Episode 6: Creating and Understanding Accountability

Episode 6 - Creating and Understanding Accountability

Welcome to another edition of around with Randall, your weekly, ten-to-12-minute podcast on making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here's your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett. 

Thanks for joining me again this week for the podcast. I want to spend this week talking about the thought processes of accountability.

It's challenging as a leader in these interesting and chaotic times, particularly with so many people working from home, to create an environment - and create the kind of relationships - that breed a positive sense of accountability. 

Many people might be asking why is accountability important? Well, first study after study has shown that when the proper accountability is built into the culture, the organization does better. There's better production, there's better efficiency, better effectiveness. But, we've also learned as we have gotten, I think, more holistic in the idea of leadership when we ask employees, “what do they think about the concept of accountability.” They tell us that generally they like it. As long as it's fair.

We'll talk about that for the majority of the podcast, because employees want to go to someplace and be involved in environments where they know what the rules are. Where they know what the expectations might be when we're in larger groups. We generally like to know everybody's kind of pulling or going in the same direction.

That's why laws work so well. If in traffic, everybody could choose their own speed. You're going to have chaos on the road. But yet you put a speed limit. There may be some people that don't think it's fast enough, but generally, most people that gives guidance to what the behavioral expectations are. That's a positive thing for a culture or a population of people trying to live and work together. 

We also know that employees tell us they want to be fulfilled that a job at its highest level is not just about showing up and getting paid, but. They want to accomplish something that, that fulfillment in doing good things, generates internal, emotional stability and internal desire to want to continue with that activity or that direction.

And that human nature tells us that we naturally matriculate to places where we feel good about what we're doing and how we do it. So if we know that accountability is good for the organization. And we know that employees generally like accountability, if it's fair.

How do we build, as a leader, accountability? And why is that so important in today's COVID driven world? 

So the first thing is, and Laura, who is a phenomenal writer, has done multiple studies on this idea of workplace. And she in one study found that 93% of employees said they don't understand the alignment between their goals, if there are any. And the organization schools that connective tissue of what the organization's mission is, doesn't meet up or doesn't parallel with what the organization’s or the individual’s mission or direction on a daily basis. She also went on to talk about that 84% of those same respondent's workers, employees indicated that there seems to be a failure to create an environment of accountability. What's staggering was almost the same percentage of managers who said they don't know how to do it.

So what are some things that we can do as leaders to create accountability and to create an environment, even if we're not all together, like we used to be, that allows our organization to thrive. And there's never been a more important time, at least in my lifetime, where nonprofits need to be successful and have employees who are doing just the same.

So I'm going to break this down into kind of six areas. The first is first and foremost, establish clear expectations from the start. If you're not on an annual basis, laying out what is expected of your employees. Those you manage at the beginning of your fiscal year or in a regular process. You're doomed before you start.

And it should be a conversation, particularly in nonprofit work in particularly with gift officers. And I'm not just talking about major gift officers, special events, people, uh, who I think of as gift officers, annual fund personnel, who I think of as gift officers, anyone who has a responsibility in communicating and building relationships on the outside of the organization, it should be a conversation.

I always used to insist that my staff would come in and we would sit down into a gift pyramid for each one of them each year. I would have my sense of what I thought would be a good goal. They would bring hopefully data that would either back that up or say, look, you're thinking probably a little bigger than I think is possible.

And we would make that an active engagement. There's a great study done by the partners in leadership workplace accountability, and their studying really looked at this idea of accountability in offices, all over the United States. And so it's, for-profit nonprofit, but it's applicable in our world of nonprofit work is they said that 70% of those surveyed indicated that their organizational results were in jeopardy because there was no communication about how the employee could help meet those objectives, which goes to what we talked about a few minutes ago about both managers, supervisors, and employees, not believing that there's an environment of accountability. 

So, sitting down and having an honest, robust conversation, and frankly, a lot of the work's done before that meeting in our world of nonprofit work. It's more about, okay, what's your gift pyramid? Who are your prime prospects? What do you think their gift opportunities might be this year? What are going to be some of those challenges and are there enough people and enough dollars to meet the expectation That's the big picture. 

