Accountability: The Leadership Skill that Changes Everything

 Hey there, and welcome to the Strategic Minute Podcast. I’m Danielle, HR and leadership coach and advisor. This is where we take one leadership skill at a time, break it down into what it actually looks like in your day-to-day work, because leadership isn’t something you learn once. It’s something you build over time through real examples, practical shifts and honest conversations.

I’ll help you move from reacting to leading with more clarity, confidence, and intention.

Let’s get into this week’s topic. We’re talking about accountability. Something to remember, because it’s important: Accountability is not a personality trait. When someone lacks accountability, what they usually lack is one of four things:

• Clarity

• Structure

• Confidence

• Courage

So if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, why is this so hard for me or for my team? That’s where I want you to start.

At its core accountability. Accountability is simple. It’s owning your commitments and ensuring others do the same. It’s taking responsibility for your actions, your decisions and the outcomes that come from them, even when they don’t go as planned.

And if we’re being honest, this is where it gets uncomfortable because accountability makes you visible, it puts you in a spotlight, in a position where people can question you, challenge you, or disagree with you. And in HR where you’re already navigating so much pressure, so many emotions and competing priorities, that can feel like a lot.

But here’s what I want you to understand: Accountability builds trust faster than anything else. When your team knows that you’re going to own your decisions, you’re going to stand behind your strategy and you won’t shift blame when things go wrong. They trust you. And when trust is there. Everything else gets easier.

Let me give you a real example. When I was leading talent acquisition, we had aggressive hiring goals, hundreds of hires. Instead of chasing my team all day for updates to take to meetings, which I know many of you are doing right now, we built accountability into the work. We used a simple whiteboard. How many offers were extended, how many starts were scheduled? Where each candidate was in the process. The total number of people in the pipeline updated daily at the end of the day. So when we came in the next morning, I had all of the information I needed to go to my meetings. There was no chasing, there was no constant check-ins. Everyone could see where we stood, even outside of the team, if they were interested.

That’s accountability with structure. Now compare that to what I see all the time: HR is chasing…time sheets, performance follow-ups, documentation, basic manager responsibilities. And if that’s you, you’re not doing anything wrong, you are stuck in a system that’s missing accountability. When I give my intentional HR leadership workshops, I always have attendees complete a leadership reflection prior to the workshop to gauge where they are and ensure I’m adding value.

Those leadership reflections showed me that 61% of HR professionals said they’re stuck shifting from reactive to strategic. And many said they’re solving everyone else’s problems all day and struggling to work on their own priorities. It’s not a time management issue. That’s an accountability gap.

Let’s look at an example that we all can probably relate to… time sheets. The problem is that managers aren’t submitting their time sheets on time. So what happens? HR sends reminders and more reminders and then starts chasing people. But the reminders and the chasing aren’t the real problem.

They’re HR’s problem. But the real problem is lack of accountability. If leaders don’t know when timesheets are due or if they turned them in late before and you were okay with that, no one owns the task. They think they can turn them in late again and it will be ok.

Whose responsibility is the time sheets? The time sheets should be the leader’s responsibility, but no one’s holding them accountable. There are no consequences. So accountability could sound like “time sheets are due Friday at noon. If they’re late, your leader is notified.” Now ownership shifts back to where it belongs. If that sounds aggressive to you, then you’re part of the problem. Holding people accountable should not feel aggressive. It should feel strategic and it’s actually what you are paid to do. Holding people accountable should feel like you’re trying to get results.

Here’s another example, performance issues: A supervisor comes to you and says, I have an employee with attendance issues. What should I do?

Reactive HR would tell them exactly what to do You would tell them, hold them accountable to the attendance policy. Where are they with attendance issues? What have you done so far? But, that’s all reactive leadership. Accountable, intentional leadership would say, what outcome are you trying to achieve here? How have you addressed it so far? And what do you think the next step is? You’re not avoiding helping them, you ARE helping them. You’re building THEIR accountability. And the more you ask these questions, the more likely they are to start asking themselves these same questions before they come to you.

And finally, let’s look at personal accountability. You say you’re going to speak up in a leadership meeting, address a behavior issue or set a boundary and then you don’t. It’s not a capability issue because you know what needs to happen. It’s usually confidence or courage. And I see this a lot in those leadership reflections too. Fear of speaking up, a lack of confidence in decisions, hesitation with senior leadership.

That’s accountability to yourself. You need to hold yourself accountable before you can hold anyone else accountable. And as we mentioned, accountability builds trust faster than anything. So let’s talk about why accountability breaks down because it’s not random. It can break down when we focus on tasks and not outcomes. People can stay busy, but they’re not moving anything forward.

For example, we say we want to improve engagement, but what does that even mean? How do we know we have improved engagement? How do we know we didn’t? But if we say we want to increase the engagement score from 65 to 75 in 90 days improving engagement is the activity. Measurably aiming to increase the engagement score by 10 and 90 days is accountability. That’s where we can hold ourselves accountable to where we were and what we achieved.

