Leadership
How Accountable Teams Drive Performance in Challenging Times
The future of work is changing, and new rules are being written before our very eyes.
Teams are more important now than ever before, but many of them are struggling to step up and drive high performance when it matters most.
Creating a Culture of Accountability
Today’s infographic from the bestselling author Dr. Vince Molinaro demonstrates how leaders can create an environment where truly accountable teams can flourish, and employees are inspired to do their best work.
>> Download Dr.Vince Molinaro’s How to Build an Accountable Team
Accountable Leaders Build Accountable Teams
Weak, mediocre teams demonstrate behaviors that can breed a toxic work environment, such as working in isolation or not demonstrating trust among other team members.
In order to combat mediocre teams, leaders must create a culture of accountability in their organization where individuals can step up and be accountable.
“No group ever becomes a team until they can hold themselves accountable as a team.”
—The Discipline of Teams, Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith
When teams take full responsibility for their actions, they manage most issues themselves rather than looking to leadership to solve problems.
Overall, accountable teams demonstrate two critical dimensions: team clarity and team commitment.
1. Team Clarity
Accountable teams should have full clarity about the business they operate in by having the ability to:
- Anticipate external trends both in and outside of their industry.
- Have clarity on the strategy and purpose of their organization.
- Understand the expectations of their stakeholders and the interdependencies that exist with other parts of the company.
- Know what needs to get done and how it needs to be done.
2. Team Commitment
Accountable teams also demonstrate a high degree of commitment needed to deliver results. They do so in the following ways:
- Have a deep sense of commitment to driving success.
- Invest time in working across the organization.
- Work to make their team as strong as it can be.
- Show a deep commitment to one another.
As a leader, these two dimensions are invaluable as a way of thinking about driving mutual accountability and sustaining high performance for their organization over the long-term.
Accountable Teams Drive Extraordinary Performance
Leaders who invest in leveling up their team and promote a culture of accountability can experience transformational benefits, such as:
- Everyone is clear and aligned on what needs to get done.
- Each team member is accountable, pulls their weight, and goes to great lengths to support one another.
- Everyone feels safe challenging one another and confronting issues head-on without fear.
- Team members leverage the unique capabilities of others.
- Everyone works hard but also manages to have fun and celebrate success.
These benefits translate to strong results within organizations. In fact, research shows that high- performing companies have more accountable teams compared to average or poorly performing companies.
The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of its Parts
Whether it’s an executive team, a departmental team, a cross-functional team, or even a team made up of external partners, organizations have become increasingly reliant on teams to achieve success and guide them through uncertainty.
Given the importance of teams in today’s ever-changing world, it is clear we need to increase our efforts when it comes to building truly accountable teams.
As a leader, you are being counted on to demonstrate accountability and create high-performing teams. Are you stepping up?
Business
Who Are America’s Most Popular CEOs?
Social network Blind polled 13,000+ respondents on whether they approved or disapproved of the way their CEO handled the job, generating the approval rating of more than 100 CEOs.
Who Are America’s Most Popular CEOs?
What do the employees at America’s largest companies think of the leadership?
To answer that, we visualize CEO approval ratings gathered by professional social network Blind.
The results are based on a survey of 13,171 verified professionals in the U.S., conducted between August 18th–23rd, 2023. Respondents were asked if they approve or disapprove of the way their CEO is handling their job.
Top 10 Popular CEOs By Their Employees’ Approval Ratings
By far, the most popular CEO right now (according to Blind’s respondents anyway) is Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, with an astonishing 96% approval rating.
Huang’s numbers point to a theme in the data. Blind notes that there is a correlation between company stock performance and CEO approval rating. Nvidia’s critical role in the artificial intelligence hype train has sent shares up nearly 3x year-on-year. Their financials for the last three quarters show that profit is already up more than four-fold from last year.
Crucially, Huang also avoided layoffs that were otherwise rampant in the tech industry, helping his popularity amongst the staff.
Here are the top 10 most popular CEOs according to Blind’s poll.
Rank | Company | CEO | Approve (%) |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Nvidia | Jensen Huang | 96% |
2 | Walmart | Doug McMillon | 88% |
3 | Palo Alto Networks | Nikesh Arora | 84% |
4 | Apple | Tim Cook | 83% |
5 | Databricks | Ali Ghodsi | 83% |
6 | Autodesk | Andrew Anagnost | 82% |
7 | ServiceNow | Bill McDermott | 81% |
8 | Anduril Industries | Brian Schimpf | 79% |
9 | AMD | Lisa Su | 79% |
10 | Visa | Ryan Mclnerney | 79% |
In fact, the Blind survey uncovered that all of the 10 most popular CEOs, with the exception of Andrew Anag from AutoDesk, did not cut jobs in the last year.
The opposite is true for some of the lowest-rated CEOs.
The Least Popular CEOs By Employee Approval Ratings
Eric Nordstrom (Nordstrom) and David Goeckeler (Western Digital) shared the lowest approval rating possible in the poll: 0%. From Blind’s methodology section, this means not a single surveyed employee answered “strongly approve” or “somewhat approve” to the question.
Both companies cut nearly 200 jobs in 2023, with Nordstrom also responsible for the job losses amongst the company’s wage workers, who staffed the many retail stores the company shuttered.
Here’s the top 10 least popular CEOs according to Blind’s poll.
Rank | Company | CEO | Approve (%) |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Nordstrom | Erik Nordstrom | 0% |
2 | Western Digital | David Goeckeler | 0% |
3 | Unity Technologies | John Riccitiello | 2% |
4 | Illumina | Francis deSouza | 3% |
5 | Snap | Evan Spiegel | 3% |
6 | Alteryx | Mark Anderson | 3% |
7 | X (formerly Twitter) | Linda Yaccarino | 4% |
8 | Nextdoor | Sarah Friar | 4% |
9 | Compass | Robert Reffkin | 5% |
10 | AT&T | John Stankey | 6% |
Also featuring on this list of least-liked CEOs: Evan Spiegel (3%), who reduced Snap’s workforce by a fifth and Linda Yaccarino (4%), who heads X (formerly Twitter) that has been in turmoil since Elon Musk acquired the company in October, 2022.
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