Then I think it's really important to start laying out the metrics of what each month looks like. Well, how many calls do you need to make? Do we need to find you a better prospect pipeline? How can I help you do that? What does it look like from the perspective of do these gifts come all in at once?

Are they laid out over the year, how many asks have to be made each month? How many calls each month? So that there's a clear understanding of what is going to be done on a daily basis. 

There's nothing worse than a series of expectations in order to try to build accountability and say your goal is “X” and by the way, you've got 12 months to do it. Good luck. And the employee walks out saying, “Yeah, how am I supposed to do that?”

Leadership is trying to get ahead of that concern or challenge that an employee might have and help them build the routines and the discipline necessary to be successful. And then trying to figure out how we as leaders can help them do that. 

By the way, if you're listening to this and you're not one of the leaders or managers, it's just as important for you to push back on your supervisor to indicate, “Hey, I need this. Can we sit down and talk about what it's going to mean for me this year to be successful?” 

So if you're not getting that kind of engagement from your leader, it's kind of your responsibility. If you want an environment that’s positive and productive try to see if you can make that type of conversation or discussion occur.

Number one, establish goals. That's actually in my opinion, 70-to-80% of the equation. The other piece is the other five come in and support that. So you build out what these expectations are from the outset. Do you give them the resources necessary in our world? That's a little bit of money, you know, do they have the ability to, you know, go see people, but at the end of the day, it's really about pipeline.

I've always believed that the organization's responsibility is to ensure that the Gift officers, the nonprofit people who are expanding the outreach of the organization as a whole, have a pipeline. And it's the systems issue to know how to do that. If you just let gift officers special that people just go do whatever they want, then we shouldn't be surprised if many don't meet that level that we think that they should achieve. 

So what is, in terms of resources, not always about money, but what is the organization doing to support them in finding new opportunities and in many other podcasts and many other places on the website, you can find information about whether it's in hospitals, grateful patients, or if it's in education about alums and parents and others, or if you're in social services or arts and culture, how do you develop those relationships with boards in the community. All different manners, but that's really an organizational responsibility to put a lot of those processes in place. 

The third piece is foster connections. This goes back to the idea of what I was talking about, about setting those expectations up front is not just lounging that to be a one-time conversation. Are you having ongoing discussions with them about connecting their goals to the broader work of the organization? Are you connecting some of their personal and their professional goals, that should be part of a conversation discussion as well. What is it that I can do to make you more successful on a personal level?

And I may not be talking about it at home, but what about professional growth? That's a personal goal of many employees. Can I include them in different kinds of meetings that don't affect their overall job responsibilities? Giving them a chance to grow. Can you, and are you open, have an open door environment that allows them to bring problems and challenges to help solve them as the year goes along. And lastly, do you allow them to connect to the rest of the team? Do you foster an environment where they feel like they're not alone?

The fourth is probably the most difficult and that's feedback. And even when it's not positive, it's important. And it can't be just at the end. I.E: this isn't working out, and we need to find a pathway out of the organization. If that's the first time the employee figures out that there's a problem. That's not a failure on the employee's part, probably, that's a massive failure on the leader's part. Constructive criticism is important. It shouldn't be directed at a personal level, but what it should be is allowing them the opportunity to see the challenge. And hopefully give them some options to choose, to allow them to grow and to overcome that challenge in the end. That's what we should want as a leader is them to be able to be successful. 

We also have to realize that in this feedback, it brings us to number five. Different outcomes require different consequences. If it's not their fault that something has happened. And they didn't reach goal. That's a much different issue than if they didn't try and the result or the outcome shouldn't be the same.

This is entirely necessary in the COVID world. If that gift officer is making all the calls and building all the relationships they should, but their prospect pool is been hit, maybe you're doing some kind of special event and this person works with restaurants and, and other type food service. Well, this is the wrong year to try to get money from that group of people.

