“How do we build a culture of accountability in our company?” That was a question one of my executive leadership coaching clients asked me recently. When I asked him what he meant by accountability, he had difficulty fully articulating what accountability meant to him. Finally, he said he wanted people to take ownership of their work and the results they produced. After we spent most of an hour exploring what was missing and what real accountability would look like, he made a bold statement. “The first thing I need to do to build more accountability is to stop talking about what we should do. I need to decide what I am going to do to be more accountable and promote accountability within my team.” It was as if a light came on for him. He realized that while we all want to foster accountability, we can’t. I can. He can. You can. Accountability happens when individuals take ownership, and that starts with individual leaders deciding to make it happen. Although my client had had a major breakthrough, he still had a big question to answer in the coming weeks, “How do I get started?”
Last Tuesday, I was working at the polls, and I met a young father who had his son in tow. I remember doing the same thing when my children were little. This father believed that voting was important, and he wanted his son to understand that and to see him taking part in the electoral process. We talked for several minutes, and he said he had to get back to work. He was a restaurant manager, and he wanted to see if anyone who wanted to vote had done so prior to the polls closing. I commented on how great it is for organizations to recognize the importance of voting and give their employees time to exercise this precious right. He laughed and said, “It’s not a corporate policy. It’s mine.” He said he really didn’t have the authority to do things like that, but he felt it was important enough to bend the rules. His rationale made sense to me. All of his employees live within a few miles of the restaurant, and he asked them to vote before or after the lunch /dinner rushes. This act of civic engagement cost him almost nothing, but it meant a lot to his employees.