Accountability and responsibility are often confused. How are they different and how do you build accountability?

What is accountability?

Accountability is the expectation or requirement to justify actions, decisions and outcomes, and accept consequences stemming from them. To be accountable is to be answerable and subject to consequences.

Personal accountability is being answerable for one’s own actions, decisions, impacts on others, and beyond. Leaders, in particular, should be accountable for their actions and decisions, and the performance of what they lead.

Ideally, accountability is willingly and actively embraced. When this is the case, it sets high standards and encourages others to be more accountable. A person who not only accepts accountability but holds themselves to account before others do is a strong role model and a powerful positive influence on culture.

Strictly speaking, being accountable applies to all actions, decision and outcomes - including the good ones. In practice, we tend to associate accountability with things that have not gone as planned or hoped.

A culture of accountability is when enough members of a group - a team, department, or organisation - believe in and practice accountability to the point that it is a positive feature of the culture of that group.

Accountability vs. Responsibility

Accountability and responsibility overlap. Responsibility refers to a person’s actions; the actions they are responsible for taking or seeing are done. Accountability relates to the outcomes or results of those actions. Were the outcomes what was hoped for? What are the consequences of the outcomes? Responsibility is task-oriented, accountability is results-oriented.

A person can be both responsible for the completion of a task and accountable for the outcomes of that task. And they can be responsible but not accountable, or accountable without being responsible.

Often the words, and therefore the meanings, are used almost interchangeably which doesn’t help understanding and the practice of accountability.

Responsibility and accountability are present and connected at almost all levels of organisations, with a degree of accountability resting with the person or people responsible, and a degree resting with people above them in the hierarchy. It’s easy too see why the two get confused but it benefits leaders to understand the difference and work at clarifying it for their people.

How Do Leaders Build Accountability

When leaders are asked if they would like the people they lead to be more accountable, most say yes. It’s a common wish. But most leaders are less sure about how to go about building accountability. Here are six ways to do so.

1. Ensure Clarity

2. Minimise Directive Leadership & Coach More

3. Openly Hold Yourself to Account

4. Make It About Doing Things Better

5. Make Feedback a Key Accountability Tool

6. And Consequences

Accountability is highly desirable and often talked. It is usually perceived as being more direct or strong. Rather, it should be set-up, nurtured, and practiced.

For more on how to build accountability see 6 Ways for Leaders to Build Accountability.