What is accountability in management? How it brings success - Torch

We hear a lot about accountability when it comes to leadership. But what exactly does it refer to, and how does this trait lead to successful management?

We’ll help you understand the behaviors associated with highly accountable people and explain how they lead to increased trust, stronger relationships, and better business outcomes.

What is accountability?

Accountability is accepting responsibility for your actions and being willing to own the outcomes of your choices, decisions, and actions. It may be helpful to share examples of what high and low accountability levels look like in action from a leadership perspective.

Let’s say the CEO of your organization made a bad strategic decision. As a result, the entire company is working overtime to put out multiple fires. Instead of brushing everything under the rug or blaming the other executives who were part of the decision-making process, your CEO publicly takes ownership of her mistake, explains how she plans to avoid a similar outcome in the future, and thanks all the employees for their hard work and understanding. This is an example of a highly accountable leader.

Now imagine there’s a major project at your company that was set to launch almost two weeks ago. But one of the teams is behind schedule and is slowing everything down. When asked for updates on the timeline, the manager of the project gets extremely defensive and – worse – blames the delays on his employees, who have been working late multiple times a week to try and catch up. This creates tension across the organization, and the project continues to be delayed for several more weeks. In this case, the manager is demonstrating low levels of accountability.