Establishing Your Self-Accountability Loop
Entering into a new organization, either as a seasoned leader or stepping into a leadership position for the first time, can be a daunting task. Not only is the organization and culture unknown to you, but you are unknown to the people that are being ushered into change whether they were looking for it or not. When I stepped into a newly created role at Indian Hills Camp, the only thing I really knew was that I didn’t know nearly enough and needed to learn it quickly. One of the ways I did that was to clearly mark out for myself some lanes that I needed to hold myself accountable to travel in as I efforted to make myself known to the staff and establish culture.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of different things happening at the same time when you enter an organization as an apex leader, either of a division, team, or the whole operation. Not the least of which is just learning everyone’s name and what they are supposed to be doing and what they are actually doing. So while I built myself some 30/60/90 goals and instituted a few simple culture nuggets, I focused on establishing what I would spend my time on and how that would be modeled. This was based on a comfortable understanding of my experience, skills, and tools to best serve the current and future needs of the organization. The simple bullet points became my self-accountability loop.
I determined that to help guide the people, programs, and processes forward into the future of ministry, I needed to make sure I focused my efforts on 7 main steps. As I lay them out, a quick disclaimer: this process is what I determined was needed in this season of time for this specific ministry and in my specific entry point. This was not my focus in my previous role and probably will not be what I focus my energies on forever at IHC. The point of sharing them is to encourage you to identify what are the things that only you can do to allow others to develop and shine. So, here is the process I am holding myself accountable to.
1. SET THE PLAN - what is our purpose, how will we do it, why does it matter
2. CLARIFY THE ROLES - how are we structured, who has ownership over what, and how do we serve across our job descriptions
3. COMMUNICATE THE EXPECTATION - what is at stake, what are you accountable to, what is the delineation of learning versus making mistakes
4. SUPPORT THE LEADERS - invest in the people, supply the tools needed, honor their previous and current contributions
5. DELEGATE THE IMPLEMENTATION - I needed to stay out of the doing and focus on supporting and building trust among teammates
6 CELEBRATE THE COMPLETION - highlight even the menial and easy-to-overlook wins of culture, and let momentum snowball
7. CORRECT THE COURSE - allow for the latitude of learning as I learned what the inherited culture, environment, and outputs were
So, could you take these and use them yourself? Sure, I would offer there are worse tools to implement. But, I would encourage you to build your own self-accountability loop that maximizes your service to the people that you lead and the purpose of your mission.
