Section 1: Self Awareness / Observation

We tend to see what we look for. If you are looking for how people fail to measure up, not only is that what you will see, it is likely ALL you will see. Additionally, we all have built-in filters and biases capable of skewing how we perceive ourselves and the world around us.

Accountable leaders work to recalibrate what and how they notice the world around them and use their observations as a call to awareness for self-discovery.

For example, when you notice frustration or bafflement over why team members are "sub-par performers" or whose behavior does not mesh well with the rest of the team do you:

1. Try to find ways to get them to change so they are more like what you want them to be,
2. Look for the latest, greatest magic bullet in leadership that, once acquired, will "make it all better" (which is essentially Option 1 above, just wearing a different dress), or
3. Use your frustration/bafflement as a call to awareness for you to discover what the situation wants to show you about yourself?

This section asks you to ask yourself, "What do I need to be aware of and willing/able to observe in order to be a fully accountable leader?

Self Awareness / Observation

Section 2: Emotionally Responsible

The accountable leader understands and practices emotional hygiene because s/he recognizes how that translates to building trust and cultivating engagement. The accountable leader manages (vs. suppresses) her/his emotions and works with them proactively to mine the insight our emotions hold for us. In short, the accountable leader is emotionally literate. In the words of Claude Steiner, who introduced the term emotional literacy in the 1970's, "Emotional literacy is made up of 'the ability to understand your emotions, the ability to listen to others and empathize with their emotions, and the ability to express emotions productively. To be emotionally literate is to be able to handle emotions in a way that improves your personal power and improves the quality of life around you. Emotional literacy improves relationships, creates loving possibilities between people, makes co-operative work possible, and facilitates the feeling of community."

Emotionally Responsible Leadership

Section 3: Respectful and Affirming

The Accountable Leader consistently demonstrates respect for others and affirms them as human beings, not just as providers of outcomes.

Accountable leadership requires leaders to set the emotional tone and safety within an organization. The accountable leader recognizes how essential emotional safety is in eliciting the best in others. This requires you to develop the capacity to be present with and take time for the humanity of those involved, including your own.

Respectful / Affirming

The accountable leader understands the value of helping others grow as human beings, not just as deliverers of skills or knowledge. This requires leaders to make a life-long practice of noticing when, where and how they make assumptions and how those assumptions feed inappropriate expectations. The accountable leader takes responsibility for actively supporting and facilitating the development of those s/he leads. This means much more than sending people off to training events. Instead, the accountable leader understands and participates in the relational nature of human development. The accountable leader takes responsibility for how s/he shows up and interacts as an elemental aspect of building others up.

Building Up vs. Tearing Down

The accountable leader is one who chooses to be deeply present and tuned-in to what matters most. In today's increasingly complex world, relational awareness and skill are a big part of what matters most. You can't afford the consequences of disconnects - among team members, between you and your team, and between you and yourself. The accountable leader realizes that what s/he is "dialed into" will shape what gets noticed as well as the levels of nuance you are able to access within that noticing. An age of complexity is an age of nuance, and the ability to discern and articulate nuance is essential for an accountable leader. The first place the accountable leader practices being tuned-in and discerning is with her/himself.

Discerning & Tuned In

Accountable leadership requires you to recognize that engagement among those you lead begins with you: not just HOW engaged you are, but where you are (really) engaged. Engaged means giving your full attention to something. Think of being engaged as being "plugged in" and ask yourself where you are - and aren't - plugged in.What really gets your full attention and where is your attention fragmented with multi-tasking? With the distractions of email-overload and demands for immediate responses through texting and instant messaging, you need to be mindful of what you are present to at any given time. Do you model the respect of bringing your full attention to your conversations with others? What does how you are present say to those you lead about being engaged? Accountable leadership means noticing when you place more attention on an outcome than on the people who are tasked with helping to achieve that outcome. Because adhering to the out-dated results-before-all-else approach will make you a leadership dinosaur. And look at where they are now.

Engaged Engager

Old school leadership approaches tell you to drive: people, projects and even change. Consider the power of language in setting emotional tone and safety in a culture: The word "drive" means to propel in a given direction via force. (Also) To "collect and move animals in a desired direction." With domestic livestock, we drive animals to a destination so we can slaughter them. So the word "drive" actually infers coercion, loss of choice and even violence. Even when we aren't consciously aware of that inference, it is present. Accountable leadership requires you to step out of the centuries old cultural patterns of using control and force to coerce outcomes. It means taking the dizzying leap into shared power and intentionally, actively working to transform and remove "power over" patterns from your leadership approach.

Leading vs. Driving

Leadership accountability requires you to make communication a priority. It means learning new ways of communicating, how to initiate and facilitate new and far more productive kinds of conversation, and in so doing, modeling the kinds of productive interactions you want those you lead to adapt. The committed communicator is a life-long learner, willing to risk discomfort for the sake of growth. Willing to notice and explore how to elicit understanding, cultivate connection, foster trust and spark brilliance - through the alchemy of words + presence.

Committed Communicator

If you think you are not a culture shaper, consider: As a leader, you are either shaping or perpetuating a culture. If you are not intentionally fostering a culture of engagement, emotional safety and shared power, you are likely - forgive me - part of the problem instead of the solution. If, on the other hand, you tend to walk into a new job, project, organization and see where systems and structures don't support people with bringing their best OR you see what others aren't willing or able to see OR you experience push-back from those in power when you attempt to bring about needed change: You are a culture shaper. Being a conscious one committed to fostering the kind of culture that grows people instead of crushing the life out of them is an integral aspect of Accountability 2.0 and being an accountable leader.

Conscious Culture Shaper