Accountability is a Two-Way Street

Accountability can mean different things to different people, depending on the culture and environment in which they work.

When an organisation says it wants greater accountability, what does that actually mean?

Does it mean encouraging people to take greater ownership of their responsibilities, decisions and actions?

Or does it mean identifying who will be held responsible when something goes wrong?

The distinction matters.

Where trust already exists, a conversation about accountability can be an opportunity to examine what happened, recognise individual and collective responsibility, learn from it and decide what needs to happen next.

But where trust has already been undermined, the same conversation feels very different.

“Who is accountable?” can very quickly be heard as “Who is to blame?”

Providing the support to take accountability

Before establishing a culture of accountability, organisations need to consider whether they are providing enough support to allow that accountability to take place.

Someone can be promoted into a management role and immediately be expected to take on greater responsibility and accountability. But being capable in one role does not automatically prepare somebody for the responsibilities of managing others.

They may suddenly find themselves expected to manage performance, have difficult conversations, support development, make decisions affecting other people and take responsibility for outcomes beyond their own work.

But have they been given the tools and support they need to do that role to the fullest of their ability?

Management training can provide knowledge. Guidance can explain policies, processes and expectations. Both are valuable preparation.

But knowing what good management looks like and developing the judgement and confidence to practise it are not the same thing.

The first difficult conversation will not necessarily follow the example used during training. A performance problem may involve circumstances they have never encountered before. They may need to make a decision where several legitimate considerations compete with one another and there is no obvious answer.

That development takes place through experience — and experience inevitably includes situations that do not go entirely to plan.

What support do we provide while they are learning how to carry that accountability?

A buddy system during the first few months can provide an important safety net, whether somebody is becoming a manager for the first time or moving into an unfamiliar area. Having a dedicated person they can approach gives them somewhere to talk openly, test their thinking and ask for advice without feeling that doing so calls their capability into question.

It should not mean somebody else making their decisions for them or remove their responsibility for the choices they ultimately make. The purpose of the safety net is to help them develop the confidence and judgement to make those decisions for themselves.

If managers learn that asking questions is viewed as a sign of weakness, how long before they become reluctant to ask them? And what happens to the quality of their decisions when they begin relying solely on their own thinking rather than drawing on the knowledge, experience and perspectives of others?

The willingness to ask questions when unsure of the direction to take should be celebrated as a strength, rather than viewed as a weakness.

Seeking support does not diminish accountability. Recognising the limits of our own knowledge and drawing on other perspectives is part of taking accountability for the quality of our decisions.

What does accountability look like in practice?

Accountability should not become visible only when something goes wrong.

It is present in the decisions we make, the commitments we follow through on, the concerns we raise and our willingness to explain the reasoning behind our choices. It also means recognising our own contribution to an outcome, acknowledging uncertainty, asking for support and being prepared to change direction when new information tells us the original decision is no longer the right one.

Accountability therefore starts long before an outcome is known.

A leader taking genuine ownership of their responsibilities needs to remain aware of what is happening rather than waiting until a problem leaves them no choice but to react. That means observing what is happening, reflecting on what those observations are telling them, challenging their assumptions and considering whether action is needed.

Not every problem can be predicted or prevented. Circumstances change, new information emerges and sound decisions can still produce unexpected outcomes.

But there is a difference between being taken by surprise because something could not reasonably have been anticipated and being taken by surprise because the signs were there but nobody was looking for them.

On balance, it is usually far easier to prevent a situation from escalating than to deal with the aftermath once it has.

Being proactive does not mean intervening at every sign of potential difficulty. Sometimes, having observed what is happening and considered the available information, the appropriate decision will be to continue to monitor the situation.

The difference is that doing nothing has become a considered decision rather than the result of failing to notice.

When something does go wrong

When something does go wrong, does the leader step back, hold their hands in the air and immediately declare, “This wasn't my fault”?

Or do they take ownership of understanding and resolving what has happened?

A leader may not have caused the problem. But if it now sits within their area of responsibility, they can still investigate the circumstances, consider the perspectives of those involved and take ownership of what happens next.

The immediate question should not always be “Whose fault is this?” Sometimes it needs to be “What needs to happen now?”

Once the immediate situation has been addressed, the focus can move to understanding what happened and what can be learned from it.

A Lessons Learned conversation can explore what information was available at the time, what decisions were made and why, what worked, what did not, and what could be done differently if a similar situation arose again.

Crucially, that conversation should include the leader's own actions and decisions.

If accountability is expected from the team but the leader's contribution remains outside the examination, the exercise risks becoming something very different from learning.

The question is not simply “Who got this wrong?” but “What can we understand from what happened, and what will we do differently because of it?”

When the leader got it wrong

But what happens when part of the answer points back at the leader?

How a leader behaves when their own actions or decisions have contributed to a situation has a direct impact on how their team responds to them.

