When we think of what a healthy, thriving workplace looks like, we quickly realize that accountability has a huge role to play. When everyone feels responsible for the company’s success and for their own areas of work, it creates an atmosphere of trust, creativity, and common purpose.
As a result, holding people accountable is regularly cited as one of the most important skills for leaders to develop. However, this is easier said than done.
Too often, holding people accountable is confused with knowing who to blame when things go wrong. But true accountability isn’t something that can be forced on employees from the top down.
Making accountability part of your workplace culture means taking a much more holistic view of what it means to have each person genuinely take ownership of their work. It’s about how you communicate within and across teams, how goals are agreed upon and achieved, and how leaders set an example for others to follow.
Fortunately, there are some concrete steps that leaders can take to foster accountability in the workplace and build a culture where everyone feels empowered to take responsibility for their own areas of work.
What Does Accountability Look Like?
Before we dive into how to increase accountability, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page about what accountability actually is. This word is thrown around a lot, but often in the context of things going wrong. In fact, accountability is about far more than just owning up to our mistakes.
If you want the dictionary definition, accountability is described as “the willingness to accept responsibility or account for one’s actions”.
There are two key ideas here that are important for how our businesses operate. Firstly, responsibility. Being accountable means our team members understand how their actions contribute to wider company goals and take full ownership of their tasks.
Of course, this is great news for managers. When employees take responsibility for getting their work done, there’s no need for us to constantly chase or check up on progress. Everyone can trust that tasks will be completed as they should be.
However, building trust and taking some of the burden off managers aren’t the only reasons that a sense of accountability is a desirable workplace trait.
When people feel this level of ownership of their work, they are also more likely to see their roles as meaningful and valuable. And research shows that employees who have a sense of purpose at work are more engaged and productive. They are less likely to miss days, stay with the company for longer, and are more likely to rise to skilled positions.
The second part of accountability is being willing to “account for one’s actions”. Crucially, this aspect of accountability acknowledges that we are each working as part of a team. Success depends on everyone playing their part – and being willing to discuss that part openly and honestly.
In workplaces that have successfully fostered a culture of accountability, everyone from the top down understands that their actions affect their colleagues and is willing to be honest about the role they played in both successes and failures.
When things go wrong, this means people feel able to admit their mistakes, take responsibility for the part they played, and step up with solutions to make sure the same problems don’t happen again.
But accountability also needs to play a role when things go right. When our actions lead to success, we need to be willing to share our processes with team members and acknowledge where input from others has played a role.
Finally, we need to remember that accountability is a two-way relationship. Everyone within the organization should understand that they are accountable to their colleagues and act accordingly.
At the same time, we also need ways to hold others accountable for their actions. This isn’t about apportioning blame, but about trusting that our colleagues will do what they say they will. It relies on fair assessments of each person’s impact and a culture of supporting each other to improve.
We’ll look at all of this more closely in just a moment.
How to Foster Accountability in the Workplace
Now that we have a clearer idea of what accountability looks like for our organizations, we’ll explore some of the ways that you can increase the level of accountability in your own team.
This is ongoing work and requires dedication across the organization. As always when it comes to creating a thriving workplace culture, there are no quick fixes. If you want to establish accountability as a core trait in how your organization works, you’ll need to put the effort into developing processes that empower people to take ownership of their roles.
As we said at the start, true accountability can’t be enforced from the top down. We need each employee to internalize this sense of responsibility and choose to demonstrate accountability through their day-to-day actions.
Here are some ways you can start creating an environment where this is possible.
1. Make Accountability a Core Value
Firstly, if accountability is important to your company, it should be plainly stated as part of your core values. Not only does this demonstrate just how important a sense of responsibility is to how you work, but it also helps you get everyone on the same page about what accountability means in your workplace.
For a core value to have impact, it has to make it down off the poster on the wall and into daily interactions. Once you’ve established accountability as a core value, you can use it as a standard when it comes to appraisals and performance reviews. If your employees know that accountability is one of the attributes they are expected to demonstrate, they’re more likely to look for ways to show it through their actions.
2. Model the Behavior
Another crucial component in fostering accountability in your company is holding yourself to the same standard that you expect to see from your employees.
Leaders and managers set the tone for an organization’s culture. If you can showcase what it means to be accountable through your own behavior, your team will feel more confident to do the same.
