Becoming an Accountable Leader: Strategies for Taking Ownership and Inspiring Success

No one’s perfect, but it’s hard to put your weaknesses on display as a leader. As someone who influences other individuals at work, you might have the idea that you need to be the infallible, act-now-ask-questions-later boss to keep your employees in line. Mistakes? Never heard of them.

Of course, that type of leadership has played out—pretty disastrously—throughout history and in the modern age. Taking responsibility as a leader is a radical act in a corporate landscape where strength is often seen as being flawless, unapologetic, and in a class of your own. 

We know, however, that true strength lies in the ability to take responsibility for your actions and decisions, both in success and failure. 

Accountability in leadership

Being an accountable leader means building trust in your organization. It’s ultimately an act of empathy and high emotional intelligence: being able to admit that you made a mistake and being quick to correct your course. It’s understanding others’ perspectives and being transparent with your decision-making process.

On the flip side, accountability in leadership doesn’t mean micromanaging your employees’ decisions or blaming others when things go awry. It’s walking a fine line between knowing when to step up to take responsibility and trusting others to take the lead in making decisions. 

The accountable leader empowers others to follow suit. If you’re willing to take responsibility, even when things aren’t perfect, that example permeates through your entire organization. If, instead, you’re more likely to pass the buck or make excuses, you can’t be too surprised when your employees do the same thing. That never-ending blame game is poisonous to workplace culture, creating a “not my problem” attitude among employees and leading to low engagement and frustration. 

What does accountability in leadership look like?

An accountable leader isn’t only taking responsibility for their own decisions and outcomes; they shoulder the accountability for the way they lead and manage others too. The first indication of an accountable leader is radical clarity in everything. 

Clarity and transparency mean you’re always upfront and honest with employees, even when it’s difficult. They should know how you make decisions, what the outcomes are, and how you plan to act if you do make a mistake. 

Taking accountability is taking ownership of your organization, its successes, and its failures. It means you’re at the forefront and modeling how to react in the face of an error in judgment or a mistake. You’re the person establishing that culture of honesty and accountability, making integrity a priority, and ensuring all employees have a clear understanding of the whos, hows, and whys of your decision-making. 

Are you an accountable leader?

Good news! The simple act of curiosity around accountable leadership tells us that you’re already on the right track. Let’s face it: It’s tricky to take a long, hard look at your organization and shoulder the responsibility of its strengths and weaknesses. But how do you truly measure or assess how accountable you are as a leader? We have some ideas: 

• The Positive Culture Index (PCI). We’ve created an assessment tool that helps measure your organization’s baseline engagement, trust, and communication levels. If you make accountability a priority, you’ll see that reflected in the PCI survey responses and, if not, you’ll know exactly where to fill the gaps to create a healthier organizational culture—and that starts with you. 
• ROIs. Actual sales and actual results are a great way to assess the hard numbers surrounding leadership accountability. Are you seeing positive results? Are your processes sluggish and often slowed by not knowing who’s responsible for what? Assess your actual results and compare that with how you’re modeling accountability for your employees. You might be surprised at how a habit of making excuses or micromanaging is hindering your success. 
• Historical Impact. It’s just like any leader in history. Sometimes, the people look kindly on their decision-making and decide that the end justified the means. Sometimes, it’s clear that they’re on the wrong side of the historical record. The only way to assess that historical impact? Ask hard questions. Solicit feedback and find out if your decisions are being supported by your employees. Consider how your actions have affected trust and integrity in your org. 

So you make a mistake. Now what?

Accountable leadership starts on day one. It shouldn’t be a new concept, especially because a lack of accountability is a hard habit to break. Go into your role with the mindset that you’ll take responsibility for your actions and the actions of others when it’s the result of your decisions. 

You’re going to make mistakes along the way. The difference between a so-so manager and a great leader is how they react when it’s clear they’ve slipped up or led employees down the wrong path. Here’s how to react when you realize that you’ve made a leadership mistake. 

1. Own up to it. It’s hard to show vulnerability as a leader, but it can ultimately build trust and empathy in your organization. If you’re willing to speak up and take responsibility for your actions and decisions, your employees will feel empowered to do the same. 
2. Take the credit . . . and the responsibility. Radical accountability isn’t only for when credit is due. Be willing to celebrate success and correct failures with the same amount of energy. Sometimes, you’ll be celebrated for your successes. Sometimes, you’ll need to put in extra work for a failed decision. Either way, you’re modeling what happens when you’re accountable in leadership. 
3. Have difficult conversations. Don’t shy away from those tough or even awkward conversations you need to have with employees when you identify a mistake. Be transparent with them about how you came to your decision and how you’d like to rectify it. If it’s a mistake an employee has made, ask them about what led to it and how you can help in the future. 
4. Match accountability with action. You can’t just hold a meeting to say “Oh, my bad” and continue with business as usual. Accountability in leadership is adding action to those words and pivoting quickly to make things right. Simply saying something is your fault isn’t leadership, but showing what to do afterward (and catching it sooner rather than later) is what separates the accountable leader from someone just trying to say the right thing.

In order for you to build trust, transparency, and integrity into your organization, it has to start not only today, at this given moment, but continuously throughout the future.

The greatest of leaders in history have an innate ability to be able to explain things, to provide a process improvement, to be able to say, “I’ve made a mistake.” That’s what builds trust: Getting employees to understand that even if you aren’t always going to make the right decision, you’re going to admit it, move on, and fix it to create a better outcome for everyone.