Be accountable for your actions & hold others accountable for theirs

The highest performing teams that I've worked with have the best mix of:

• Each individual on the team knowing their responsibilities (and the ability and ambition to execute them), as well as the responsibilities of their teammates.
• A commitment by everyone on the team to execute their responsibilities to the best of their ability...all the time, as well as a commitment to provide respectful, direct, and honest feedback to their teammates when they're not executing on their responsibilities.

Does this mean you don't help teammates when they're not at their best? Absolutely not...but there's a big difference between helping people and trying to do their jobs for them because you believe yourself to be better than them at it. Trust me, you're not.

Over the years I've worked with many people that either aren't completely clear of their own responsibilities and/or their teammates' responsibilities, their teammates aren't completely clear of their own and/or their teammates', or most often, some combination of all of these. There's a word for this...it's called anarchy.

Imagine a football team where nobody really knows what their responsibilities are exactly. Do you think they'd ever complete a play successfully? Do you think they'd ever win? Sure, maybe sometimes, but their ability to do so would largely be by chance. If you don't fully understand your responsibilities, get clarity from who you need to so that you do. If you don't fully understand your teammates' responsibilities, then get that clarity too. Once you have that clarity, be the first to admit it when you don't execute well on your's. Additionally, be the first to respectfully and directly speak to your teammate when they don't execute well on their's (though of course, the "pick your battles" rule always applies).

The book Crucial Confrontations is in the Recommended Reading list for this blog, and is a great tool to help you with these conversations. The worst thing you can do is go around people you believe aren't doing their jobs, at least not based on what you believe their job to be. This doesn't fix problems, and unfortunately, often creates more. The next worst thing you can do is to try to do people's jobs for them. This is just irritating, patronizing, and insulting...not to mention it takes you away from what you're being paid to do. Don't do it...you don't want people trying to do your job either. Instead of doing these things, provide respectful, actionable, and direct feedback to people. It will help them improve, and most people are thankful to those who help them improve.

Effective architects give effective feedback, are accountable for their actions, and hold others accountable for their actions because they know that's the only way problems really get solved. A resource that effectively illustrates this and other attributes of dysfunctional teams is the book titled The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. It takes an interesting approach in that the "lesson" is told through a fable played out by characters. Though the "team" is an executive team in the fable, the underlying problems they face will resonate with you in different teams you've been on I'm sure.