If you could boil the secret to success down to one word, what would it be?
Based on my research and experience, that word is accountability. It’s the foundation of excellence and high performance in individuals and organizations. Think of any admirable person or organization, and you’ll find people taking ownership of their situation and focusing on what they can do to improve it.
Contrast that with people and organizations who don’t take accountability for their actions or the results they produce. You’ll find plenty of excuses, blaming and expecting someone else to solve problems.
If you create a culture of accountability, then excellence and high performance will follow.
Accountability Is Leadership Power
Leaders set the upper limit of accountability for their organization — no one will take accountability to a greater degree than their leader does. Leaders, therefore, hold the key to enhancing their organization’s culture. When they hold themselves to a higher standard of accountability, they set a powerful example and create a safe environment for others to follow suit.
Personal accountability can be boiled down to three simple behaviors which, as a training professional, you can incorporate into your leadership training programs. Each of these behaviors is simple to understand but hard to master because they all go against our basic psychological and, in some cases, biological wiring.
3 Habits of Personal Accountability
Habit 1: Don’t blame.
Blame is an organizational virus. When people are blamed, some shift responsibility onto others, while others retaliate in passive aggressive ways. Either way, blame spreads — and causes damage with every exchange.
Our brains interpret blame as a threat. It triggers the fight-or-flight response and shuts down the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for problem-solving. The irony of blaming others is that it actually disables the very part of their brain that could help fix the issue.
Blame destroys accountability. When people are blamed, they are more likely to:
- Stop taking initiative.
- Blame others.
- Expect someone else to fix problems.
- Reject feedback.
- Hide mistakes.
- Stop innovating.
- Defend themselves instead of solving problems.
Nobody will take accountability if they think they will be blamed for it. That’s why great leaders eliminate blame from their teams.
Case Study
A government research organization with 25 labs had one facility ranked in the bottom 10% for measurement accuracy. The chief chemist accepted the challenge to improve the lab on the condition of full autonomy.
He gathered the staff, explained the problem, and said, “If you make a mistake, you won’t be blamed. Instead, investigate why it happened so we can prevent it from happening again.” Errors were investigated, cataloged, corrected and shared.
Without fear of blame, staff treated debugging their work like a game. Within six months, the lab rose to the top 10% in the country. Even more rewarding than the results was the joy they found in their work and relationships.
The first step in eliminating blame is replacing “Whose fault is this?” with “Where did the process break down?” This question short-circuits the blame game and leads to sustainable solutions.
Habit 2: Look in the mirror.
Most of us are quick to spot others’ mistakes, but not how we may be contributing to the problem. Our biases protect our egos, often blinding us to our own role.
As a result, we tend to believe our problems are caused entirely by other people or bad circumstances. But that’s rarely the whole story. Since you’re one of the few constants in your life, your behavior influences most of your outcomes. Recognizing this is key to improving yourself, your work and your circumstances.
For example, when I delegate an assignment that doesn’t go well, my first thought is usually, “They messed up!” But once I look more closely, I often discover that:
- I wasn’t clear.
- I didn’t give a deadline.
- I didn’t explain the context.
- I didn’t follow up.
- I made the mistake myself.
To counter these blind spots, ask yourself: “How may I have contributed to this problem?” If you’re unsure, seek feedback on how to avoid it next time.
Case Study
The general manager of a construction company routinely blamed team members for problems during weekly team meetings. After learning the three habits of personal accountability, he tried a different approach. When discussing a problem from the previous week, he was tempted to call out the suspected culprit. Resisting the urge to blame, he acknowledged his role in the problem. This prompted several others, including the suspected culprit, to do the same. As a result, they quickly identified a solution and moved on.
When leaders acknowledge their part in problems first, they make it safe for others to do the same. And if nobody else follows suit, the leader has earned the moral authority to ask, “And how might you have contributed to this problem?”
Habit 3: Engineer the solution.
When bad things happen, our brains are hardwired to blame the person closest to the mess and ignore other causes. Fortunately, there’s a fix. It’s called “systems thinking” — noticing how environments and processes influence behavior.
Case Study
Systems thinking emerged near the end of World War II when the US Air Force noticed many planes were crashing without mechanical issues. Their conclusion? “Our pilots are idiots!”
However, upon investigation, they discovered the problem was really a poorly designed cockpit. Pilots confused controls that looked the same or were placed next to each other. The fix? Simplify cockpit design. The result: fewer crashes.
Humans make mistakes. When they do, we can:
- Blame the person closest to the mess and tell them to be more careful, or
- Change the process to reduce the opportunity for human error.
As mentioned earlier, the way to adopt a systems mindset is to get in the habit of asking “Where did the process break down?” when you encounter a problem.
Be the Leader You Wish You Had
Anyone in a leadership position can leverage the power of the three habits of personal accountability to produce better results and improve the way their team members feel about their work. However, these habits work much better when everyone in the organization has learned them and when executives and managers are committed to living them. This is not a pipe dream — many organizations have already done it.
