Tag Archive for: Accountable Behaviours

Accountability With Heart: Igniting Engagement Through Trust and Ownership

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When Brenda took over as the Executive Director of a community outreach, nonprofit organization, she walked into a team that had lost its spark. People were burned out. Staff meetings were tense. Deadlines constantly slipped and a sense of defensiveness hung in the air. At first, Brenda responded the way many leaders do under pressure—by tightening control. She introduced stricter reporting requirements and frequent check-ins. However, instead of improving performance, morale sank further. One afternoon, after a particularly difficult meeting, a colleague quietly took her aside and said, “We don’t need more tightening—we need more trust.”

This was a defining moment for Brenda, a moment that brought her to reach out and connect with me for coaching. “How could I actually make this request real?” she asked me in our first session.

Together we developed a plan – a plan Brenda has given me permission to share in this article. Below is a high-level overview of her implementation:

  1. One-on-one meetings with every one of her key leadership team members. The purpose was not to correct but simply listen. She asked them about their personal values and how they could feel more supported to live their values at work and away from work. They talked about how each person could be more supported to bring their unique abilities and passion more fully to their work. She talked to them about their defining moments growing up that led them to this work, and about why they decided to work here. She explored with them the kind of culture they wanted to work in and what actions would need to happen to start to live the organization’s espoused values.
  2. Assess fit. In these one-on-one meetings (for some she met more than once), Brenda also discussed their experience of being on the leadership team and what needed to happen to create a place people were proud to work. In these conversations she discovered there was one member that simply didn’t fit into the culture. Through exploring and recognizing that his strengths and approach didn’t align with the organization’s values or direction, she helped him create space to thrive elsewhere and moved him on, in order for the team to move forward authentically.
  3. Establish a team charter. Within three months of arriving, Brenda set aside a day with her entire leadership to ensure that they put a priority on the health of that team. To achieve this, they took time to share their values, to get to know people at a more personal level, and pinpoint the expectations team members had of each other. A “team charter” was written, a list of agreements and a process for responding when those agreements were dishonoured. The outcome was a blueprint for creating a team they were committed to, a culture that would enable them to do their best work, and mutual agreements that would inspire a place they were proud and grateful to work in. They also made agreements about how to extend the same kind of process to their respective teams.
  4. Rigid, controlling oversight was replaced with clear expectations and accountability agreements to each other. All this was balanced by genuine care. Self-care became a high priority in the organization to ensure the care they had for their own teams and the clients they served came from overflow, not emptiness.

The results, over a period of a few months, were transformative. People began taking initiative. Energy and engagement improved. Meaningful results began to emerge, signaling that important progress was finally taking shape.

The heart of accountability lies not in control, but in connection. True ownership flourishes when people feel seen, trusted, and valued for the whole of who they are. Trust transforms accountability from a system of enforcement into a relationship of commitment. When leaders embody warmth and integrity, they invite others to bring their best selves forward—not because they have to, but because they want to.

Too often, accountability in organizations is equated with surveillance or blame. But leaders who lead with heart understand that accountability is ultimately about stewardship. It means caring enough to follow through and having the courage to be honest—with oneself and others—about where improvements are needed. It also means creating psychological safety, so feedback is welcomed, not feared.

Ownership, in turn, is the natural outcome of trust. When people take ownership, they stop working for an organization and start working with it. They see success as a shared creation rather than a metric imposed from the top. This kind of engagement can’t be mandated; it must be cultivated. And it grows best in environments where empathy coexists with high standards, and where mistakes are treated as learning moments, not failures.

Brenda’s team rediscovered what many organizations forget: accountability is most powerful when it feels human. And being human means embracing imperfection. Behind every task and deadline is a person who wants to contribute meaningfully. Systems and goals matter, but they are sustained only by relationships built on trust and respect.

Leaders who practice accountability with heart create ripple effects that extend beyond their teams. They model responsibility without rigidity, compassion without complacency, and transparency without fear. Their legacy isn’t just performance—it’s a culture where people thrive because they are trusted to care as deeply as their leaders do.

In the end, engagement doesn’t ignite from pressure; it ignites from purpose. And purpose grows strongest in workplaces where trust and ownership meet—where people are accountable not out of obligation, but out of love for what they are building together.

Intentional Culture, Exceptional Results – Integrating Authenticity with Accountability

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One habit of good leadership is to be out in your culture, shining a light on success, celebrating wins, and catching people doing things right. There are likely some amazing things going on around you that you may be missing if you aren’t intentional. It’s natural for human beings to fixate on what’s not in our lives instead of focusing on what’s in our lives. Lately I’ve been putting this habit into practice in my own community. What I’ve discovered is that our little town is full of small giants (a term coined by Bo Burlingham), companies that deliberately choose to focus on excellence, purpose, and community impact rather than pursuing relentless growth or becoming as large as possible.

