Leadership Accountability Means Being True to Purpose and Values

Failing to Meet the Duties of Leadership Accountability Results in Loss of Value, Reputation, Market Share, and Sustainable Success

Leadership Accountability is not just about owning up to mistakes or ensuring that processes and procedures are followed faithfully.

Leadership Accountability is being true to the purpose and values that drive the organization.

This type of leadership accountability means that personal and departmental agendas are put aside for the greater good and sustainable health of the organization.

When Leadership Accountability is absent, as we have seen at Volkswagen, Enron, HSBC, Wells Fargo, the U.S. Veterans Administration, and other organizations, devastating disasters and ethical crises often arise. In some instances, neither the brand nor the organization recovers from Leadership Accountability lapses.

In society, when people do not live up to their collective and individual responsibilities to the community, they are usually jailed, ostracized, or outcast.

In the corporate world, such failure to meet the duties of corporate responsibility and leadership accountability results in massive loss of value, reputation, market share, and, of course, sustainable success. This has been happening to Volkswagen and Wells Fargo for the past few years.

Great leadership is a mixture of vulnerability, humility, self-confidence, forgiveness, ethical judgment, and a personal code upon which to based leadership behaviors and actions.

It takes all this, and more, to consistently hold yourself and others accountable for all leadership behaviors, actions, and decisions.

Great leaders also go even further by holding themselves and other leaders accountable for their leadership behaviors, actions, and for making ethical decisions. This is the essence of Leadership Accountability.

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.