The boss keeps saying “Jess is responsible for this”.
“John is responsible for that.”
Unfortunately, just saying that somebody is responsible doesn’t mean much.
For someone to take responsibility, you first need them to buy in. Many times, I’ve seen leaders fall flat on their face, because they expected somebody to take responsibility, but it didn’t happen.
I’ve done this myself. I expected somebody to step up and be responsible, but they didn’t come through.
When this happens, the first thought that comes to mind is that the person is useless.
Worthless. Incompetent. Not a team player.
But it’s time we looked a little bit harder at the reasons for this, rather than just blaming somebody else.
There Are Reasons Why People Don’t Step Up and Take Ownership
When you want somebody to take responsibility, you can’t just say it. You need to set up conditions that make it happen.
On the flip side, there are factors that stop people from accepting responsibility or accountability. If you’re having a problem getting people to step up and take responsibility, look for some of these issues in your team.
Learn More: 4 Reasons Why You Can’t Hold People Accountable.
1. People Won’t Take Responsibility Because They Lack the Skills Or Experience
I’ve seen situations where leaders tell others they are responsible for tasks that are unfamiliar. Often it happens when people leave a team and aren’t replaced.
The boss: “Sarah, you’re responsible for handling all the sales enquiries that come in.”
Sarah: “But I’ve never done sales before.”
The boss: “Well, you need to take responsibility for it, because Josh left.”
Perhaps Sarah does need to take responsibility for sales enquiries. But in order to make it work, you’ve got to provide her with the skills to do so.
Coaching, mentoring or training are all ways to achieve this. But don’t expect people to take responsibility without providing the tools to make it happen.
Learn More: Improving team performance through cross training.
2. People Won’t Take Responsibility Because They Don’t Believe In Your Approach
When team members don’t agree with a leader’s approach to managing the team, they are less likely to take responsibility for tasks. People are less likely to commit because they are doing something they don’t believe in.
Telling someone they are responsible for something they don’t believe in is a recipe for disaster.
One way managers can avoid this is to communicate the “why” behind their actions.
Some leaders operate on a “need to know basis”, telling their team members only the bare minimum of information. But if you want buy-in and need people to step up and take responsibility, they need to know why it matters.
Start communicating the reasons behind your decisions. Otherwise, you’re forcing people to follow a path that they don’t want to walk down.
3. People Won’t Take Responsibility Because They Don’t Feel Supported
A critical factor in helping your team members take responsibility is ensuring they feel supported. They need to feel as if you’ve got their back.
If you tell someone they are responsible and then leave them alone, there is a good chance they’ll lack confidence. They will be fearful and feel as if the weight is all on their shoulders.
If you want people to take responsibility, you need to support them. This means being available, listening to concerns, coaching and mentoring. Then you need to make sure you provide regular feedback on their progress.
Otherwise, your team members will feel as if they are being hung out to dry.
4. People Won’t Take Ownership Because They Aren’t Interested In the Work
Sometimes, efforts to convince someone to take responsibility fail because they just aren’t interested in the work involved.
This comes back to understanding what each team member wants to achieve in their career. If they have specific goals in mind, finding work that matches those goals can be a great way to encourage them to take responsibility.
Otherwise, your team member is going to feel the burden of responsibility, but without any of the benefits. If taking on more responsibility isn’t getting them to where they want to go, they are less likely to feel invested.
We can’t always provide work that excites and motivates everybody. But the better you understand the goals and aspirations of your team members, the greater chance you have of getting them to step up and take on responsibility.
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Regardless of the reason – if the employee doesn’t take responsibility for their actions, the only proper way to deal with it is to ruthlessly replace him with other candidates.
Thanks for the comment Mykola.
Replacing people is one way to do it, but recruiting new people often results in delays, higher costs and a loss of business knowledge. If you can keep people but help them to take ownership, we can sometimes avoid these issues!
Cheers,
Ben
If they ain’t taking the responsibility, then they ain’t taking the responsibility – pure and simple, and no wishfully thinking attempts at “feel good” exercises will make them take that responsibility. It must be made clear to them that they must start taking responsibility and producing results, or they will be cut. If they are smart and care about keeping the job, they will figure it out.
As far as the recruiting costs go, yes, you need to have a constant ongoing recruitment of suitable candidates going on and that process must be efficient, and ideally semi automated (there exist services like Testdome allow to screen candidates automatically with real skill testing that requires no human administration if set up properly). The business owner must constantly be in a position where they always have options regarding people – that way they will keep power over their business and not be held hostage by their staff. This will have associated expenses, but will guarantee the business permanent freedom from HR problems if executed properly.
