As for this blog post of the teamwork series, accountability and commitment would be discussed in ensuring a high-performance team. Low-performance teams have ruined my confidence in my past in terms of poor grades or reception from the quality of product and service delivered to meet requirements. Not surprisingly, low-performing teams also have longer delays in general of completing assignments, which cost the organization resources in the following ways (from here): (1) revenue loss, (2) extra employment cost of the team on the project, (3) cost of lost opportunities during the delay period b/c of unavailable resources. Lack of accountability are also key sources of problems that could easily break teams apart.

From my personal conversation with members on the Brazen Careerist community, and digging up more background reading on my own, the general consensus starts from the leader selection and his/her actions as the team leader to build trust, clarity and accountability among each other.

When selecting a team leader as a team, s/he should have a strong balance of technical, interpersonal, and business skills, and be willing to serve the role. As the top decision maker of the team, clear accountability standards for achieving results should be set to ensure own accountability for the overall performance of the team. The members should not set a good leader up to fail by ensuring that the leader has sufficient authority and control to succeed. This can be achieved by following these six steps together as a team (from this source):

1. Draft the accountability standards as a team, and have each member understand and follow them during the course of the project. Normally, the team composition should be consistent throughout the lifetime, as a new member joining the team midway is usually fairly destructive in terms of overall team productivity if not educated about these standards properly. If a new member does join a team, it is essential that s/he is educated about the standards (by partnering with a buddy, lectured in several classes, reading the standards, etc.) sufficiently.
2. Put the standards in writing. This needs to be done for consistency reasons. Also, people are more likely to remember written standards and facts than verbal exchanges. The standards should also be clear so that no misunderstanding can occur.
3. Educate in the long picture. Team members would be more accountable for tasks understood to be more important. Once the members know why why different aspects of the project are important, they are more likely to take ownership and accountability for that area.
4. Assign responsibilities. This should be done as a team, based on the team members' strengths and preferences to maximize ownership of the work. At the same time, accountability should be assigned for certain tasks to each team member to show the trust and belief in them to get the tasks accomplished. Team members' self-esteem would be built and pride would be developed in their performance to accomplish their accountable tasks.

Accountability and trust go hand in hand with each other. According to Auxilum, trust is a function of intimacy, credibility, and risk. When credibility is high and risk is low, the level of trust should be high. Intimacy affects trust in a way that team members trust each other b/c of familiarity with each other. In order to build such trust and accountability, ample amount of individual commitment is needed. The following list shows the problems that may arise from individual commitment requirements:

• unrealistic expectations
• overuse of the word "commitment"
• under-use of the word "commitment"
• unclear objectives
• poor communication (Surprised? Communication skills are key to a lot of activities in life, especially teamwork)
• a society that doesn't value commitment as much as tangible items

Teams can build the required commitment by using the word "commitment" but not overusing it, and by allowing people to commit to achievable goals. Team leaders can reduce their project management load by getting as many solid commitments to achievable tasks as possible. When this is done correctly, only the tasks that don't have commitments need to be "managed."

To conclude the guide, results should have been defined in the beginning, and measured during the team's lifetime (After all, it's all about getting results for the company to make profits). Measured results don't need to be tied directly to financial measures to be valuable. Teams should define important objectives related to team performance and track the results through the project lifecycle. Examples of measurable objectives (thanks to Auxilum again):

• No more than two hours average per week in meetings with entire project team
• Zero occurrences of management intervention to resolve interpersonal conflicts
• At least two hours per month on average in off-site activity
• 75% of project tasks backed by individual buy-in and personal commitment

Positive results should be celebrated for recognition. The more recognition that is given the more likely the employee will be to repeat the same performance. The team leader must also review or inspect the work. By reviewing the work, this shows the employees what are important enough to be checked on.

Here are two different personal stories that I would like to share with you that reflect these differences, based on the comparisons of what was (or was not) done:

• In one of the project teams, there was not a clearly assigned team leader from the beginning. As a result, most of the project development lifetime lacked coordination between each team member. Team morale dropped rather quickly, and internal deadlines are missed repeatedly. Commitment levels declined. Either team members dropped out in terms of participation and task completion, or for those who toughed out the storm, it was a rather frustrating experience. The deliverables failed to be completed in the end despite for the efforts for those members who maintained their commitments. Self-esteem was consistently low for the team members, and the atmosphere was rather negative.
• In another project team that I'm currently in, I was selected as the team leader. Despite not being too thrilled to accept the extra responsibilities as the team leader, I do have more leadership and technical experience this time around. The team bought into a lot of standards from the beginning, from agreeing on a team meeting time, task assignments, and level of commitment. Not to say my team is superiorly ahead of other teams, but everyone on the team has a positive attitude when accomplishing tasks. Milestones are being met a lot more consistently from other teams I've been with in the past b/c of clearly documented objectives (measureable outcome and deadline) in the task assignments. There has been a lot of healthy conflicts, which was handled with grace and common sense. The team members have complemented each other's strengths and weaknesses very well. For example, my team members take the time to plan out development strategies before implementing them, while I for the most part carry things out with too much haste at times to cost more time later fixing problems. Commitment levels from most team members have been generally healthy, despite being placed in the team based on cumulative GPA.