Business team coaching often requires coaches to work with individuals on a particular team and to help them improve their own personal skills while also helping them improve within the framework of a team.

What is a Key Accountability?

Key accountabilities are critical factors and drivers for success in a job or task. The accountabilities of a job are not the same as a job description.

Key accountabilities are the reasons why a client has a job or the reasons they are part of a team (or manage a team), and why the team even exists. If they don’t know and understand these reasons, it will be quite difficult to make that team efficient and productive. Helping clients in your business team coaching practice understand key accountabilities is the foundation for your work with clients and for any improvement that may occur.

So, what is a key accountability?

• One critical reason a job exists. Without this key accountability, the job wouldn’t exist or the job would lack any real purpose.
• A result that is critical to performing a job well, and to the efficient functioning of a team and the health of a business.
• A result for which the client (or team member) is responsible.

These three key accountabilities are critical to the existence of a team and to the existence of the jobs within that team. Whether you are identifying goals, setting goals, creating a road map to reach those goals, or seeking other positive outcomes, understanding key accountabilities is crucial.

Two Types of Accountabilities

The goal of your business team coaching sessions is to produce outcomes that clients are seeking. To reach goals, it is important to have a basic understanding of the key accountabilities for a specific job, and to help your clients be able to identify these accountabilities and break them down for each job for which they are responsible – team leaders would need to understand key accountabilities for each job within the team while individual team members would need to focus on their own job or task.

The two types of accountabilities are:

• Produce a Positive result. Examples of these would be providing a specific service, manufacturing help for a certain product, or specific sales of a product line.
• Reduce a negative result. Examples of this might be reducing accidents in a manufacturing plant, reducing down time on an assembly line, eliminating mistakes, reducing the number of unhappy customers, or cutting back on the number of refunds requested.

Focus on Focus in Business Team Coaching

As a business team coach, one of the most important things you can do that will help produce positive outcomes is to bring clarity and focus to the underlying reason that a job exists. You can work with clients to build a framework and lay the groundwork for defining and supporting skills, behaviors, motivators, and rewards that will bring about successful understanding and achievement of the position’s key accountabilities.

If you can do this for your clients, whether they are team members or team leaders, you will build a successful business team coaching practice.

Give this strategy a try and see for yourself that it works. If you liked this coaching tip, leave a comment or use the handy bookmark buttons below to share it with others on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. Thanks!

Fred Philips
Business Coach
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