Who Are You Accountable To?

Accountability is one of those buzz words out there and for good reason. It can be incredibly frustrating as a leader to have team members who won’t take accountability for mistakes they made, regardless of how hard the leader has worked to cultivate an environment that is nonjudgmental and practical about the very obvious fact that people make mistakes. Aside from work-specific mistakes, I’ve also written about the importance of individual accountability for behaviors that detrimentally effect the team and client base. It seems to be, then, fairly common knowledge that team members are and should be accountable for their actions and behaviors to their leaders. It logically follows that leaders are accountable for the same to their managers/leadership/ownership. But accountability shouldn’t just flow up the hierarchy within an organization. Like any relationship that is healthy and balanced, accountability flows both ways.

It’s SO easy to get inspiration for these articles when the Detroit Lions are in-season. If you’re already annoyed by my extreme enthusiasm for this team and their head coach, you best mute me for a few more months. The Lions played a decent game for Week 3, settling in to a more stable offense and our already dynamite defense just continued to show out. I caught part of the game on the radio driving home from up north (it’s a Michigan thing) and the second half of the game at home. It was interesting to me how frequently the announcers on both mediums seemed preoccupied with the Lion’s head coach’s press conference from a week prior.

In case you’re not as obsessed with the Lions as I am: Week 2 we played bad. Like, real bad. We did have an opportunity to kick a field goal in the first half but head coach Dan Campbell sent out the special teams unit early, while the offense line was still on the field. This mistake caused a penalty that ran off the clock and removed the Lion’s opportunity to kick that field goal. At the press conference after the loss, he said, “I asked for improvement from last week and we did improve and, uh, their coach cost them. Their head coach cost them this one. Critical error in the half and 100% on me… it’s not okay.”

The Week 3 announcers kept referencing this Week 2 press conference. They seemed preoccupied with it. Maybe it was a slow news day and there wasn’t anything else going on. My theory is that the NFL doesn’t see a whole lot of accountability from their head coaches.

Don’t air your dirty laundry in public.

I was raised with the mentality that it’s not polite or proper to talk about your personal problems in public. You protect your family or your organization by erecting a fa?ade that everything is great, and work out any issues in private. Not airing dirty laundry can be seen in younger generations by the sanitization of their public lives as viewed on social media to reflect a perfect and conflict-free existence. In my adult life, I’ve rebelled against this line of thinking quite aggressively. I personally believe that being open, honest, and transparent about difficulties (relative to the situation) can be instrumental in arriving at the best solution for all parties involved. But more importantly, sharing real struggles with people in your life can impact them in a variety of ways: understanding that their own struggles are commonplace or relatable, learn different ways to cope or adapt to struggles, and having a supportive environment in which to work through your own struggles, knowing others will react with empathy rather than judgment. There is a matter of discernment as well, there are appropriate and inappropriate topics, environments, people that can be discussed.

Maybe what was so surprising about Dan Campbell’s admission was that he broke one of those unspoken rules. The head coach of an NFL team, while ultimately responsible for the entirety of the team, is like the CEO of an organization. Sure, they have the ultimate responsibility, but there are levels underneath the CEO that have more direct responsibility over certain operations within the organization. I can’t recall ever hearing from a CEO when a mistake was made by them personally. It’s in their best interest NOT to admit responsibility, hide behind the organization as whole, or (worst-case) blame someone lower in the hierarchy.

It’s a different way to view accountability. Whether Dan Campbell himself sent out that special teams unit, or the special teams coordinator did it, or a player just started running out and the others followed him, it didn’t make a difference to the fans. We were mad that there was a mistake made by the team. But I’ll tell you – as soon as Dan Campbell made that statement, the fans went from upset to completely accepting of the loss.

I’ve seen this play out within my own organization. Not only does having accountability internally to my team make me a better leader and my team stronger, but taking accountability externally diffuses situations in the best way possible. I learned this early on as a server in a restaurant. The guest who received a burger with cheese on it, even though they didn’t ask for cheese, isn’t interested in whose fault it is. Maybe the guest forgot to request no cheese. Maybe the server forgot to ring it in without cheese. Maybe the cook forgot to omit the cheese. Maybe the quality control assumed the no cheese was an error and added it himself. It doesn’t change the fact that the guest received a less-than ideal product. Now – who is best to take accountability on behalf of the restaurant to the guest? Any one of those workers could go to the table and tell the guest it was their fault. But what works best, what the guest responds the most positively to, is the manager taking accountability for his or her team. The likelihood that the manager, specifically, is responsible for the mistake is very low. But the manager has ultimate authority and responsibility that the team members don’t, and that matters to the guest.

The same holds true in the real estate world. If a mistake is made on a file by an escrow officer, for example, I encourage my team members to take accountability, inform the client of the error, propose and execute the solution. This works about 80% of the time. The rest of the time, the client is not satisfied with the level of authority of my team member, thinking that someone higher in the hierarchy will have a “better” solution. It’s an identical solution, but it feels different to the client coming from a manager, leadership, or owners. I can’t change that thinking, just adapt to it in an effort to create the best client experience. Also, it’s REALLY EASY for me to take credit for mistakes I didn’t do. Much easier than taking credit for mistakes that were actually my own fault.

When the topic of accountability comes up, make sure you practice what you preach. Not only did Dan Campbell take accountability to the fans (guests/clients) for his mistake, he also apologized to his team. If you want your team members to air out their dirty laundry to their direct reports, you also have to be willing to share that vulnerability when you make a mistake that impacts them or their clients. Externally, a good leader takes accountability for their whole team. If one member makes a mistake, the team made a mistake, but when it comes to the client, it’s the team leader stepping up to take accountability and work on the solution.

Accountability means admitting that you’re human, that you’re not perfect. It’s humbling and embarrassing and unpleasant. But there’s a worse outcome waiting if you hide your mistakes from your team, shift the blame, or simply ignore the problem. By sanitizing your work mistakes the way my generation sanitizes their social media profiles, you become unrelatable, unrecognizable. You never struggle? Everything is always great? You love the new direction the company is going by laying off half your team? That’s not realistic and it puts up a wall around you that prevents others from allowing themselves to be vulnerable enough with you to take accountability for their own actions. Accountability also needs to go both up and down the organization’s hierarchy because there simply isn’t a way to limit mistakes to only effect leadership but protects your team from exposure. Once you’ve mastered that, it’s a small side step to take accountability externally for your team. Everyone wants to work on a team whose leader stands up for them, protects them, and is invested in showing them in their best light, even if that means taking one for the team.