Your ability to successfully hold others accountable for performance, regardless of your position within the organization, is directly related to your skill at leveraging the following four strategies:

1. Interim Deliverables:  Do you have the same level of confidence in all of your direct reports to perform in a timely and quality fashion?  What happens if you only rely on the team members in whom you have a great deal of confidence?  Can you assign work to an employee in whom you have low confidence – and still maintain control over the quality and timeliness of the work?  Should you follow up with the employee, or should the employee follow up with you on the commitments they’ve made?  
2. Advance Warning:  Do any of your employees routinely offer excuses for not doing their job?  Do you want more of your employees to take the initiative to solve problems sooner rather than later?  Would you like to strengthen communication so that you’re not blindsided?  And would you like to establish more trust throughout your team?
3. Deliverable Clarity:  Have you ever asked someone to identify a project time frame and they bring you back a 60-page dissertation on the history of time?  Have you ever heard, “I didn’t know I needed to do that?”  Or what about, “You didn’t tell me you needed me to do it by today?”  Was the problem you, the employee, or was it somewhere in the middle? 
4. Proactive Accountability:  How difficult is it to hold an employee accountable when they perform well?  Is it difficult to tell Janice that she did a terrific job?  What’s the problem then?  Isn’t it holding employees accountable when they fail to perform?  When do you deal with this?  Even more important, what do you say to effectively hold the person accountable for not performing – in a way that minimizes that type of behavior in the future?  

In highly effective teams, employees excel in three performance areas.  These areas are critical to success and involve:

1. 1. Fulfilling his or her job responsibilities.
   2. Following policies and procedures, including engaging in organizational and team acceptable behavior (e.g. arriving on time, being respectful to co-workers, etc.)
   3. Meeting interim and/or final deadlines and quality deliverables when given assignments and project work.

Simply put, as a manager, you want to hold your employees accountable to the expectations you establish in each of these three areas.  Non-performance occurs when an employee in some way violates one or more of these areas.

A deliverable is simply a performance expectation that is measurable and has a specific due date.  Examples in each of the three performance areas are listed below:

If only!  For most managers, the answer would be a resounding, “No”.  So why not – why don’t you have the same level of confidence?  Any of a myriad of reasons may and should apply:  some employees are new, don’t have the necessary skills, have missed deadlines in the past, have not submitted quality work in the past, etc.  Is this important to how you manage employee performance?  Absolutely. 

Should you manage an employee that has earned your confidence for a specific task the same you would an employee where confidence is low?  Of course not.  By the way, is your confidence equally high with everything an employee does?  Not only does confidence vary by employee, but it could very well vary for an employee by task, project and assignment.  This is especially true if you are challenging your top performers to expand their skill and knowledge base. 

For these reasons, your level of confidence in an employee should, and must, drive how you manage that employee's performance.  Like some managers though, you might make the mistake of gravitating and engaging only the employees who have earned your confidence.  When a manager does this, what happens within the team?   It becomes dysfunctional.  Why is this? 

Let's look at the employees you go to all the time, their morale drops because they feel they are being overloaded.  Further, and even more demoralizing is that they believe you are being unfair because you allow other team members to get away with non-performance.  By the way, will they tell you about their frustration with your management style?  In most cases, you'll be left wondering what happened when they tell you that they are leaving for another opportunity. 

For the staff that you avoid, they experience contradictory messages.  On the one hand, they know that you will leave them alone if they don't perform so this is an incentive not to perform.  But on the other hand, your actions scream that you don't trust or believe in them which serves as a self-fulfilling performance prophecy.

Absolutely. The real question is, how do you do it?  You do it through follow-up.  This means the more confidence, the less follow-up with the employee.   And conversely, the less confidence you have, the more follow-up there will be.  So the amount of follow-up frequency is directly related to your level of confidence in an employee’s ability to meet the quality and timeliness of deliverables.  Granted, an occasional task may arise that does not lend itself to follow-up; in these rare cases, then allow yourself enough wiggle room with the due date to deal with performance issues.

