When your people aren’t accountable
Many of the leaders we work with — directors, VPs, even front-line managers — ask about how to hold their teams accountable. We hear things like “I feel like I'm constantly chasing people down for updates. Why can't they just follow through?” or “No one takes ownership. Everyone just waits for me to step in and tell them what to do.” or “People seem busy but I don’t see real progress on the most important work.”
When they come to us with this, they’re at a critical moment. A moment when someone, or the whole team, hasn’t done what they expect. And when they ask “how can I hold them accountable” they’re asking “how do I give consequences for this so that they improve?” But the reality is, the moment for consequences is the last step of building a culture of accountability. And really, it’s only part of the last step. Because consequences don’t just mean negative consequences.
A culture of accountability is where everyone takes responsibility for their actions, their performance, and the business outcomes. People demonstrate both agency, and urgency, acting proactively and following through on commitments. If they can’t, they proactively restore and repair by acknowledging the situation, apologizing, and communicating next steps or asking for help.
So if consequences are the last part, what comes before? Accountability starts with leaders. Not just telling people what to do, which is like a “parent-child” dynamic, but creating the conditions for a supportive collaboration that enables people to successfully meet commitments and goals. We’ve found there are 6 conditions that foster accountability:
Trust
Transparency
Feedback welcomed
Defined goals
Clear expectations
Consequences-done-right
As a team’s leader, when you feel a need for negative consequences, it's more likely than not that there is some part of the environment you should also take accountability for. So let’s break it down.
1. TRUST
Trust is foundational to accountability. Without a sense of safety and stability, people feel afraid, which leads to finger-pointing or hiding mistakes – the opposite of accountability.
Be trustworthy. We really love the Trust Equation from Trusted Advisors for evaluating what your level of trust is with people on your team. What do you do to contribute to credibility, reliability, and intimacy with your team members? And how much do you show that you have their best interests at heart? Does your team know that you’ve got their backs?
Be trusting. Pay attention to how you behave when things fail, when there are setbacks and when results aren't happening rapidly. If you're focused on your frustration rather than finding ways to encourage sustained momentum, you might be unintentionally undermining trust. Focus on pulling together as a team: ask questions like “How can I help you?” And then actually help!
Read more about building trust.
2. TRANSPARENCY
People tend to be afraid of what they don’t know, which will undermine their ability to confidently take action, a key to accountability. Having information – policies, decisions, progress on goals, and potential challenges or roadblocks – accessible to those who need it, when they need it, allows them to feel more confident in the choices they make.
Keep people in the loop. It's easy to forget that so-and-so needs to know about the thing you just spoke about with someone else. But people need to know about anything that affects their work. Give yourself an agenda item after each conversation:"Who else needs to know about this?”
Say it in many ways. Just because you said it or shared it doesn’t mean it was understood or agreed with, or that it’s clear what action to take. If people aren’t complaining that you’re repeating yourself, then you probably don’t communicate it enough. Use multiple channels – written documents, in person conversations, Q&A sessions. Meet people where they can engage best.
Encourage and engage with questions. It’s tempting to want people to take your word – you’re the leader after all. But encouraging dialogue, and giving frank and honest answers, will demonstrate that proactivity and ideas are encouraged. Where possible prefer group communication over multiple 1:1s; that way people know others have the same information and benefit from hearing others asking questions.
3. FEEDBACK WELCOMED
People at all levels of the organization need to be comfortable with giving and receiving frequent feedback. Without feedback, you get silent disagreement, passivity, lack of ownership, and protectionism.
Assess your feedback environment. Asking people to give feedback is not enough. Are there easy mechanisms for giving feedback and clear expectations about how and when to do it? Do you explicitly role model giving and seeking feedback? One simple way of encouraging feedback: publicly acknowledge at a team meeting when feedback changes the way you approach something. Read more about building a feedback culture.
Accept criticism well. Our first instinct is often to explain ourselves, but that actually discourages others from giving feedback. We love this feedback staircase to help you think about how you are receiving feedback from others. Denying or defending yourself definitely doesn’t encourage others to give feedback, but explaining is also not enough. You need to seek to genuinely understand and empathize with the other person’s point of view, and then actually do something about it or help them understand why you can’t or won’t.
