encourage Consistent Feedback from Others – Actively seek feedback from all levels of the organization for how things could improve or be better for the average worker. This shows that the leader values input and is open to improvement even when it may reflect negatively on them or the organization.
- Hold Themselves to the Same Standard – Apply the same level of accountability to themselves as they would to others, regardless of rank or position. Make sure that they are open to having their performance reviewed just the same as anyone else.
- Be Consistent in Your Decision Making – Consistency in decisions, actions, and behavior reinforces trust and a culture of accountability. For example, if there is a flexible hybrid or remote work policy and a contract is signed for that part of the work environment, that cannot just be ended without abiding by the contract or letting people know there will be changes after the end of a contract. It’s important to not pull the rug out from your employees when they come into the job with certain work expectations that they agreed to.
- Provide Recognition and Consequences – Celebrate successes and address failures in a fair and constructive way. Holding people accountable, positively or negatively, ensures a balanced approach that people will appreciate because of your honesty and consistency.
- Empower Other People in Their Roles – Provide resources, training, and autonomy for team members to succeed and be responsible for their roles. Make sure that they can go to conferences, relevant trainings, skills development courses, and other events that they will benefit from whether it’s for IT, sales, marketing, business development, etc.
- Always Maintain Ethical and Moral Standards – Model both Ethical and Morally sound behavior for others in your organization, even when no one is looking. This sets a baseline for personal and organizational integrity that others will follow based on your example as the leader of the firm and because they know they are doing right and following the rules.
- Be Present and Available to Everyone – Hold open office hours each week and make it a priority to meet with each employee or each team throughout the year to see how they are doing, especially individually. Be accessible to all team members when they need guidance or clarity, demonstrating commitment to their growth and accountability in your firm or organization.
- Follow Through on Your Commitments – Demonstrate reliability by keeping promises and meeting deadlines, setting an example for follow-through in the organization. Your word is your bond as a leader in the work you do, and others will want to do business with you or continue the partnership if you are able to do what you said you were going to do.
- Foster a Culture of Mutual Accountability – Cultivate an environment where everyone feels responsible for the success of the team, not just individual performance. If you have different teams, make sure they know the role that is expected of them, what they are responsible for, and how to resolve issues with each other when they inevitably come up.
- Address Issues Promptly and Privately – Tackle accountability problems early before they grow into larger organizational issues, showing that problems are addressed fairly and swiftly. Make sure to do it privately as well with those affected employees and keep it constructive in terms of ensuring more accountability. It’s never good to air out grievances with your workers in public or in front of a team or group of employees.
- Provide Continued Growth and Training Opportunities – Workers want to feel like they are progressing in the job and giving skills or certification training(s) can really help with overall job satisfaction. Being able to provide a long-term trajectory for those people in your firm or company so they stick around and lower the turnover rate is key too.
Being a leader of a company, firm, or organization is not easy, but the reward of being an effective leader of a thriving workplace is worth the stress of it all. You must be a positive example who sets a high standard but also is able to help the people under you develop their own professional futures and be willing to adapt and adjust your own ideas and policies based on constructive feedback. If accountability and transparency are to thrive in any organization, it must come from leadership first and work its way down through the hierarchy.
