The Use and Abuse of "Accountability"

Many leaders use the word accountability to mean “punishing someone when they screw up.”

Something went wrong? We have to find someone to blame. Someone has to be held accountable.

No wonder the word alone gives us a little spike of cortisol.

You often see leaders use the word accountability the most when they’re under pressure and need a scapegoat. (You see it in politics, too, all the time. Just look at the headlines.)

Whether they realize it or not, these leaders have found a management-guru-approved way of saying “Someone’s got to take the fall for this.” Funnily enough, it’s usually not themselves they want to hold accountable. In other words, it’s “Someone’s got to take the fall for this, and it won’t be me!”

But I think there’s a much healthier way to think about accountability, and many other leaders do a good job of it. This healthier way is regarding accountability as “commitment to objective reality.”

What do I mean by that?

When a team or a company culture is defined by lack o…