In practice, this might look like:
- Admitting when you’ve made a mistake
- Apologizing if you get something wrong
- Being honest when you don’t know something
- Doing the things you say you will – and being honest about when you can’t do something
- Looking for ways you can personally improve
- Seeking solutions instead of focusing on barriers
3. Be Clear About Roles and Responsibilities
One major barrier that stands in the way of people being able to feel accountable is confusion or lack of clarity about who is responsible for what.
If we want people to take ownership of their work, they need to know exactly what that work is. Well-written job descriptions can help, but we all know that employees’ roles often evolve well beyond their original job descriptions.
Don’t wait until performance reviews roll around to get clarity on who does what in your team. Make it a regular part of your team updates and one-to-ones to make sure everyone is on the same page.
This doesn’t need to be an overly formal process, but it does need to be openly and clearly articulated. Don’t assume that someone knows that they have responsibility for a particular task, state out loud who will be doing what.
Make this part of your meeting practice too if it isn’t already. Every meeting should result in a clear list of action points – including who is responsible for making each action happen and by when.
4. Do Away with Blame Culture
While we’re on the topic of barriers to accountability, another one to get rid of early is blame culture.
Accountability breeds confidence and trust but we also need these things in place before people feel safe to demonstrate accountability. If there’s a culture of passing the buck, it’s hard for anyone to feel empowered to admit when they’ve contributed to issues or not done what they said they would.
As managers, we can tackle blame culture in several ways. First, we can model the behavior ourselves, showing what it looks like to take responsibility for our actions instead of blaming others.
Second, we can redirect anyone who starts to pass blame. This can often be done quite gently – it is, after all, understandable that people want to direct blame away from themselves (indeed, it seems to be something we’re naturally wired to do).
However, if we want to foster accountability in our teams, we can’t allow blame culture to thrive. If conversations are starting to disintegrate into criticism of each other, or we hear team members blaming others for things going wrong, it is our job as leaders to step in and move things onto a better track.
5. Focus on Solutions
We’ve looked at blame culture and how getting rid of it helps us create an environment where accountability can thrive. Hand in hand with this is the mindset with which we tackle issues and disappointments.
When things don’t go as planned, it is tempting to go back and critique every action and decision. However, this is what allows blame culture to creep back in and can quickly turn into a negative spiral of finger-pointing.
Instead, we can encourage our teams to adopt a learning mindset. When something goes wrong, we treat it as an opportunity for growth. We might look back to see what we could have done differently, but with the aim of improving for the future, not apportioning blame for the past.
6. Know What Success Looks Like
Just as our employees can only demonstrate accountability if they know what their responsibilities are, they can only honestly assess their own performance if there are clearly defined metrics for success.
This means mutually agreed deadlines, defined goals, and a clear set of KPIs against which our team members can judge their work. When these things are in place, staff members have a structure within which to operate, which gives them the confidence to know if they are on track.
They also have a way to tell when they are falling behind – and the opportunity to ask for help or alert the rest of the team that things aren’t going to plan.
7. Trust Team Members to Own Their Work
Trust and accountability go hand in hand. It can be hard, therefore, to offer one when the other hasn’t been demonstrated yet.
However, our employees will only feel responsibility for their work if they know they are trusted to do it without us hovering over their shoulders. As managers, we may need to give up some of our own need for control so that our team members can have more autonomy and ownership in their roles.
There’s a careful balance to find here. We don’t want to leave employees feeling unsupported or prevent them from sharing updates on their work. But we also don’t want to micromanage or interfere too much.
8. Communicate Openly
Open and honest communication is vital to fostering accountability in the workplace. We need to create spaces where people can give (and get) feedback on progress, share concerns, and analyze their mistakes without being made to feel blamed or unfairly criticized.
Again, part of this will come from how you model communication as a manager. Keep that solution-focused mindset and be willing to talk honestly about areas where you need to improve or haven’t done what you hoped.
Provide opportunities for staff members to check in with you, report their progress, receive feedback, and brainstorm solutions to issues. And remember that how you listen is just as important as what you say. When you listen to your team and act in response to what they say, you give a valuable demonstration of what accountability looks like in action.
Finally, encourage team members to collaborate, support one another, and ask for help when needed. When we focus on collaboration instead of competition, people feel safer being honest about their progress and sharing when things aren’t going to plan.
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Accountability is vital for organizations that want to create a culture where people trust one another, collaborate, and come up with creative solutions to problems – not to mention achieve high performance. Encouraging this mindset can be a challenge for leaders, but clear communication and a willingness to model the behavior ourselves can make a huge difference.