S1E12 - Accountability – From Punishment to Ownership

For many leaders, “accountability” still sounds like blame: Who dropped the ball? Who’s at fault? In this episode of Leadership Matters, Glenn Price and Terry Reynolds flip that thinking on its head.

Drawing on the Vision to Results framework, they unpack why true accountability isn’t punishment from the top, but ownership from within. They explore the difference between responsibility (your job description) and accountability (your personal choice to own the outcome), and why so many executive teams demand accountability from others while quietly avoiding it themselves.

Glenn and Terry dive into:

• Why holding people “to account” without clarity of expectations and measures kills performance
• How regular, well-designed check-ins can build ownership without creating a culture of fear
• The power of collective accountability, where peers call each other up, not just out
• How language (“check on” vs “check in with”) shapes whether people feel policed or supported

You’ll also hear four practical ways to build a culture of real accountability—starting with leaders modelling extreme ownership in public, not just demanding it in private.

Transcript

Welcome to Leadership Matters, a podcast series recorded by LeaderShape Consulting that helps leaders take their vision and deliver results. My name is Glenn Price, and as always, I'm joined by my business partner and co-host, Terry Reynolds. And we've been working through a number of different drivers that help leaders take that original vision, their strategy, and be able to execute on that and get results. And we started that off by taking a look at the first rational step of setting direction.

We then moved into more of an emotional area around how do we engage and excite our people and our customers to create the right context for performance. We explored some rational elements like structure and resourcing and action plans around the step enable and execute. And we're now on this last step of sustained momentum, which is, hey, we've worked so hard to get that flywheel running. How do we make sure that it keeps producing results? And that's more emotional. In our previous episode we talked about development. Today's episode takes a look at accountability. when I say the word accountability, the sort of pictures in the past and up until this point in time that come to mind are punishment, right? Somebody's dropped the ball, who's accountable? I can almost hear my boss saying it. And yet in the book, we say accountability isn't punishment, right? It's ownership. And so I wanted to explore that topic with you, Terry, before we get into deeper and giving some top tips for leaders around accountability, because I think accountability is one of the most overused and least understood words in leadership. And I think when we use it here, it's important for our listeners to understand our intention. Yeah, look, I think the the words themselves are two very, very different things. And I think that I can hold somebody accountable. But whether they own it or not is very, different. For me, ownership is a very, very different thing. It's a very personal thing and I'll own the outcome. I'm driven by ownership of things. I'll take the action because I own it, not because I'm being held to account. Yeah, I had a senior exec say to me just recently, he calls it extreme ownership, right? You can't just own it because the letters are next to that particular task on the plan, whether it be a strategy plan or an operational plan.

Extreme ownership is give it to me and regardless of the outcome. I'll own that outcome. Right now when we did the research, we asked people what's the difference between responsibility and accountability and responsibility is your duty. It's what we pay you for. It's your job description. And so when you say I hold people to account, I'm a little bit sane, but a little bit different. I think I hold people responsible for delivering on what they've promised to do.

Accountability or ownership for me are quite similar. And what I mean by that is it's a personal choice. It doesn't matter what you're doing to try and hold me accountable. It ultimately comes down to, as you said, me choosing to take ownership over it. And so as you're beginning to listen to our conversation through here, you can sub that word accountability for ownership probably all the way through. We certainly don't think it's blame orientated. It's absolutely more about that ownership piece.

And it's not top-down pressure. It's about that internal commitment that people are making themselves. And so I just, I wanted to explore first that because of that blame orientation sort of lived experience that comes with the word who's accountable. I guess the question I had is why do so many leaders confuse having tough conversations with accountability? Well, I think that you and we're going to talk about it in the next couple of episodes, but the clarity of expectation often is missing. It's very, very hard to hold people's feet to the fire if they're not clear, if there hasn't been clarity in actually what the execution needs to happen. What's that old line, you know, the only time people let you down is when you haven't been clear on your expectations. So you're right, there's a direct connect with making sure that they've got some level of goal clarity and role clarity. And the other thing that we know is that if the people that are going to be held to account and execute on what it is that we're going to ask them to do, they must have been or feel emotionally attached through that process with all the drivers that we've talked about. So how well are they aligned to what it is that the direction, the expectation, et cetera? As opposed to being given that action plan, I was involved in the process and then I feel very emotionally attached to it. want to own it because I was part of it. In fact, we say that, we, is that if you've been actively engaged and involved at appropriate levels all the way through the drivers above, then actually you don't need to attend the compulsory accountability workshop. You're just more likely to choose to own the bit that's yours, right, and be upfront with what the results are. I think this is where it comes down to this explanation we talk to people about, you know, is that we share the what but allow them to come up with the how. And I think that if they're coming up with the how because they're going to be held to account on it, then I'm hopeful that they'll own it because it was their idea. They're the ones that are going take increases the chance of it, right? When you first started about a minute or so ago you went, if we're going to hold people to account.