If a leader is quick to take credit for the team's successes but reluctant to accept responsibility when something goes wrong, cohesion can begin to erode. Engagement can fall. People can become less willing to contribute openly or take ownership themselves. In some circumstances, team members may feel they have little choice but to go above their leader's head to get something resolved or correct an account of events they believe does not reflect what happened.

At that point, the original problem is no longer the only problem.

The leader's response to it has created another one.

Taking accountability when you recognise that your own decision or behaviour contributed to an outcome does not require lengthy explanations or attempts to justify what happened.

Sometimes it begins with something much simpler:

“I got that wrong, but I am taking steps to learn from what happened.”

An apology can be important, but “sorry” on its own does not demonstrate accountability.

There needs to be an acknowledgement of how and why the person's own actions or behaviours contributed to what happened, alongside an understanding of the impact those actions had on others.

And then comes the part that gives the apology meaning: what are they going to do differently?

Without a subsequent change in behaviour, “sorry” can become little more than a word used to draw a line under an uncomfortable situation.

Looking beyond your own part

I can think of an occasion when my Operations Manager told me that another Team Manager was experiencing difficulties with their team and asked whether I could recommend somebody from my own team to transfer across and provide additional support.

I recommended one of my strongest team members. They were mature, proactive and naturally supportive of others. Within my team, they had become almost an unofficial deputy, and I believed those qualities made them ideally suited to helping a team that was struggling.

It didn't work.

The behaviours I saw as supportive and proactive were interpreted by their new manager as undermining their authority. When my team member contacted me to explain what was happening, I discovered that their new manager had also been raising concerns about them with our Operations Manager.

That conversation gave me an opportunity to act before the situation escalated further. I suggested approaching the other manager and offering to take my team member back because the working relationship clearly wasn't succeeding. They readily agreed and my team member returned to my team.

Initially, I thought my mistake had been recommending somebody without sufficiently understanding the environment I was sending them into. And I still take accountability for that.

But further reflection made me question the original premise of the decision.

The problem we were trying to address was that a Team Manager was struggling with their team. Moving a strong performer from another team into that environment did not address why they were struggling.

I also had to recognise something about my own behaviour at the time. I was very keen to be a “good Company person”. I had a tendency to say yes when I was asked to help and, on this occasion, I concentrated on how I could fulfil the request rather than whether I should challenge it.

I shouldn't simply have answered the question I was asked — “Who can I send?”

I should have challenged the premise behind it:

“Why does this manager need one of my people, and what problem are we actually trying to solve?”

When something isn't working, using the most immediately available intervention can be tempting. But before deciding what to change, we first need to understand what is causing the difficulty. Otherwise, we risk addressing the symptom rather than the cause.

My team member had effectively become a quick fix for a problem they had not created and could not reasonably have been expected to resolve.

And there was another question I had not asked: what support did the manager who was struggling actually need?

Taking accountability for my own decision does not require me to accept responsibility for every decision that contributed to the outcome.

It requires me to understand where my responsibility begins and ends, while still being willing to examine the wider circumstances that allowed the situation to develop.

Accountability is not about finding one person to carry the blame. Sometimes several people need to be willing to examine the part they played.

What happens when somebody takes accountability?

If an organisation wants people to take accountability, how it responds when they do matters.

When a leader or team member acknowledges their part in something that has gone wrong, does the organisation examine the circumstances that contributed to it and consider whether additional support is needed?

Does it consider whether anything needs to change to prevent a similar situation in future? If prevention is not possible, could the likelihood of recurrence be reduced, or measures put in place to mitigate the impact?

Or does the organisation immediately enter the blame game?

There can, of course, be circumstances where someone's actions require consequences. Accountability should not mean that poor decisions, inappropriate behaviour or serious failures are simply excused in the name of learning.

But there is a difference between holding somebody accountable for what happened and creating conditions in which admitting what happened feels unsafe.

Having policies and procedures designed to guard against a blame culture is not enough if they are not followed in spirit as well as in process.

If the starting point when something goes wrong is still “Who is to blame for this?” rather than “What happened, why did it happen and what can we learn from it?”, the existence of a procedure alone will not create a culture of accountability.

People learn from what they experience.

If acknowledging a mistake results primarily in blame, embarrassment or damage to somebody's reputation, others will notice.

An organisation's response has a strong impact on whether people are willing to take accountability in the future. It teaches everyone watching what the consequences of doing so can be.

Accountability throughout the organisation

Ultimately, accountability needs to be demonstrated throughout an organisation, starting at the top. Leaders at every level need to take responsibility for their own behaviours and decisions, for the support they provide to others, and for how they respond when somebody acknowledges that something has gone wrong.

Accountability cannot simply be something we expect from the people below us. It needs to be something we demonstrate to them.