One of the small giants in Cochrane, Alberta is the Spray Lake Centre. Erin Wagner and her incredible team of leaders have created a vibrant, thriving, customer-focused environment that is at the heart and hub of our community for fitness, sports and recreation, as well as family and community connection. The SLS Centre also regularly hosts the Cochrane farmers’ market, both indoors and outdoors, and many other community events every year. When you visit Cochrane, stop by and get a shot of energy from this amazing place.

There are also many other small giants in Cochrane such as Found Books, Route 22 – Artist Collective Gallery, Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary, Pink Wand Cleaning Services, Flores and Pine Restaurant, Alberta Metal Works, Align Developments, and the Cochrane Public Library. All of these organizations are part of Innovate Cochrane, a community-driven non-profit dedicated to empowering entrepreneurs and business leaders to build authentic, accountable organizations.

Everyone talks about the importance of culture, but when the pressure to deliver results mounts, culture takes a back seat. Like taking care of your health in times of high demands, it’s easy to declare, “we don’t have time for culture.”

But culture is always present, regardless of whether you are intentional about it. It is not a flavor of the month management fad. It’s the fabric of your entire organization.

Organizational culture is complex and multi-layered. To create and sustain a great culture requires leaders at every level to look beyond visible behaviors and statements from culture surveys to understand and influence the deeper beliefs that truly shape how organizations function.

My framework for organizational culture focuses on integrating the two fundamental elements of a great culture: authenticity and accountability in three areas: organizational, interpersonal, and personal.

The Importance of Authenticity

Authenticity means living in alignment with your true values, living and working in a place where you don’t have to leave who you are at the door, where you can express yourself genuinely, fostering meaningful connections and trust. Authentic cultures encourage open communication, vulnerability, and psychological safety to support people to tell the truth in a respectful way.

Leaders who lead authentically strengthen the overall sense of belonging and engagement in an organization.

The Importance of Accountability

Accountability means that we remember that culture isn’t what we say. Culture is how we hold ourselves accountable for how we act. You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do. Accountability starts with ownership. Accountability means that individuals and leaders take ownership for their decisions and their actions. We institutionally deny the fact that each of us – through our perceptions and our choices – is creating the culture that we so enjoy complaining about. Deciding that you have created the culture you are living and working in – and therefore you are the one to step into healing it – is the ultimate act of accountability.

Accountability means taking responsibility to work with clear expectations and agreements and being a person who can be counted on. It means having the tough conversations, providing regular mutual feedback, helping each other grow, and delivering on the promises you make. It means holding each other to the same high standards and asking for the support needed to deliver on agreements made.

How Authenticity and Accountability Work Together

Authenticity and accountability are mutually reinforcing. Authenticity creates the psychological safety necessary for people to be honest, while accountability ensures that this honesty translates into clearly defined and necessary results.

Authenticity supports people to operate from a place of truth, caring, and integrity, while accountability ensures that this integrity is backed by responsible action. Together they foster trust, engagement, and sustainable success in any culture.

RAISING ACCOUNTABLE KIDS: It’s About Principles, Not Perfection

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You can observe a lot by watching. – Yogi Berra
When grandparenting you aren’t in the thick of the responsibilities that come with raising kids, so you have a bit of time to observe. So, as a grandparent, here’s three observations I have about the state of child raising these days:
  • There’s no more important leadership responsibility than within the walls of our home. The greatest success lies in building strong character in our young people that will enable them to be contributing citizens of the world.
  • We’ve never been more aware of the needs of our children because we have access to extensive information on child development, the impacts of trauma on brain functioning, mental health, the importance of attachment, emotional regulation, and self-esteem and well-being.
  • We are now extremely anxious about how we’re doing as a parent and how our kids are going to turn out. And all the anxiety is spilling over onto our children. Paradoxically, the more we worry about our kids, the more anxious they become. Anxious parents raise anxious kids. They have enough of their own anxiety without us contributing to it.
For those who have assumed the vital and arduous work of leading young people, here are four strategies to consider:
  1. Don’t make life too easy for your kids. On the wall of my daughter’s high school English class was a quote by Van Jones, the political commentator: I don’t want you to be safe, ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe, emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym. In other words, making the space within the walls of our homes and our schools safe doesn’t mean rescuing our children from the challenges of life. Just as the struggle to break through the cocoon builds the strength of the butterfly’s wings, if we want our children to fly one day, they must struggle and develop strong wings. Don’t raise your children to be happy. Raise your children to be strong. Strength comes when our kids know they are not alone. We are right beside them, in their corner. Loving without rescuing. Being there without doing for them what they can do for themselves. With strength, happiness will follow.
  2. Don’t be afraid to parent. Saying no is not abuse. Our children do not need us to be their friend. Their friends are their peer group. What our children need is a parent. There’s a big difference between pleasing your kids and loving your kids. Pleasing is about giving them what they want so they will be happy and like you. Pleasing comes from insecurity. Loving them is giving them what they need – and what they need may very well be different than what they think they need or what their friends have. Children are not born with accountability – the ability to be counted on; they have to learn it. And they learn it, in part, when they can count on the caregivers in their life. If you are a parent, your kids are counting on you to be one. Let’s work at being secure enough with ourselves that we don’t depend on our kids for our self-worth. It’s not their job.
  3. Set clear boundaries around digital media. Digital media was originally developed for two reasons: information and communication. When it exceeds its function and is used, like any product or substance, to meet our emotional needs or to escape from our life it becomes addictive. Monitoring our own use and consciously and carefully supervising the use of devices with our kids is now an integral part of parenting. You can’t leave it to chance.
  4. Relax. You don’t have to get it perfectly. I remember a time when our youngest daughter wanted to change her curfew to go to a friend’s party. The easy road would have been a quick “yes” or a quick “no.” Instead, we spent the better part of a week negotiating with her and struggling to do the right thing. I don’t know, to this day, if we did the right thing. What I do know is that my daughter knows she was loved. She knows she was loved because she knows that we invested in the relationship. As parents and caregivers of children, we never really know what “right” is. There’s no formula. The goal is not necessarily to be a better parent. The goal is to find joy on the journey. And finding the joy will make us a better parent.
In Blackfoot culture, turtles are considered to be a symbol of creation and motherhood and embody the concept that is similar to “Mother Earth” in English. To the Blackfoot, the turtle is patient, wise, knowledgeable, and long-lived. The Blackfoot saying Iikakimat mookakiit means be wise and preserve and can be used to describe the turtle’s characteristics. And these characteristics fit well into my own approach and philosophy of raising accountable kids: be patient, wise, a good role model and the kids will be alright.

How to Fix an Accountability Problem on Your Team

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“Everyone on a team knows who is and who is not performing,
and they are looking to you as the leader to see
what you are going to do about it.”
The late Collin Powell,
Former US Secretary of State
How many times in the past year have you heard, “We need more accountability on our team?”
When you’re frustrated and things aren’t going well — maybe your numbers are down, or people aren’t showing up the way you need them to, or team members aren’t meeting your expectations — it’s easy to turn to this all-too-common refrain. But when you announce that you “need more accountability here” what your team actually hears is: “You’re failing, and it’s your fault.”
No one is inspired by being blamed. While there may be times when your team could put in a more focused effort, a lack of accountability is rarely intentional. Any lack of accountability is a downstream problem that requires upstream action. It’s always better to prevent pollution than to clean it up. Leaders who default to a plea for accountability will inevitably hit a wall of frustration.
Further, verbalizing that there is “a lack of accountability” on your team can easily come off as threatening or condescending to people on the receiving end. This is hardly productive when you are trying to inspire change, and more importantly, it doesn’t help you get to the root of the problem.
Rarely is an accountability problem actually an accountability problem. It’s an agreement problem. The way you fix it is through a better agreement process:
  1. Clarify your expectations. Ambiguity breeds mediocracy. It also breeds frustration. Clearly communicate the measurable results you expect, including the kind of behavior that demonstrates your values.
  2. Create a compelling WHY. People need to understand how what you expect from them makes a meaningful impact toward the overall success of the organization and the people you serve.
  3. Assess fit. Be sure that people are passionate about what you expect from them, and that it lies in their wheelhouse of strength. Accountability without an element of passion is drudgery. Leaders are accountable to ensure that you have the right people on the team.
  4. Aim high. Expect high standards, both for yourself and others. Challenge yourself and those under your care with lofty goals, a commitment to results, and high expectations so everyone will grow and feel great about themselves at the end of the project.
  5. Get an agreement.  A request is not an agreement. Be sure to get a clear yes to your request to deliver expected results. Every defined expectation needs to end with, “Can I count on you?”
  6. Clarify support requirements. Aside from a lack of understanding the expectations, people fail to perform as expected when they lack the required skill or capacity. Leaders are accountable to assess workplace competencies and ensure adequate resources are available. Ensure the person you have expectations of feels supported.
  7. Identify consequences. Clarify what the results will be for delivering on your promises – to the individual and to the organization. What’s important to the individual? What’s important to the organization? Negotiate a win-win relationship. And sometimes, especially if you’ve made a mistake around fit, help people make a career decision and move on from their role.
  8. Have an evergreen plan. Map out a process for keeping your agreements to each other current and useful. How often do you need to meet to review expectations? Be sure to have a clear process for tracking and measuring success and how you will discuss it when your expectations of each other are not being met.
When you are promoted, you don’t get more power, you get more accountability to assess and implement the accountability process. Any accountability problem on your team is corrected by being accountable. Just as blame is never a good strategy, pleading for more accountability isn’t the answer either. Those who develop self-awareness, clarity, empathy, and courage to have the tough conversations will create powerful solutions, build winning teams, and create workplaces where people are inspired.
If you want to be an authentic leader that people want to work with, shift your mindset from blame to ownership, assess the gaps, and practice filling the gaps with these eight strategies. You’ll drive better results, make lasting impactful change, reduce your frustration, and create unstoppable workplaces.