Explain to the employee the reason your confidence is low.  More importantly, offer the employee an incentive for less frequent follow-up.  You can say to the employee something like, “If you do A, B and C, then we can significantly cut back the amount of follow-up.”   If you can’t explain why your confidence is low, maybe you are micromanaging the wrong employee.  Nothing kills a good employee’s morale more than micromanaging.

Absolutely NOT. Instead, employees SHOULD BE providing you with an interim deliverable (e.g. draft of a report, focus group report, cost-benefit analysis) that is specific, NOT a status report.  Knowing that “everything’s on target” is a waste of your time, doesn’t prevent or solve problems, and is a lousy time management, project management, and coaching tool for the employee who hasn’t earned your confidence.

If you want to treat your employees like 2-year-olds, then YOU should follow up with them.  YOU should be the “mommy” or the “daddy”.  And by the way, when YOU follow up with them, what message does the act of doing this send to the employee?  There are a myriad of messages – including, “My boss doesn’t trust me to do the right thing.”  “My boss doesn’t think I can handle this.”  “I don’t have to worry about being responsible and professional because my boss will take care of that for me.”  And how motivated will he or she be to take the initiative and communicate potential problems, as well as possible solutions – to you in the future?  What does this type of approach produce?  DEPENDENCY!

It’s critical that a clear expectation is set regarding follow-up that it is the RESPONSIBILITY of the employee to do one of two things:  either communicate that the follow-up deliverables have been completed in a way that meets quality and timeliness expectations OR he or she provides you with advance warning that there will be a problem meeting the expectation, the reason why, and what will be done to address the issue.

Highly effective managers know that it is ONLY acceptable when an employee communicates AHEAD OF TIME that he or she can't meet their commitment.  Are there legitimate reasons that prevent an employee from missing a deadline?  Absolutely!  Using the sanitized version of a popular saying, “Stuff happens!”  But it is simply unacceptable and irresponsible for an employee to miss an interim or final deliverable without giving you an advance warning.

Do you assume that your employees should provide you with an advance warning when there is a problem meeting a deliverable?   If some or all of your employees DON'T do this as a matter of practice, is it reasonable to hold them accountable for this type of behavior?  The answer is both yes and no.  In other words, like a lot of things, it depends. 

Of course you should hold staff accountable IF, and that's a big if, you have clearly established the advance warning expectation as a policy.  And just as important, it is unreasonable and unfair IF you haven't clearly done this.  By the way, what is the advance warning expectation?  It is an example of one of the three performance area deliverables mentioned earlier.  The key question for you to consider is this, have you clearly established an advance warning policy. and if not, what are you waiting for?

The bottom-line answer:  Establish the expectation that if there is any problem meeting an interim or final deliverable within the three performance areas, it is the responsibility of an employee to provide an “advance warning” to you.  And the best way to do this is by establishing, communicating and gaining agreement with your entire team that this is standard policy.  This is the advance warning strategy.  This way, no one can use the lack of knowing that they were supposed to provide the advance warning as a legitimate excuse for failing to take the initiative to do this.  Once again, how can you hold someone responsible for an expectation that had never been clearly communicated and/or understood?

Simply put, it eliminates employee excuses.  It teaches your staff that, on your team, whenever someone agrees to do something, the employee has a responsibility to the person with whom the commitment was made – either to communicate that it’s done OR to let them know ahead of time that there is a problem, why, and the proposed solution. By the way, is this asking a lot of employees?  I would make the argument that this is the essence of professionalism and responsibility – wouldn’t you agree?

The benefit of operationalizing this strategy is ENORMOUS because it enables you to grow a stronger accountability culture – one in which your team:

1. Becomes more responsible and professional.
2. Takes the initiative to communicate and solve problems sooner.
3. Operates more efficiently.
4. Strengthens team trust, confidence and loyalty.

And from a selfish standpoint, you save yourself a considerable amount of time by NOT “babysitting” your employees.  Why?  Your employees follow up with you on interim and final deliverables, instead of the other way around. 

NEVER (although some try)!  Effective managers clearly understand the essential link between clarity on deliverables and performance.  The sad truth, unfortunately, is that managers from organizations all across the globe just assume that their employees know what the performance deliverables (expectations) are because, “I told them”, “It’s written down”, “I shouldn’t have to tell them – they should know this already”, etc.  Does any of this sound familiar?