4. DEFINED GOALS
It’s well established: people are more likely to adopt personal accountability if they know their own goals AND can envision how their actions help contribute to the organization's overall success.
Set specific goals. A vision and words are not enough – there’s a reason people talk about SMART goals and OKRs. Whatever you use, you need specific goals for yourself, your team, and the organization. They should be tied as directly as possible to strategic or operational needs. And they should be outcome-focused, not purely deliverable-based.
Practice collaborative goal setting. Instead of cascading goals through the org, increase buy-in and inspire personal accountability by setting goals with teams. Catchball is a technique used in the Lean community that describes how goal alignment should be like tossing a ball back-and-forth with every team – both within reporting lines and across teams – not just a top-down announcement of goals. Doing a few rounds of this increases the odds of well-aligned and agreed goals at all levels.
5. CLEAR EXPECTATIONS
Expectations help people understand the boundaries of their work and allow them to proactively manage the edges of them – to do enough to achieve the goal, or know when to collaborate, or when to ask for support.
Clear ownership and role definition. Leaders often focus on defining skill and impact expectations, but clear behavioral expectations are just as – if not more! — important. It’s easy to assume others will approach work the way you do, but without explicit guidance, they may not. If you expect them to attempt problem-solving before escalating issues, say so. If they need to own the weekly meeting and ensure alignment, make that clear. If you want them to navigate ambiguity and proactively propose solutions, spell it out. Clarity prevents misalignment and empowers ownership.
Facilitate conversations. Expectations don’t only come from the leader, and a RACI/DACI emailed around and never looked at is not enough. They must be set collaboratively and revisited as teams, roles, and contexts evolve. Everyone brings different experiences and working styles, so open conversations help surface assumptions: Who owns which tasks? How are decisions made? Who provides guidance? Making these explicit ensures alignment and shared understanding.
6. CONSEQUENCES DONE RIGHT
Finally, there are consequences. People tend to associate consequences with some kind of punishment. But with accountability, consequences are about maintaining or improving future outcomes. This needs to happen regularly and frequently – through recognition, through coaching conversations, and yes, sometimes through tough decisions or adjustments to roles or employment.
What gets recognized gets repeated. It’s all too easy to see the gaps and forget to celebrate. Appreciate people (tell them) when you see them being proactive. And then make sure others also see accountability resulting in positive feedback. It can also be useful to include accountability in career frameworks so that people have to show it in order to get promoted.
Constructive feedback and coaching. Don’t stop at feedback, help people understand the impact – why did their actions (or lack of actions) matter? Seek to understand their intent and whether expectations were clear to them. Tools like Situational Leadership1, Grenny’s 6 Sources of Influence2, and Marquet’s Ladder of Leadership3 can support you. Using these will also help you know that you have done all you can to encourage accountability, and decide that it might be time to let them go.
It starts with you!
The good news is that it starts with you. In fact it has to. People recognize lack of accountability when they experience it. So you can’t expect it from your organization until you’ve put in the work yourself!
If you need help to diagnose accountability problems, reach out. We are happy to help!
What’s excited us this Q
Our first ever F&E company retreat. (Yes, it’s still a retreat with only 2 of us.) We spent it in Tasmania, Australia, where we swam, hiked, cultured, and turned our hopes and fears into plans for 2025.
Preparing to kick off some in-house Leadership Learning Labs again this year.
We’ve kicked off our coaching scholarships! We love to bring coaching to those that might not otherwise even consider it.
What’s pushed our thinking this Q
We’ve found hope in Indivisible’s Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink, and Jessica Craven’s Chop Wood, Carry Water. Both have been better places to focus our energy than the torrent of the news cycle.
You have many lifetimes. Use them.
Uncertainty as a source of growth and self-discovery. Ann-Laure Le Cunff at SXSW EDU.
Situational Leadership comes from The Center for Leadership Studies.
The 6 Sources of Influence model comes from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, by Joseph Grenny, et al.
The Ladder of Leadership was created by L. David Marquet and Stephen Covey.