Here are a few ideas for you to increase your personal accountability, the trust others place in you, and the overall arch of your path to success in whatever you choose to do.
Becoming More Accountable
Ideas to Increase Your Personal Accountability
• Setting realistic timeframes to get things done, and then meeting the target shows others your dedication and follow-through.
• Whenever a deadline is in danger of being broken, let the people you answer to know about it in advance so a new schedule can be worked out.
• If you tell the people who are depending on you that you have missed a deadline when it is due or afterward, you lose their trust and your reputation of dependability.
• Make sure you stay on track from beginning to end.
• Remember that setbacks commonly occur in almost everything. Be the one who takes the lead in seeing that they’re resolved.
• Knowing who you’re accountable to and who they’re accountable to will help you to understand that missing a deadline or a goal makes you, your team, and your managers look bad all the way up the chain of command to the top authority involved.
• Your own successes reflect up the chain so when you look good, everyone looks good.
• Your successful management of employees or projects also makes everyone who might answer to you also look good.
• Offer to lend a helping hand and ask for approval or direction from the person in charge; then take action. Then you’ll find your reputation improves, even if a matter doesn’t directly involve you.
• If you’re able to be of service, be of service!
• Make your work look good, be accurate, and as polished be as possible before it reaches others.
• Make sure written communications or reports are accurate and have no misspellings. It’s also wise to set aside additional time before proofing them again to make sure you catch errors you might otherwise have missed with your initial review. We often catch errors when you walk away for a while and come back later to review because our brains often see what we think we wrote and not what is actually in the presentation or document.
• Have other trusted people review your work—they can catch mistakes or offer suggestions that clarify what you intend to say before your superiors see your work.