A critical element of leadership is being accountable. It’s one of those subjects that’s easy to teach the theory, but hard to adopt into practice. To demonstrate accountability, one must start by accepting the the hard reality of our circumstance.

We use the graphic of a ladder in our Crestcom© development course to give a visualization of the various stages of accountability. I would like to think that I consistently demonstrate accountability, but if I’m honest with myself, I’ve got a lot of work to do.

One of the first steps in being accountable is to be teachable. When we’re in a situation that isn’t working, we’re going to need to learn a new approach to see a resolution. As Einstein said, “To keep doing the same approach expecting a different result is insanity”. This involves seeking out others and information for help. It isn’t easy as it requires us to be vulnerable and admit we need help. We seem to prefer the humility of failure over admitting we need help.

To take this one step further, we need to be accountable to other people with the information we’ve been learning. We need trusted advisors to help us apply this information into our unique context. As so much information is at our fingertips, our learning models can become void of humanity. We still need human perspectives and experience that will help us climb from blame to solutions.

If you would like to learn more about how you can develop your leadership skills, or those of your team, I’d be more than happy to speak with you.

Lowell Harder
lowell.harder@crestcom.com | 403.479.9582

Working with good people to build productive, successful teams