Some people are born with good people skills, and take charge to pull their weight. Many of us, would rather complete the project on our own if it meant managing our peers. Team management isn’t sunshine and roses, and it isn’t easy for many of us. In fact, many managers, and business owners find themselves struggling with managing their teams. Thankfully, there are a handful of things you can do to keep your team accountable.
How to Keep Your Team Accountable to Drive Performance
Avoid this Common Mistake
If you’ve spent time after work grabbing beers, it can be hard to keep your team accountable. This can put you in a position of being too lax, and you’ve totally failed at holding your team accountable. On the flip side, morphing into micromanager accountability is about trusting your employees to do the right thing, whereas micromanagement is based on a lack of trust.
Set Clear Expectations
While you don’t have to present rules, you should let your employees know what’s expected of them. In terms of goals and behavior, this means leading by example and making sure all team leaders are doing the same. By the same token, it’s also important to put procedures into place to properly handle issues that may frequently arise.
Use Technology to Hold Your Team Accountable
When your employees spend the day out in the field, it can be hard to maintain communication, and difficult to ensure that your team isn’t taking unnecessary breaks. GPS-based fleet management tools can provide you with a birds eye view of your entire team. Thus, allowing you to see when your team is arriving, and how long it’s taking them to complete jobs.
Embrace Mistakes
Nobody likes mistakes, as they are bad news for your business and the employee who makes them. However, when your employees make a mistake, the problem can escalate. The goal here is to make your employees approach you with problems, in order to not start hiding future problems. Instead, consider having each employee share an issue and talk about how they fixed the mistake.
Communicate Problems
One of the biggest mistakes is failing to communicate issues to deal with every problem. However, if you don’t communicate with your team when they make mistakes, they’ll never learn. Failing to inform your employees when minor mistakes are made sets a bad example for other employees. By the same token, it’s important to praise that person in front of your team, and provide a clear example of the type of behavior you expect in order to keep your team accountable.
GPS Fleet Management
These days, tools like GPS fleet management technology is making it easier to successfully manage your field team. Tools that connect your entire team via a single dashboard dramatically improves team performance. Thus, giving you peace of mind, and providing you with a headache-free way to keep your team accountable.
