I’ve been thinking about the word “accountability” over the last year or so. It seems that most leaders have a minor obsession over it, and the word is usually only referenced when someone isn’t doing something that’s expected, and we need someone to blame.
This obsession is loaded into PowerPoint decks everywhere, especially this time of year when annual strategy and goal setting is taking place.
“We need more accountability!”
In Finland, they do not have a word that captures the nuances of the English word, “accountability”. A Finnish education expert, Pasi Sahlberg, has been quoted saying, “There’s no word for accountability in Finnish. Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.” This suggests that in Finnish culture, the emphasis is more on responsibility and trust, rather than external accountability measures.
Simply put, accountability is a crutch for pre-work that’s been ignored. The work to create clarity, to understand and accept responsibility, or to engage in healthy debate that could lead to either. This is the work that is often ignored in many teams today, and very often comes up in my Team Coaching work.
The incredible work of Patrick Lencioni and his legendary “5 Dysfunctions of a Team”, states that of the 5 behaviors that aren’t present in a team – lack of accountability is most present in dysfunctional teams. The directly adjacent “dysfunction” in Lencioni’s work is lack of commitment – or said a different way, people aren’t clear on what they’re accepting responsibility for, and may not have developed the trust to speak up when they don’t understand.
Trust takes work.
Accepting responsibility is serious.
Demanding accountability before you’ve done the pre-work isn’t fair to anyone.
Are the Fins on to something here? Maybe that’s one of the contributing factors to them being named the world’s happiest country, every year from 2018-2024? Imagine working within a team where trust and responsibility were prioritized – what would the accountability conversations be like in an environment like that?
Here’s to doing just one more thing this week to contribute to trust, or to understand responsibility. A leader or team that works towards both will ultimately experience more accountability taken, and with less fear and blame.
Here are a few related resources that I’ve enjoyed recently and have been sharing:
1 // Orson Welles on the genius of not-knowing. (1 min video)
2 // How would a team win that’s stuck in a room with each other for a month, without going home? (15 min video)
3 // “Every week brings a new opportunity.” With so many opportunities, we can leave the imperfections behind, and try again. (5 min read)
