I worked with a CEO last year—sharp, well-liked, genuinely caring—who had a blind spot. His leadership team would align in the room. Commitments made, heads nodding, action items assigned. Then the next meeting would arrive and roughly half of it hadn’t happened. He’d sigh, redirect, and move on. When I asked him about it he said: I don’t want to be the kind of leader who micromanages. I trust my people.
What he couldn’t yet name was that he was conflict-averse and wanted to be seen as the good guy. He’d hired strong directors and VPs to hold the line. Except when they did, he wouldn’t back them up. He’d soften the message, make an exception, explain away the miss.
His team learned the real rules fast. Accountability was real, just not at the top.
This is one of the most common and quietly devastating patterns I see in leaders and it almost always lives in someone genuinely kind and well-intentioned. Somewhere along the way they decided that holding people accountable was the opposite of caring about them.
It isn’t. But here’s the cost: your best people get tired. The ones who do hold the line start to feel like they’re playing a game with no referee. Eventually they stop. Or they leave. Your team stops bringing you the real problems. They stop believing the commitments mean anything. And you lose the thing you were trying to protect.
The good news: this is learnable. It starts with tolerating a little more discomfort—sitting with the pause, naming the miss, backing up the people you’ve asked to hold the line. Not to punish. To show your team that you mean what you say.
Practices
- Where are you quietly deputizing accountability downward and then undermining it?
- Where is your conflict-aversion showing up dressed as compassion?
- Think of one commitment that was made and not kept, recently, on your team.
- Ask: did I name it? If not, name it this week. Not to punish. Just to say: we said we’d do this and we didn’t—let’s talk about why.
- Then check the quality of the original request. Was there a clear performer? A real deadline? Clear conditions of satisfaction? Often the accountability gap starts there.
- Check out these newsletters for a powerful accountability process: Conversations For Action Part 1 and Part 2.
Download our Communicating For Action worksheet (PDF) that offers a four-step model to encourage accountability:
Summer is Officially Here: Summer Reading Recommendation
We’ll be back in September. I hope you find time to pause and enjoy some great reads. A classic related to this month’s topic and relevant for our whole lives is “Language and the Pursuit of Happiness” by Chalmers Brothers. Not a stuffy leadership book, it’s a fun, practical read that might even change your life.
