Issue 3
Accountability is a beautiful concept that can provide clarity and alignment, or it can work against you, amplifying your own shadows, or leaving you with a sense of safety where there is none. This article reflects on how to connect accountability measures to your heart, so you can tell the difference.
By Martin Drohmann
Published
Accountability can be such a gift. Uncounted creators of New Year’s resolutions could have experienced success or gained the clarity to let go with the right portion of accountability.
Holding others accountable can be a gift, helping others succeed and be recognized.
And like so many good ideas and spiritual concepts these days, companies implement tools and processes to give this gift at a larger scale with more clarity, power, and sometimes fairness. There are performance reviews, goal setting frameworks, issue tracking and project management software, and regularly scheduled 1-on-1 meetings are just some of the examples.
Powerful tools. As operators of these tools, we can create gifts and set ourselves up for success at a large scale. But without awareness, every power can also lead to abuse. Then we operate these tools creating abuse at scale.
Especially with accountability, abuse often goes unnoticed at first. As most people went to school for a long time in their life, they are used to systems that account for their success and how their life should be structured without much consideration for whether it is actually good for them. Strict schedules with attendance requirements, grades, and rules are all examples of how to create accountability, and how accountability creates alignment and a pathway to accomplishments.
But rarely do students practice creating or choosing their own accountability measures and connecting them to a higher goal. But that is what business is about: defining a higher common goal and helping each other stay on track moving towards this goal.
If managers use the school model of accountability in their companies, they often overthink the problem. Setting financial targets, counting the hours worked on a task, or the pace at which something is produced, lines of code, marketing articles, or meeting agendas, might all be valid measures of accountability, but are they the right ones?
If unused to the practice of giving accountability, managers may make the mistake of creating measures that amplify their own shadows, their unprocessed feelings. Unprocessed feelings are dangerous to us, so we want to protect ourselves, our ego, from this.
For example, if the leader is fearful that the team will not follow, or does not understand their concerns, it will trickle down. Team members will more likely see the accountability measures as something they have to fulfill to keep their job, not as something that is good for the team. If the members can propose accountability measures, it will more likely be something they think is easy to achieve, or something with a goal description vague enough that it can be easily interpreted as a success. Team members will ask for leader buy-in or approval, even for trivial changes, setting up the ground for micromanagement. Nobody wants to be wrong, out of fear.
And if something uncomfortable is going on under our skin that we do not want to look at, we may even create accountability measures that avoid those conflicts altogether.
Accountability is a gift, and most of us like to give gifts. Especially if the receiver clearly shows their happiness and validates us for our great choice. I can see it play out at children’s birthday parties, where children say, “Look at what I got you.” Egos also want to give gifts, but to please themselves, not others. Therefore egos do not make good leaders. That is a simple fact, not easy to change though. We all grew up with an ego.
But if the leader tries to set up every team member with accountability measures that are right for them, focusing on the goals that the individual members want to and easily can achieve, they maximize the likelihood that everything looks good. But there will be no team, no awareness for the company’s well-being, but plenty of room for praise for how good everyone did.
It is like always asking my children what they want to do next. Trust me: cleaning up the house or even just their room is never on their list of suggestions. And I have made the mistake of giving in too much because I wanted to avoid the conflict that comes with the negotiation of what is good for the entire family unit. Of course, this is not sustainable.
Imagine heart-led accountability that feels like a gift, and that is received as a gift.
What does this look like in a leader-team relationship from the perspective of the leader? I think of it as a conversation, with the leader clearly stating what they need, the leader listening to the reactions of the team, integrating the ones that are good for the team, and leaving room for excitement, disappointment, sadness, anger, and everything else that might come up. This develops the fertile ground for trust where clarity and alignment can grow. These are sensitive flowers that sometimes need watering, sometimes rest, and lots of observation.
Coming back to the example of getting my children to clean up, I could tell you how miserable it felt always cleaning up their messes, how I got angry with my children because they never helped. But instead I will just tell you how beautiful and peaceful it is when I am aware of my own and my family’s needs. How simple it can be to ask my children to tidy up the house calmly and with openness to their reactions, and how beautiful and efficient it is when I have the internal clarity what it is for. Then we all do it together, knowing that we all profit from it: we feel good in a clean home, find our clothes when we want to leave the house, and can just start a new craft project because we are prepared for it.
Leadership is inside all of us. We just have to pay attention.
With care,
Martin
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