Critical Leadership Traits – Accountability
I am continuing my series on the top 5 leadership traits. Here’s number 3 – Accountability.
Accountability is an acceptance of responsibility for honest and ethical conduct towards others. In the corporate world, a company’s accountability extends to its shareholders, leaders, employees, and the wider community in which it operates and serves.
The key for leaders is that they need to hold themselves accountable as well as others. Accountability has to go both ways or else it simply doesn’t work. You need to walk the talk of accountability. In Kim Scott’s book, Radical Candor, the basis of the model she espouses is focused around caring personally about employees and challenging them directly. Challenging them directly is focused on accountability. It’s amazing when you see leaders wanting to hold everyone else accountable, except themselves. If that’s the case, you are doomed to failure. I have seen too many leaders who do exactly this. Bottom line, they aren’t very good leaders.
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