Accountability is a crucial part of the coworking environment. It's so important that we're going to devote an entire article to it!
What is personal accountability?
Personal accountability is the responsibility you have for your attitudes, behaviors and actions. When you take personal accountability, you recognize that it's up to you to make changes in these areas of your life. You don't expect others to change or fix things for you; instead, you take matters into your own hands and make the necessary adjustments.
How to practice self-accountability
As a self-accountable person, you:
Do what you say you will.
Are honest with yourself and others about your goals, plans and progress.
Stay focused on achieving results, not just doing tasks.
Learn from mistakes instead of hiding them or pretending they didn't happen (which is sometimes easier than making changes).
Ask for help when needed so that other people can support your efforts without being asked--and without feeling like they're being taken advantage of by the system or their peers.
Accountability in the coworking environment
For many people, working in a coworking space is the first time they've had to be accountable for their work. When your job is to do something well and then hand it off to someone else, you don't have any incentive to take ownership of the task yourself. The person who ultimately receives your work doesn't care how you arrived at it or what went into creating it—they just need results that meet their requirements.
Coworking changes all that by putting freelancers under one roof and forcing them to interact with each other on a regular basis. Accountability becomes an important part of coworking culture because coworkers are forced out of passivity and into action; if one person isn't doing their part, it has an impact on everyone else's productivity as well as the overall atmosphere in which they're trying to get things done (i.e., distraction).
How to hold others accountable
To hold others accountable, you first need to understand what accountability is.
Accountability isn't about punishing failure or rewarding success—it's about holding people accountable for their actions and ensuring that they are held responsible when something goes wrong.
This means constantly communicating clearly and often with the members of your team, setting clear expectations around what they should be doing, giving feedback when necessary and encouraging them to succeed. When things go wrong (and they will), it's up to you as a leader to take responsibility for fixing the problem so that others can learn from it without being punished or encouraged by external factors outside their control like luck or timing.
Getting started with accountability in your team
The best way to get started with accountability in your team is to start with a simple task. An easy first step is to track tasks on a spreadsheet and share it with the people you work with regularly. You can also use project management tools that help you assign tasks, collaborate on them, and schedule them as deadlines.
If you're using a chat tool like Slack or Discord, it's helpful to set up an accountability channel where you can check in regularly and keep each other accountable for what needs done each day.
Simple things like communication and keeping track of tasks can help you hold yourself and others accountable to doing their best work.
Communication is key.
Communication isn't just about talking, it's also about listening and understanding what the other person means. By communicating clearly with your colleagues and superiors you can get your point across without misunderstanding theirs. You may have to be flexible in order to make sure that everyone understands each other's opinions—but being open to different opinions can help you find creative solutions to problems that might otherwise go unresolved.
It’s easy to get bogged down in the details of our work, but we can make sure that those details don’t cause us to lose sight of what’s important. Self-accountability is an important part of working with others and being successful at it. By practicing self-accountability and holding others accountable, we can maintain a healthy work environment while still meeting our own goals.
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