You could either do this verbally, in writing, or a combination of both.  As is the case with many aspects of accountability – it’s situational.  My recommendation is to do both if it’s an important deliverable or one that has caused problems in the past.  In writing, you could take one of the following approaches:

1. 1. Use a standard template that outlines the scope of the deliverable in newspaper format (headline, sub-headline and bullets).  This forces you to think through what you expect ahead of time. (If you’re already doing this, give yourself a mental “pat on the back”.)
   2. Ask the employee to send you an e-mail summarizing the scope of the deliverable.
   3. Ask the employee to submit a plan for carrying out/accomplishing the deliverable.

The best way to answer this question is to begin emphasizing what SHOULDN’T be done.  Clarifying deliverables does NOT take place when you ask an employee, “Do you have any questions?”, “Are you all set with what needs to be done?”, etc.  And as this question implies, you don’t want to say something insulting like, “John, what did I just ask you to do?” 

A better approach would sound something like this:  “Chris, sometimes I’m not a perfect communicator and this might be one of those times – so would you mind giving me your sense of what’s involved with this?” 

By taking this approach, who is responsible for poor communication?  You are.  And by the way, if you’re thinking, “I don’t want my employee to know that I’m not a perfect communicator!”  Well, I hate to break the bad news, but they already know. Because there truly is no such thing as “a perfect communicator” – none of us are!  And by the way, if you try to prove otherwise with your employees on a regular basis, they will see right through it and make it their mission to prove your imperfection.  Ever been there before?

Important Reminder:  When an employee is explaining their understanding of what needs to be done, minimize interrupting him or her.  This only complicates the situation and frustrates your employee.

Never!  This type of poor management practice results in a manager either mentally and/or verbally accusing an employee of poor performance when, unfortunately, the employee really didn’t know or understand what actually was expected of him or her.

By confirming expectations at the very outset, you will have both ensured that this never happens AND preempted a non-performing employee from hiding behind the excuse that they “didn’t understand” what you wanted. This will be key to successfully holding an employee accountable for non-performance.

As a manager, you hold an employee accountable for non-performance when an employee has neither communicated that they accomplished an interim or final deliverable NOR provided you with the heads-up that they couldn’t meet that deliverable – along with the reason why, and what the plan is to deal with it.

Let me answer this question with a question.  If employees always communicated and completed interim or final deliverables on time OR provided you with an advance warning that there was a problem, when would you have to follow up with them?  In a word – NEVER.  That’s right, you would never have to follow up with them.  Why is that?  Because they will always follow up with you.  Employees do what they say or they proactively take the initiative to communicate to you that there is a problem.  This is proactive accountability.

As a manager, the only time you hold an employee accountable for non-performance is when an employee HAS NOT communicated that he or she accomplished an interim or final deliverable on time AND didn’t provide you with the heads-up that they couldn’t meet the interim or final deliverable, why, and what the plan is to deal with it.

YES.  Before dealing with non-performance, make sure that you aren’t the problem by answering the questions listed below.  If you answer yes to all 3 questions, then the employee is not performing and it’s time to hold the employee accountable for non-performance.  If you answered no or maybe to one or more of these questions, then you need to restart the performance clock and clarify the performance and/or accountability deliverables.

This is critical.  It is imperative that you hold the employee accountable for non-performance immediately AFTER that person both failed to communicate to you that he or she met the interim or final deliverable AND failed to provide you with an advance warning.

I am sometimes INITIALLY misunderstood with my answer because it seems counterintuitive.  It seems to go against how you might have approached managing employee performance up to this point.  You may inaccurately believe that by dealing with non-performance AFTER the fact, you will put your "back-side" at risk.  Simply put, if a staff member doesn't perform, and you don't catch it before it happens, then it blows up in your face.  More important, your credibility takes a hit with your boss, client, etc.  This makes perfect sense - right?  Wrong!  When you leverage the interim deliverable strategy mentioned earlier, as well as the strategies of advance warning and deliverable clarity, this WILL NOT happen. 