As far as the “loss of business knowledge”, the only way this can be addressed is to have structured and well organized business processes and careful documentation in the business that will make it possible to get the new person well acquainted with the situation without the need of having the old fired person cooperating.
Are there costs in running a business in an organized and ruthless way? Of course there are – but what you get to have in return is an operation that is solid, consistent and high in quality – you get to win in the marketplace by providing a superior service (and charge higher fees as result), as opposed to being a loser whose employees mess things up all the time with no responsibility – that will only get you to the bankruptcy court when all the clients leave you for competition!
The choice is simple – be strong, or be weak? Mainstream (and very much radical left leaning) media and the big tech executives are pushing a narrative of being weak on everyone and tries to promote it as something good, which it is not – they just want everyone to be weak and gullible so that they can be exploited for their purposes.
More on this in book by Dan Kennedy: “No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profit” ISBN 1599181657
Thanks for the comment. Certainly agree with being organised and setting expectations of performance. In fact, I think we agree on most points – the business owner definitely needs to have options with regard to hiring to reduce single points of accountability and also needs to have structures in place to capture organisational knowledge.
I don’t believe that supporting your people to help them grow into their roles and step up is weak – I see this as part of being a leader.
It’s easy just to fire everyone who doesn’t perform exactly how you want them to. I find this usually creates a culture of fear where people are scared to speak up, resulting in the bosses simply treating people like dirt. Not the type of organisation I would like to work in, but everyone is different and I respect that.
Cheers,
Ben
I’m not saying that you should not help people get better – but what I am saying is that you should only try to help people who are really getting that help out of you and really are trying to get better and positively respond to the time invested in them. I find that too many business owners (including myself in the past) invest too much time in employees who don’t make much use of the investment made into improving them (usually because these employees don’t really want to put in the effort to get better).
Of course you need to help people improve – but only to those who justify the time invested in them – and once they get better and produce good results they the need to be given $$$ bonuses and raises in order to clearly reward improvement and good performance with real tangible things and not some “feel good” encouragements.
Hi Mykola,
I agree with you about helping people improve if they really want to, otherwise you really are wasting time which could be better spent elsewhere.
Obviously bonuses and raises are great if you can provide them. Unfortunately, these aren’t always available, especially in sectors like Aged Care or government organisations. Sometimes we need to look for other ways to reward people if there are limited financial options.
Cheers,
Ben
But you also will always have those passive aggressive employees who you are trying to mentor/coach. And well they aren’t so receptive, as in emotional outburst they perceive as ok. They dump every little issue in your lap….instead of being a leader of themselves they act defenseless. Then put the blame on you when there is no accountability on their part. Leading to accusations that you are a bully and belittled, and that their boss knows nothing about their job other than they have been at if for serial years.
No at a point you have to say no more. Or you become a doormat. Some employees will always try to get the upper leg on you. Yes I sound jaded as I am a manager who jumps in both feet for production work, working 12 hours a day to support a team, one person can really put a monkey wrench in everything for a dedicated team with they are not a team player and self serving. Those folks should go…they destroy good teams. Some people just flat out suck.
Thanks for the comment Carmen, and absolutely you are right, there comes a time when you need to say “enough is enough”.
The reason I wrote this post was to help leaders think more about how their leadership may be contributing to the situation. I’ve seen lots of leaders blame their people for not performing, while at the same time they are doing things that are ruining the team environment.
If you’ve tried to address some of the factors above and people won’t get on board, they’re in the wrong place. And then it’s up to the leader to say “enough is enough” and implement some consequences.
Cheers,
Ben
Sometimes no amount of help/training/encouragement will help and have to know when to cut the cord. These are grown adults and if they can’t figure out how to work within a team on a project and such…cut the cord. People like this are draining, not only on your company financially also all other employees see this – resentment builds, other co-workers possibly taking on more of a work load. The whole system will and does get raddled. A true leader will recognize this provide training if needed/required, old patterns return and all is a pattern…..cut the cord and move on. Your other 5, 15, or 30 employees will thank you!
Absolutely. I think it’s important to give people a chance to improve and step up, but if you’ve tried and it’s not working, then having poor performing team members hanging around will cause long term damage!
Thanks for the comment,
Ben
There is also a factor of being over stretched, mainly in government and public bodies. No control over workload leads to an organisation or team being left disabled, firefighting and no room for growth. So you could call that taking no responsibility, I work in such an organisation, healthcare, I manage a team and it’s majorly left to me to lead and deliver on strategy, improvement, recruitment, training staff, developing I can go on. I’ve not found a solution yet to motivating and coaching in such a situation, but boy am I trying.
Great point, it’s hard to step up when people feel destined to fail. In those environments, sometimes I find the best thing to do is focus on what you can control and look for the small wins.
Cheers,
Ben