In the last few months, I’ve had the privilege of coaching some brilliant leaders and facilitating deep work with their teams. Across sectors, roles, and leadership styles, one challenge keeps surfacing:
Accountability. Or more precisely, the lack of it.
Leaders are telling me they want to see more ownership, more initiative, more stepping up from their people. And when we dive into it, it’s clear that this isn’t just about individual behaviour – it’s cultural.
So, what does a culture of accountability actually look like?
We’ve been exploring this in sessions by posing some simple but revealing questions:
- If accountability is a core value here, what would we actually see each other doing?
- What would we start doing as a team?
- What rituals, processes, or systems could we put in place to reinforce it?
If I jump up ‘on the balcony’ for a moment though, what I’m most curious about is what might be driving this lack of accountability in the first place.
One senior leader hit the nail on the head recently when they reported on some conversations they’d been having:
“I’m starting to wonder if there’s a link between this culture of waiting to be told what to do and a lack of accountability”
Bingo!
To my way of thinking, if people are waiting to be told what to do, it’s often because
a) there’s a perceived risk in getting something wrong or
b) they’re used to having leaders who prefer to tell their people what to do -possibly because of style or again, because of the perceived risk. Either way it becomes a cultural norm for the business or team.
The Leadership Circle Profile I use with leaders shows us clearly – leaders who default to a controlling or autocratic style often create environments where people stop thinking for themselves. They wait. They comply. They focus on doing only what’s asked of them. Strategic thinking fades into the background.
And here’s the paradox – it might feel faster and more efficient in the short term to just tell. But if that becomes your go-to, it’s a handbrake on long-term performance.
Accountability disappears.
The challenge for leaders is to resist the urge to step in and do or direct. Instead, the work is to create the conditions where people think for themselves, see their role in the business’s success, and take aligned action without always being prompted.
So let me ask you this:
- Are you experiencing the same pattern?
- Do you see a link between low accountability and autocratic leadership behaviours in your context?
- What might be contributing to this and what can you shift?
I’d love to hear what you’re noticing – hit reply and share your take.
And as always, if any of the above sounds like you and you’d like to have a conversation about how you might address it, please do reach out.