If you have incorporated an interim deliverable approach, then you won't be left "holding the bag" should there be a problem.  By definition, you will catch any problems before they become an issue by incorporating interim deliverables into your approach.  And as I pointed out in a previous answer, even with staff that you have a great deal of confidence in, you will still have given yourself wiggle room to deal with the unexpected.  After all, even your top performers are not perfect, and we don't live in a perfect world.  Stuff happens.

Just as important, what message are you sending if you follow-up with an employee before an interim or final deliverable deadline?  The act of going to the employee before the deliverable due date obliterates the accountability policy.   Actions speak louder than words.  Why would your employees follow this policy when you deliberately undermine it?  Just as important, your actions are screaming, "I don't trust you!" and "You need to be treated like a 2-year old".  Consider this, how effective is this approach in developing staff?

Customize the following three-part language:

First:  “We agreed that deliverable(s) was going to be done by time frame and I’m looking at the fact that it that it didn’t happen – I’m wondering what happened?”

Second:  Actively listen to his or her response.  What does this mean?  It means demonstrating the following behaviors while the person is talking:

- Shut up while employee is talking.

- Show that are listening with your body language and voice.  With your body language use eye contact, open body posture, nodding head occasionally, saying the word “right” occasionally, and putting aside everything and focusing on the person.  With your voice, say the word "right" periodically, and if on the phone, minimize any background sounds that would make the employee think that you are focused on something els

Third:  After giving the employee time to respond, simply ask in a very CALM voice, “But we had an agreement, didn’t we?

It is important to hold the person accountable face-to-face whenever possible.  This is the most effective approach.  Why?  With your body language, you will have the most leverage with the employee.  Make sure you are sitting down with the employee when you do this, as this will calm the situation and make it less confrontational compared to you standing while the employee is sitting.

Obviously, if you can only do this by phone, then so be it.  If the person isn’t available to speak, leave a voice mail message with the first part of the three-part language above, and ask the employee to call you as soon as he or she receives the message.  

If the employee responds with any variation of, “Yes, I should have let you know, you’re right, etc.”, then you have successfully held that person accountable. 

At that point, you have taught this employee a very valuable lesson.  The lesson is powerful because it clearly states that on your team, it is unacceptable, unprofessional and irresponsible NOT to take the initiative to communicate that there is a problem meeting a commitment ahead of time.  Just as important, you have put that person on notice that, as the manager, you will hold the person accountable for this type of unacceptable behavior.  That will prove extremely motivating to the employee when tasked with future deliverables.

Once the person indicates that he or she is at fault, you then segue into the question, “So, when can you have this done?”

The key is to interrupt their interruption by saying in a very authoritative voice, “Excuse me!”.  Or you could also say, “Excuse me, let me finish!”  And you could say this while holding your index finger up (if doing this face-to-face).  By the way, as a bonus, this is a very effective approach whenever someone interrupts you in almost any situation.

If this happens, now the issue is dealt with in a different way.  The reason for the constant heads-up might be a result of unrealistic deliverables.  If that’s the case, then you’ll need to do some adjusting.

The problem might not be unrealistic deliverables.  It may be with the employee.  If the deliverables are realistic, then it’s time to take this performance issue up with the employee in a counseling session, and depending upon your HR policies, disciplinary action or possible termination may result.  IMPORTANT CAUTION:  This is the last resort; and if you customize the proactive accountability strategy, this should happen very rarely.

This strategy is highly effective because you teach non-performers that, on your team, your expectation is that they will be professional, etc.  And just as important, you also will help them get there because you believe they are valuable and you care.  Those sentiments are very powerful and go a long way.  As Booker T. Washington once said, “Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.”

Absolutely.  Research in the field of expectancy theory, as well as the Pygmalion Effect (self-fulfilling prophecy), clearly demonstrate what happens when we set a reasonable and realistic expectation as a manager (employees doing what they committed to or providing the heads-up), and then back that up with verbal and non-verbal behavior on your part (setting policy and holding person accountable for non-performance immediately after they didn’t meet policy).  The inescapable result is that your employees, as a general rule, will rise to the occasion and meet this important accountability expectation.