Another reason why accountability breaks down is we have a fear of making mistakes. Perfectionism shows up. It shows up when we delay things or we procrastinate. Perfectionists are the worst procrastinators when we overthink things. Just do it. What’s the worst that could happen? And when we avoid things altogether, and in HR, this gets amplified because the stakes feel high. And honestly, they are, but they’re even higher when you avoid accountability, it doesn’t protect you. It just slows everything down, creates chaos. Where there could be calm, people are still questioning things. Things weren’t implemented. Why weren’t things implemented?

A lack of clarity is another reason why accountability breaks down. If people don’t know what’s expected, what good looks like, or what happens if they don’t do it, they can’t be held accountable, and this is one of the biggest gaps I see. Setting clear expectations and ensuring understanding is so important if you have accountability built into your process. If people don’t understand the expectations, they’re going to ask. Because they don’t want come out at the end being held accountable for something they didn’t do or know to do.

And finally, the most common avoidance is hard conversations, this is a big one. We delay tough conversations because they aren’t comfortable. We don’t want conflict. We don’t want to be the bad guy. We hope it will fix itself somehow. That if we ignore it, it’ll go away, but it doesn’t. And honestly, it gets more expensive both emotionally and operationally, the longer we wait. If we don’t address something immediately and we let it fester, that behavior becomes okay because we didn’t address it and trust me, it spreads faster than anything when your team sees you not addressing something when it happened the first time, then everybody else will start having that same behavior or other behaviors start because if that one is ok, this one must be, too. We need to make sure that we address things immediately if it’s not okay. How do we do that?

First, we define the outcome. What does working actually look like? What is the measurable end goal? Not vaguely. We want to be specific, remember smart goals. That’s our end goal. Second, we want to build the structure. What needs to be in place for us to achieve the desired outcome? What behavior needs to change. What expectations need to be set? We want to make sure there are clear expectations, there’s simple systems, and there’s visible progress. If we weave accountability through the project, we see the progress.

Third, put accountability markers in place, whether that’s through follow-up visibility or whatever works, depending upon your circumstances. This way, you’re gauging accountability, not just when something goes wrong. It’s not reactive, it’s built into the process and how you lead. So set a tone, maybe that’s status updates every Wednesday.

What do you want included in those status updates? Not only are you identifying gaps and giving yourself the ability to do damage control before things get out of control, but you’re also instilling accountability in your team. So, as they grow and develop in their careers, they can carry that sense of accountability with them.

Be careful though. This could be seen as micromanaging, so make sure you do it in a way that shows accountability and not insecurity and lack of trust. Holding yourself visibly accountable is a great first step to build that trust and showing how important it is for accountability to exist at every level.

Another idea, when you have a big project, let your team take ownership in establishing how accountability can be shown as milestones are reached in that project. Stop over-functioning: this one might sting a little, but if you’re fixing everything, answering every question and stepping in every time you’re training your organization to depend on you. And that’s why you’re overwhelmed. Start asking those valuable questions that we shared a little while ago. What outcome are you trying to achieve? How have you addressed it so far? And what do you think the next next step is?

Accountability issues are more often than not leadership issues in disguise. They stem from unclear expectations, inconsistent follow up, avoiding hard conversations, and doing too much for others. And I want to leave you with accountability isn’t about pushing harder, it’s about leading more clearly. So, here’s a reflection for this week: what’s one thing that keeps landing on your desk that shouldn’t be yours to own? And instead of solving it again, ask, what’s the desired outcome? What’s missing? Where should accountability actually live with this task? That’s how you move from reacting to leading.

Some other accountability challenges that you can implement this week. Are you working on a project but you’re unsure why? Establish clear goals. Get clarification. Ask questions. Before you take accountability for anything you need to know what’s expected. Have a set of clear goals that specifically state the outcome desired and define your target result, giving you a clear picture of what success looks like.

Goals help focus time and effort and make things more fair. They provide an objective way to measure success. Set smart goals for projects you take on.

Are you a procrastinator? Procrastination is a common way of avoiding responsibility or putting off dealing with a situation. Often it means someone else has to take responsibility and others may start to see you as unreliable. Identify why you procrastinate. As I mentioned, perfectionists are the biggest procrastinators. Stop waiting for everything to be perfect.

Are you slow to act because you don’t think you’re up to the task? Talk with someone who will help you boost your confidence.

Are you waiting until you have all the information to get started? Start doing the things you can with the resources that you have.

Find it too overwhelming? Break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks. Commit to doing one piece a day.

Find the task boring. Focus on the sense of achievement you’ll have after it’s complete. And honestly, those tasks that we think about that are so boring that we put off over and over and over again. The amount of time we think about them and dread them, we could have had them done, a few times.

Once you understand why you put things off, you can take the steps to fix the problem. Before we wrap up, here’s something to reflect on. What’s one thing that’s showing up in your work right now that might need to be led differently? A hill I’ll die on is that leadership development isn’t a one and done training It’s built through how you show up everyday, what you practice and what you’re willing to shift over time. You learn, practice, reflect and refine, as with any skill.

This is exactly the work we do inside HR Ally, supporting HR professionals in moving from reacting to leading with clarity and confidence. If this resonated, become a founding member!

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