That's typical leadership, right? We have people reporting to us. But I'm interested in your opinion with the leaders that you work with. I see leaders attempting to hold others to account, but often not modelling it themselves. They don't hold themselves to account, even at the executive level. When you say that, is it they're not holding themselves to account or the executive team is not holding the CEO to account? It could be a bit of both.

I think it's pretty the board normally will hold the CEO to Correct, right? And so even if we move the board or an advisory board to shareholders, if it's a private company, to one side, I often feel sorry for the CEO. Everybody looks at him or her or they and go, well, you didn't hold us to account, right? Like, I sort of go at an exact level, I would expect each person to have that ownership without me having to remind them as the chief exec. Ultimately, there's probably some conversations that need to happen there with some people, but the best teams I've seen, and when we've done our best work, is that you've got four or five execs that hold each other to account. And the reason why they do that is they have that high level of vulnerability-based trust, which means that they can give themselves rapid feedback, which we talked about in the last episode, but it's pretty rare. The conversations often are not hey, how do we as a leadership team hold ourselves collectively accountable? It's more, hey, Glenn, could you help us have the right conversations? Because I've got one of those change resistant people in my teams and I need to hold them to account. So it's all very downward looking as opposed to, look at yourself in In the previous episode, we talked a lot about this, if the rhythm is set up right then actually holding people to account or checking on where people are at becomes quite easy. Because you're just executing on your fortnightly meeting to go where are we at with these things, these must-wins that we agreed. Where I think people let themselves down and why they can't hold people to account is because the plan is done. There's no follow-up on that. And then consequently everyone thinks, well that they're not going to check out. Well, you've kind of got the goal. Yeah, you've got the goal piece there. But you don't have the measures. No. And I think without the measures that destroys accountability before it even starts. If you don't know what a yardstick is, then it's pretty hard to hold me to it. It's kind of a bit of, well, last meeting you said this, but now it's this. there's a constantly moving feast. But that meeting needs to be set up in a way to say, hey, we're going to check in. I will be checking in on this every fortnight just to see what progress you're making. So please come prepared to update where you're at. Now, a good CEO, a good MD is going to do that fortnightly, 9am on a Friday morning, Glenn, where are you at? Now, if I start to do that two or three fortnights in a row, when that next fortnight comes around, you know I'm going to ask you. My feeling is, is that to begin with, that's going to drive your behaviour. You may not be owning it.

But you're going to do it because you know you're to get checked on, right? Because you're going to be held to account. But over time I reckon that behaviour changes and all of a sudden you begin to own it as the time goes on. If you weren't going to be checked up on, you're probably…you know, there's a lot of people out there that just wouldn't do it because no one's going to check in on me. Business as usual, got busy, all that sort of stuff. I agree with you. When you say, I'm going to check in with you in whatever the cadence needs to be. As soon as you said it, the question that came to my mind is going, can you have higher levels of accountability without fear? Because that check-in for most people goes, you're checking to make sure that I'm doing it right. Do you think most organisations swing too far either way? Do they sort of push too hard on, we've got to keep people accountable? And then the culture is almost fear, like, my God, I'm being checked on.

Because I agree with you, it starts the behaviour. Do you weigh yourself every day? I do. Why do do that? Because I'm holding myself accountable. Yeah. So if it moves, if you weren't doing that, there's a lot of wriggle room. There's a lot of wriggle room. have that. I didn't ask for feedback No, I'm not giving you feedback about how you look. But there's a lot of wriggle room because, you know I'm going do…I'm going to have the cake now as opposed to I'm going to have the cake… hang on a minute, I'm going to weigh myself in the morning. And I think all of that plays out because all of a sudden there is a finite thing of going how are you going? Well it's interesting. Your analogy absolutely connects with me. And it's interesting me weighing myself I see as a reward mechanism for the behaviour that I took the day before. What if it comes back negative?

