You are holding your weekly team leadership meeting. You are discussing with your direct reports how to handle the project delays that have caused the team to miss its quarterly numbers. You know that Ted — one of your direct reports — contributed to missing the numbers by missing two key deadlines. You’ve seen this kind of behavior before from Ted, and you’ve seen the team’s frustration with Ted. You decide to not say anything to Ted in the meeting, but afterward you privately tell him that how he’s letting you and the team down.

If you’re like most leaders, you believe in the adage “praise in public and criticize in private.” So when a team member does something that negatively affects the team, you usually talk to the team member in private. But this can be a dangerous adage to follow because it significantly reduces accountability, the quality of team decisions, and your team’s ability to manage itself. As Richard Hackman said reflecting on his research, “[T]he most powerful thing a leader can do to foster effective collaboration is to create conditions that help members competently manage themselves.” Here’s why criticizing in private undermines your team, and what you can do to build a smarter team starting today.

Is your leadership team a real team — one in which members are interdependent with each other for meeting team goals? If so, they should also be accountable to each other for working together to achieve those goals, including how they rely on, work with, and make decisions together. Yet when you “criticize in private” for behavior that occurred in a team meeting or affects the team, you undermine team members’ accountability to each other. You send the message that team members are accountable only to you, not to the team. You also send the entire team the message that they don’t need to hold each other accountable — you’ll do it for them. In short, you shift accountability from the team to you.

You also make it more difficult to solve the problem. If you tell Ted his missing deadlines contributed to the team missing its goals, you and Ted may reach an agreement on how he will change his behavior, and that may inadvertently create new problems for other team members. Or Ted may tell you that other team members made it difficult for him to meet his deadlines, that it’s not his fault; at that point, you’re likely to become a human ping-pong ball, shuttling back and forth between Ted and other team members trying to understand the problem. The information to solve this problem lies with Ted and the other team members.

Why do leaders unwittingly shift team accountability to themselves? First, they’ve been taught correctly that they’re ultimately responsible for the team. Yet they misconstrue this ultimate responsibility and adopt a “one-leader-in-the-room” mindset; they believe that they are primarily, if not solely, accountable for how the team functions, including providing negative feedback to their direct reports. Second, research by Chris Argyris and Don Schön and my 30 years working with leadership teams shows that in challenging situations almost all leaders try to minimize the expression of negative feelings: If it’s difficult for you to give negative feedback, you prefer to do it in private than in the team setting.

Leadership isn’t about being comfortable; it’s about being effective, even when you’re uncomfortable. Smart leaders address ineffective team member behavior in the team setting when it occurs, or when the behavior affects the team. In the team: that’s where the information, solution, and accountability are.

In the case of Ted, you could start by saying something like, “I’m noticing two patterns in our meetings. First, Ted, this looks like the third time in a month where you haven’t met a deadline for the team. Am I off? [Assuming Ted agrees, you continue.] The second pattern is that each time Ted says he hasn’t met a deadline, I notice the rest of you — Fran, Alex, and Sheryl — sigh or shake your head, but you don’t say anything to Ted. Am I on target? [Assuming people agree, you continue.] Since these meetings are the place for solving problems and the team can’t meet its deadlines if Ted doesn’t meet his, I’m curious, what leads you not to say something to Ted in the meetings?

If you want to create a more effective team, you and your direct reports will need to change how you handle accountability. Here’s what you can do, starting today: