Leaders: Accountability Is About More Than Results

Great Leaders Hold Themselves and Others Accountable for Behaviors, Decisions, and Ethical Decision Making 

When leaders talk about ensuring accountability they are usually referring to practices such as holding people accountable for results.

Good leaders take this a step further by emphasizing that accountability is about more than just results. They hold both themselves and others accountable for the decisions and options producing the results, as well as for the actual outcomes and results.

A good leader will also hold herself or himself accountable for utilizing the right level of delegation when appropriately empowering team members.When leaders talk about ensuring accountability they are usually referring to practices such as holding people accountable for results.

In addition to these responsibilities, great leaders tend to have a larger organizational perspective, thus holding themselves and others accountable for how their decisions and actions impact other departments and business units as well as customers and business partners.

Great leaders also go even further by holding themselves and other leaders accountable for their leadership behaviors, actions, and for making ethical decisions.

I call this Leadership Accountability, a concept I will detail in the next blog post.

This article is excerpted from my book Great Leadership Words of Wisdom, which is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats and has over 1000 quotes on leadership from global business leaders, statesmen, athletes, coaches, sages, and philosophers.