Accountability, Ownership, and COVID-19

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The focus of my life’s work and passion is authentic leadership. At the foundation of authenticity lies ownership and personal accountability. In part, this means the ability to distinguish between what you can control and what you can’t and putting energy into that which you can influence. I am aware that COVID-19 is causing concern and fear. I recently read that, despite all that is being done, 50,000 people still die on this continent every year from the flu. As much effort that is going on to try to contain this thing, let’s keep things in perspective. A trickle of fear in the brain can eventually turn into a trough that everything flows into.

The truth is that our health is constantly threatened by external toxins and “invaders” such as viruses and bacteria. We have little control over what is circulating in the air around us, but most of us have the ability to influence our immune system – how the body responds to these toxins.

Personal accountability means taking full responsibility for what we can control and letting go of what we can’t control. In the midst of all the unknowns in the current world narrative about this disease not enough emphasis is being placed on what we can control – our own response to the disease. Let’s not get so stressed about this that we create a self-fulfilling prophesy of a compromised immune system.

While much lies outside the sphere of influence in this impending endemic, here are three things we can all be accountable for:

1)    Get as much knowledge about what is happening as we can – from trusted sources.

2)    Learn as much about your immune system as you do about the disease. And put your energy into what you can impact – bolstering your well-being.

3)    Wash your hands.

Achieving Engagement From Productivity

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I’m concerned about the focus these days on employee engagement as if it were some kind of “special thing” to be pursued outside the usual day-to-day operations of a workplace. Engagement isn’t a goal to be sought. Rather, it’s an outcome of good leadership. The goal should be a well-run organization. The best run organizations have engaged employees, not because they are necessarily pursuing “an engaged workforce,” but because they are committed to a well-run organization. If you keep your eyes on the right priorities – on the right prize – engagement will naturally follow.

An adaptation of Gallup’s Q12 Index (https://q12.gallup.com/) provides a suggested checklist for leaders. If you sincerely pursue these endeavors toward a well-run organization, employee engagement will follow. In other words, these behaviors can assist the leader to do a much better job.

Don’t try to accomplish this massive list all at once. Start with getting a read on how your employees might perceive your leadership and begin to take action in any of these areas. Action on any one item on the checklist below will result in a better, well-run, engaged organization.

  • Are you doing everything you can to clarify the kind of employee you need on your team? Are you clearly assessing the kind of skills and attitude required of an employee before you hire them, so that in the hiring process you get the right kind of people on the bus? While you may refine behaviors, don’t count on changing people’s fundamental values.
  • Are you explaining to your people exactly what you expect from them, both in terms of operational results and the kind of behaviors you need to see demonstrated to support your values?
  • Are you doing everything you can to give them the skills, tools, resources, and capabilities to succeed at their job?
  • Have you linked your expectations with the purpose of your organization so they feel their contribution is valued?
  • Have you assessed their strengths so they are doing what they do best every day?
  • Are you getting out of your office at least every week and catching them doing their job well? Are you recognizing and celebrating success?
  • Do you genuinely care about them as people? Have you listened to what matters to them, what they value, and how you can best support them to use their job to achieve their personal goals?
  • Are you encouraging your employees to grow, learn, and develop themselves? When was the last time you recommended a good book for them to read?
  • Do you allow genuine input and collaboration from your team so their opinions actually matter? While you can’t possibly make every decision by consensus, do you explain – and demonstrate – that their input on as many decisions as possible will be taken seriously?
  • Do you set high standards and hold people to account to those standards? “Everyone knows who is and who is not performing, and they are looking to you, as the boss, to see what you are going to do about it.” (Collin Powell)
  • Are you encouraging the development of good friendships at work?
  • Are you openly talking with people about their progress toward the achievement of both personal and organizational goals – so there are no surprises if/when you do an annual review?
  • Are you bringing humility to your leadership by being honest, vulnerable, and teachable?
  • Are you making it safe for people to risk making mistakes, while ensuring that they learn from these mistakes?
  • Are you creating a culture of ownership, so that employees are encouraged, and held accountable to create conditions for success on their own rather than depending solely on you, the boss, to deliver this?

Moving into a position of leadership does not give you more power. What it gives you is more accountability. Leading a well-run organization takes time, patience, and a clear intention. Set a goal for a productive workplace and employee engagement will follow.