The Cost of Not Holding People Accountable
A post taken from my Facebook account last week:
“This week has been plagued with stories of extra rude people. I’m not sure when it became okay for adults to be rude and disrespectful. For real, when did this become okay, because in a world where we talk about needing more love and joy, being rude doesn’t make that happen.
One friend, waiting for a parking spot so she didn’t have to haul her two kids through a huge, crazy cold parking lot had two people use the f word to curse her out for waiting.
Then last night, we took a parking spot next to someone who had parked super close to our side of the line, and while we were well in our lines. When we came out, we found someone from that car had spit on our driver side window – twice – leaving us charming globs of saliva because of his poor parking job.
Seriously, why would someone think either of these things okay?”
As I mentioned, I posted this on Facebook, and the idea deserves a little more exploration, because I think there’s a bigger issue here – accountability, but not accountability on the part of the poorly behaved people, but accountability by those of us who stand by and watch when someone else does something inappropriate and we don’t say anything.
Poor behavior happens when we don’t speak up, when we allow those things to happen. I understand we live in a violent and terrible world, and there’s honest fear that something may happen to us if we step in and speak up. We fear that person will turn on us. We determine in a heartbeat that person and their actions aren’t worth our time.
What if we looked at it differently? What if instead of deciding that person or their actions aren’t worth speaking up, we decided it cost too much for us to let that behavior happen? I think this switch in mindsets would make us all better across many realms, including having healthier teams at work.
Take for example, that rude person at work. We’ve all have them. The one co-worker who everyone tiptoes around. The one who is allowed to undermine a colleague. The one who is in it for themselves and makes his or her disdain for everyone else clear.
How can we take this rude behavior and turn it around? How can we help one another see the value of accountability? I’ve worked with several teams recently where there were unhealthy relationships because people were too afraid to hold one another accountable. They didn’t see the value in it.
One of those teams has spent approximately $12,000 in hourly salary, training and expertise to teach the team what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t – all because they didn’t hold each other accountable to healthy behaviors from the beginning. And, that cost doesn’t even include the cost of stress, worry, redundant work, gossip, and finding office workarounds to avoid some of the folks there. That’s a big expense to fix bad behavior.
How do we positively support an environment where people hold one another accountable? We do it through consistency and character. Acting with consistency and character requires us knowing what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. It requires clear guidelines and conversations with the team. So many of these guidelines lie outside of our HR policies, but the ideas are equally as important to the health of the team.
It’s things like, what types of words and language are okay? Is the silent treatment okay? Do we allow someone to forcefully push their opinion through? Who has to be at the meeting?
Once we have our agreed-upon norms established, we speak up each time someone behaves badly. Maybe in the moment, our brains freeze, but we’re sure to talk about in a timely fashion after the fact with all the people involved. It’s this consistency that communicates we are committed to the character we agreed upon.
This won’t happen overnight for most of us. It’s something we have to practice, again and again. We have to admit when we miss the mark and we have to move forward together.
In a world of rude behavior, Ghandi would tell us, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” That’s this week’s challenge. Choose one hard conversation you want to be a part of and identify how you will represent the character and consistency you want to see.
As for what I commit to? For my mom friend treated rudely in the parking lot, I want to commit to speaking up for you and commit to helping others see the impact of what they say. I hope to be the one who says to those chewing you out, “I’m sorry but that language is offensive and there are small children in the car who were just exposed to it. Please stop and express your frustration in an acceptable way.” I may become the brunt of that person’s rant, but I bet that person would think before going on another rant. I maybe wouldn’t change the moment, but I’d change the future.
Keynote speaker, trainer, and consultant, Sarah Gibson, helps organizations leverage the power of communication, teamwork and diversity to improve engagement and transform teams. To buy her book or inquire about her speaking programs, please visit www.sarahjgibson.com.