So as a leader, are you aware that the circumstances of things beyond that employees control. Probably don't indicate that it should be a consequence of getting rid of them. Now the organization may have to choose not to do a special event, but that's a different conversation. If someone's just not trying, not showing up, then we're dealing with a totally different series of issues.

And those things should be pretty easy to either fix or to mitigate or turn them loose. And so just be aware that the way in which as a leader you come to this is really important. And the last thing is, is accountability is not about fear. Number six. It's not about creating an environment where everybody's scared.

Accountability is about providing a centralized thought process and mission. For, we're trying to do this with our organization and nonprofit work. It's even more important. You're filling a hole in the community. Maybe Telecare, maybe it's education. Maybe it's a museum. Maybe it's a zoo. Maybe it's a food bank. Maybe it's housing for the homeless. 

There's a hole that your community can't do on its own. The government doesn't take care of to the level that it needs to be. So the nonprofit steps in fear, shouldn't be a part of the reason people do what they do. Hopefully it's about joy in an employee's heart to want to make a difference in the area that they've chosen to support with their work.

So if you are fostering an environment of fear, here's a couple of suggestions. How about praising? The positive things people do rather than harping on the negative highlighting every week or two someone's great work. It doesn't have to be a gift every time. It could just be a mention in a meeting or a personal note.

And the one that I think is probably most important is we're all fallible. We all make mistakes. Can you admit to them, can you look at others and say, boy, I messed this one up or it didn't go as well as I'd hoped? Because if you can do that, And have others feel like they are safe in the environment to do that.

Then that's a good thing for the organization in defeating this idea of fear. Now, if the same mistake happens six or eight times in a row, we have it a little bit different issue we have to deal with. And that goes back to feedback. But part of this is creating an environment, a culture where people feel safe about saying, gosh, I'm learning.

I'm going to hit that wall at a hundred miles an hour. I'm going to do my very best. And then I'm gonna adjust and I'm going to do it again. And if we can do that, that's when we get employees to believe. So what are the tactics out of all of this while there were a whole ton of them throughout if you're the leader.

So I hope that you'll take them and use them and make your culture a little bit stronger. If you're the employee, maybe it's time you sit down and have a conversation. If you're not getting this kind of engagement from your leaders, or maybe you're getting the wrong kind and say, gosh, I think we could do this, or I think we can make the environment better for that. 

And what we know is, and we've talked about this in previous podcasts, when these things don't happen, employees leave in our goal should be to hire the best and to keep the best and to create an environment where the best con can come out of the people that we engage every day inside of our offices or inside of our zoom calls.

Thank you for joining me. Don't forget. The website has at Hallett philanthropy. Two L's, two T's philanthropy.com has a couple of blogs a week - 90 second reads - just about being professional and kind of the world that at least I see. And certainly if you have any comments about this podcast podcast at Hallett philanthropy, if you have a concern or you disagree with me, I got a special email address and it's kind of a homage to Clark Howard, because I love what he does about allowing his listeners to comment about things they disagree with. I call it reeks R E K S at Hallett Philanthropy, Randall reeks. So just email reeks, R E E K S at Hallett Philanthropy.com. Check out the blogs, send me an email. And if you've got a subject you want to talk about or want me to address, let me know that as well. That's still at podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. 

This is a great profession. I say it every week. I believe it. It's a vocational call and I hope that you have the opportunity to know the outcomes of my all-time favorite saying some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened.

I hope your people, listeners and, and in your daily life or people who wanting to make things happen because in non-profit work, we're taking care of those who are wondering what happened if we do it right? We come to work every day, knowing we're affecting lives, we're filling holes. We're taking care of those that are the forgotten, not heard. That's what nonprofit work should be. No matter what part of our industry you're in, it is a vocational call. And I hope you feel like you're making a difference in your community because by doing it, if you do it well, you are changing lives and that is a worthy daily endeavor. We'll see you next time here on the podcast, around with Randall. Have a great day.