Accountability, both for employees and business owners, is the key to making your best business and ensuring that all of your work was accomplished and successful.
As we close out this series, we reflect upon everything we’ve discussed within the past five weeks that we believe will help foster a stronger, better, more successful small business. If you haven’t caught up on the latest blogs that we posted, take a look at vision, employees, data, problem solving, and process management. Each of these blogs will break down the key components necessary to making your best business.
As all of those aforementioned elements come together, it is important to make sure that your efforts to make your business stronger were successful. To hold yourself accountable as a business owner, you must reflect upon your business processes to help synthesize your daily practices and allow you to better communicate with your employees. Looking back on what you and your employees do over time creates a working environment that promotes success, teamwork, and responsibility.
In order to make your best business, follow the four Be’s to hold yourself and your workers accountable:
Be clear, Be observant, Be honest, Be consistent. Memorize those four Be’s, you’ll be golden.
To ensure that your employees always understand what you ask of them, be explicit in your directions. Unclear, unwritten messages cause miscommunication and confusion, which wastes time and effort. If your employees don’t comprehend what you require of them, how could you hold them accountable when you yourself aren’t performing to the best of your ability as a leader?
Be observant. A good manager is one that is present. Remember working that minimum wage job as a teenager? Of course. Remember all the goofing off you got away with because your manager, who wasn’t much older or more mature than you, wasn’t paying attention? We do! Without someone checking in on employee activity and progress, often things can run amok, which makes for an unsuccessful, unproductive work day. Be observant of the ongoings of your company. Now, don’t micromanage your employees because that plants distrust and upset in the workplace, but do make your rounds to maintain the integrity of your company. Give your employees the space to succeed, while still asserting your place as a leader.
While monitoring your business’s daily practices, give employees feedback whenever necessary. Feedback can take the form of scheduled meetings after projects or even quarterly, for example. It can also manifest extemporaneously through observation and coaching practices. Regardless of when feedback occurs, be honest when giving it. Sometimes, as business owners, we may feel compelled to cushion ours responses to an employee’s words or actions to save face or make us feel much less uncomfortable during potentially negative interactions. While we aren’t at all promoting being harsh when reflecting upon the work of an employee, it is important to realistically address any points of concern or praise for the employee. Being honest creates an open line of communication, making you a trustworthy and reliable leader.
Finally, be consistent when working with employees. Your employees shouldn’t be constantly surprised about your schedule, how you approach work, or how you react in given situations. In order for you to hold yourself and your employees accountable, everyone involved should be able to rely on you as a business owner to perform to a certain standard. Being a dependable and stable leader develops confidence in the workplace and strengthens the overall accountability of employees and business owners alike.
It should be assumed that you are consistently clear with your expectations for your employees and that you are observant and honest when it comes time to reflect upon the work done by your business. Being a trustworthy and dependable leader is important to fostering a healthy and thriving work environment, which will ultimately help you make your best business.
Just because our “Making Your Best Business” series has ended, doesn’t mean that our advice stops here. Check out our massive backlog of blogs on personal and business success as well as tax planning! Also, like us on Facebook to get an update whenever we post a new blog.