Fostering Accountability

Evelyn Lim, my friend at Attraction Mind Map, posed an excellent question in a comment on my last post entitled “A Great Perspective on Accountability”.

In case you missed it, I’ve pasted the comment, followed by my response, below.

At the risk of regurgitating stuff you’ve already read, I think this point is so relevant, and so important, that it needs to be emphasized over and over again.

Evelyn’s question gets right to the heart of the matter of learning how to foster accountability in an organization, and it points to a common misconception endorsed by many businesses, and many business philosophies.

Evelyn: Enjoyed the snippets that you posted. Many organizations tie sales commission and bonuses to their payouts to employees to make them more accountable and responsible as well. Do you think this is a good way?

Me: Thanks for your comment! I think sales commissions and bonuses are a great way to reward people for being accountable, but as a strategy for creating accountability, or creating a culture of accountability, these tactics fall short.

True accountability can’t be “bought”. It has to occur to employees as an opportunity to demonstrate their strengths and abilities by holding a degree of ownership. It has to occur as an opportunity to be someone who has a say in how things go.

In other words, in order for the reward system to work, accountability has to be there already! The reward is a way of acknowledging someone’s willingness to choose to be accountable.

Accountability is something of pivotal value to business and society, but when it comes to creating a culture of accountability in an organization, or fostering accountability in the people you lead, it’s easy to overlook the fact that true accountability must be chosen, or developed from within, and cannot be imposed.

One of the reasons for this misconception is that many people try to assign accountability in order to indicate fault. In other words, something terrible or disappointing has happened, and we want to know who’s to blame, or who can be held to account for whatever happened. This relationship to accountability, while indeed serving a purpose, is very superficial.

In order to foster accountability in the people you lead, you have to appeal to their desire to hold ownership or authority. Accountability doesn’t come from beating someone over the head after they screw up - it comes from appealing to their commitment to contribute, to grow, to provide leadership, and to be someone of substance who has something to say about how things go.

In this context, when people are held to account, it actually helps connect them to their personal sense of commitment, reigniting their desire to be successful.

That’s why sales commissions and bonuses are an effective way of acknowledging and rewarding accountability, but not creating it. Commissions and bonuses are insufficient to reach the underlying drivers that compel people to choose to be accountable.

When it comes to fostering accountability, rather than asking “who’s to blame”, a better question to ask is “who do you want to be?”

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