Then I know it's as a consequence of what I did the day or the week before right? could have been traveling or a airline food or whatever Decided to have a piece of extra piece of cake. I do think it worked. Maybe it's just the language check-in That triggers my fear response as opposed to going hey, we're gonna have a really cool conversation a progress conversation that goes through wins learns and what we need to change and make sure that I'm doing everything I can to support and resource you properly on a fortnightly basis, then I've got no problem. But I think often we say in order to change a culture, it starts first with its language and that the I'm going to check on you is almost for me the opposite of encouraging ownership. Whereas I'm going to still check in on you, but it's going to be a two way conversation. It's going to be strength based. It's going to talk about the progress that you're making and how I can help you accelerate it. I think that really helps the person be empowered to go, okay, I've got that clear goal. I know what the measures are of progress and I've got somebody, confidant who happens to be my leader that's helping me get there. And that means that that conversation is psychologically safe whilst there's still that. I didn't say no pressure. I just said limit the fear. Yeah, I reckon different horses for different courses. Because my experience has been is that if I try to judge people individually and go, how am going to get the best performance? How am I going to work with the individual? And it's one size doesn't fit all. Definitely not. So some of that language stuff that you talk about and you're absolutely right. Works for some and then you'd need to taper it for more direct for others. it for some us, yeah. We've talked so far about individual whether it be the leader themselves or the people that report to us accountability. But what happens when accountability becomes collective, right? When people start calling each other up, just not out, you know, that was done really well. It's not just the piece where there's a gap in performance that we're holding people accountable. We're highlighting the bits that they're doing well as well. What happens with collective accountability? Well, I think that that's a very, very different thing. I think for me it's all about how well is that team operating, how open do they feel? know, we've talked a lot about vulnerability based trust and all those types of things. Is that…is that…do they…do they trust that their opinion is going to be listened to and accepted in the way that it was meant to be accepted? It comes down to intent, right? It does. It does. And I think that, you know, there's teams that we've all worked with where you're probably not going to raise that you're just going to let it fly and there's other people that are, know, there's other teams that are going to have really, really open conversations. Look, I, to wrap us up on accountability, I think it's an area that is a massive, almost fatal flaw for most leadership teams. They don't hold each other accountable. They don't hold themselves accountable. And so, I mean, I've seen exec teams screaming about accountability right after dodging their own review. Right. 

And so I think it's an area that once again, it's more challenging because it's more emotional. What drives people like that conversation around pain or pleasure or the words that we use and adapting that matter. But I think coming down to if our goal is to try at this level, this is the 11th out of the 12th set of drivers is really what we're looking for. And when we say the word accountability, we're talking about extreme ownership. We're talking about individuals holding themselves accountable to what they've said that they would do, which builds trust. But it doesn't mean holding people hostage, right? It's not…it's about supporting people to help them get further on the journey than it is a lead table of shame or something like that. You know, from a leadership perspective we often talk about, you know, when you build your plan, part of the key about that plan is to involve as many people as you can. And obviously the secret behind that is that others can hold you to account. Because sometimes after the 1st of January and we've told, we've kept it to ourselves, you know, whatever, it's too easy to wriggle out of. But the more people you involve in all of that process, the harder it is and probably you find that people are going to execute on it. Completely agree. Once again, without, you can have the best strategy in the world, but if you can't execute on it, which requires a high degree of accountability and extreme ownership, then it's all for naught.

So here are our top tips for leaders on how to create a culture of accountability. Firstly, model that ownership publicly, right? Start with every review that you own and have that conversation that says, accountability begins at the top. You can hold me accountable personally. 

Two, be precise, not necessarily polite. Vague feedback is the enemy of accountability. And as you said, Terry, and we're going to talk about this later, clarity is actually kindness. People will only ever let you down if you're not clear on your goals and your expectations. Three, balance support with standards. We want to make sure that we don't let people just off the hook. We want them to help stay on the hook and go, I know what's required of me and I'm stepping up to that task. 

And last of all, we want to make sure that we're rewarding true accountability, not excuses. And so celebrate those who take responsibility, even for failure, putting their hands up going, I'm a peak performer, help me, this is what happens. And when you do that, it builds integrity and trust. And so for the final cue or end with a challenge for this episode is this question. When was the last time you held yourself as accountable as you hold your team?

Looking forward to seeing you on the next episode.