Defining More Accountability at Work
When leaders assess their organizational culture to understand why the business is not performing at its peak, a “lack of accountability” is often the default diagnosis. We agree that sustained success requires consistently high performance — and that strong leaders make accountability a priority. Where we diverge is in how workplace accountability is typically defined and pursued.
Building a true culture of accountability is not just about setting rules, enforcing standards, or tracking commitments. Those are table stakes. High performance culture goes deeper. It requires shaping how people think about ownership, consequences, and meaning. Real accountability lives first in the mindset of individuals — not in policies, scorecards, or escalation paths.
When leaders create clarity of purpose, reinforce personal ownership, and connect daily decisions to meaningful individual and organizational outcomes, accountability becomes self-driven and part of the way work gets done — rather than an imposed mandate. That is when standards stick, commitments matter, and performance rises without constant oversight.
What Leaders Can Do to Create More Accountability at Work
Clear expectations are essential, but they are only the starting point. Accountability breaks down when expectations are vague, inconsistently applied, or disconnected from real consequences. To make accountability credible, leaders must put a transparent system in place — one that evaluates performance objectively and applies rewards and consequences fairly, accurately, and consistently. Without that foundation, calls for “more accountability” ring hollow.
Once expectations and performance metrics are clearly defined and applied with discipline, leaders can shift from enforcing accountability to enabling it. That is where ownership takes hold. The following four actions help employees internalize accountability and self-monitor their behavior and results. Effective leaders must:
- Create Team Alignment on Goals and Performance Expectations
Aligned teams define success collectively — not as a set of individual wins, but as progress toward shared outcomes. That requires leaders to work with their teams to clarify what success looks like, why it matters, and how it will be achieved in ways that serve both the people doing the work and the business they support. Common, agreed-upon, and realistically achievable goals are foundational.
Our organizational alignment research shows just how much clarity matters. Strategic clarity explains up to 31% of the performance gap between high- and low-performing organizations. Teams that are truly aligned grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable than teams operating without a clear, shared team charter. Yet despite this, most employees report that team goals are 50% less clear to them than they are to their leaders.
That strategic alignment gap has consequences. When goals are ambiguous, accountability becomes subjective and uneven. When goals are clear, accountability becomes fair, actionable, and self-reinforcing.
Are your goals clear enough to genuinely hold people — and teams — accountable for results?
- Create High Levels of Individual, Team, and Company-wide Trust
Lasting accountability is nearly impossible without trust — trust in the organization, trust in its leaders, and trust among colleagues. When trust is low, people protect themselves, manage perceptions, and avoid ownership. Recent Deloitte research underscores the risk: one in four employees does not trust their boss, and leaders overestimate workforce trust levels by nearly 40%. That gap quietly erodes accountability long before performance metrics reveal a problem.
Effective leaders understand that accountability follows behavior. People mirror what they see. Leaders who want ownership, honesty, and follow-through must model those behaviors first. That means being transparent — especially during uncertainty — telling the truth when answers are incomplete, inviting dissenting views, and rewarding candor rather than punishing it. Trust grows when employees see that speaking up leads to progress, not repercussions.
Strong leaders also recognize that how people are treated shapes how they perform. When expectations are high, fair, and paired with respect, employees rise to meet them. When trust is present, accountability becomes a shared commitment instead of a compliance exercise.
Have you created the psychological team safety and trust required for accountability to take root and endure in your culture?
- Define and Foster the Right Amount of Risk Taking and Learning
High performance is rarely linear. Progress includes missteps, course corrections, and hard lessons. The most effective leaders are deliberate about how much risk their culture encourages — and where. The “right” level of risk is dictated by strategy.
Some initiatives demand experimentation and speed, where taking smart chances should be recognized and rewarded, such as launching a new high-tech business line. Others require precision and zero tolerance for error, such as manufacturing a new aircraft. Treating all work as if it carries the same risk profile undermines both accountability and results.
Accountability improves when people understand not only what is expected, but how failure will be handled. When leaders clearly define acceptable risk boundaries, employees can act decisively without fear of arbitrary punishment. When those boundaries are unclear, people either play it too safe or take reckless bets — neither of which drives sustainable performance.
Regardless of your risk posture, organizations that want stronger accountability must normalize learning. Embedding a disciplined project postmortem process into everyday work shifts the focus from blame to insight. Teams examine what worked, what did not, and why — then apply those lessons forward. Over time, this builds ownership, sharper judgment, and better decision-making.
Are you intentionally reinforcing the right balance of risk taking and continuous learning in the areas that matter most to advancing your strategy?
- Create Higher Levels of Meaning
If you expect employees to hold themselves and others to higher levels of accountability, you must offer a commensurate level of meaning in the work. Accountability without purpose feels punitive. Accountability anchored in meaning feels worthwhile.
At the individual level, leaders need to understand what genuinely matters to each person and design roles that provide the autonomy, confidence, and capability to deliver. When people see how their strengths and aspirations connect to their work, ownership follows naturally. At the team and organizational levels, leaders must consistently link projects and priorities to the real impact they create — for customers, for the business, for colleagues, and, when relevant, for society more broadly.
Meaning is not a one-time message from the executive team. It must be operationalized. When leaders deliberately embed purpose into how work is planned, discussed, and reviewed, discretionary effort increases. People go beyond minimum requirements, hold each other to higher standards, and step in when performance slips — not because they are told to, but because the work matters.
Have you built enough meaning into the daily experience of work to credibly ask for higher performance and stronger accountability from your teams?
The Bottom Line
Are your leaders willing to look in the mirror and move beyond enforcing accountability toward deliberately co-creating a culture where accountability is owned, expected, and reinforced every day — enabling people and teams to perform at a higher level and achieve what was previously out of reach?
To learn more about how to create more accountability at work, download The 3 Levels of a High Performance Culture that Leaders Must Get Right to Increase Accountability
Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.
0
