What does accountability mean?
Almost everyone wishes that other people would be accountable for their actions and impact. Almost everyone gets nervous when other people start talking about holding them accountable for their actions and impact. Are we all a hypocritical or are there good reasons for this seeming paradox?
In contexts governed by good faith, there are two ways to be accountable for your actions and impact: you can measure your results against rules or benchmarks or you can tell the story of how you achieved your impact.
Noticing your results against fair benchmarks stabilizes your achievements in a world where achievements can get lost. It feels good to take time to notice what you have accomplished.
Giving an account - telling a story - of how you achieved your impact is almost synonymous with human nature. Human beings are creatures who tell the stories of their lives - and live the stories they tell. We all love to shape our actions and impacts into stories that tell us what we have done, what we did not do, and what relationships we have formed.
We all naturally want to find ourselves in contexts governed by good faith where it will feel good to be accountable for our own actions and be motivating to hold others accountable for theirs.
Are you working in a context governed by good faith?
In contexts governed by good faith, there are two ways to be accountable for your actions and impact: you can measure your results against rules or benchmarks or you can tell the story of how you achieved your impact.
Noticing your results against fair benchmarks stabilizes your achievements in a world where achievements can get lost. It feels good to take time to notice what you have accomplished.
Giving an account - telling a story - of how you achieved your impact is almost synonymous with human nature. Human beings are creatures who tell the stories of their lives - and live the stories they tell. We all love to shape our actions and impacts into stories that tell us what we have done, what we did not do, and what relationships we have formed.
We all naturally want to find ourselves in contexts governed by good faith where it will feel good to be accountable for our own actions and be motivating to hold others accountable for theirs.
Are you working in a context governed by good faith?
Interesting thinking about accountability and motivation
- Account-ability
- Rethinking what it takes to be accountable at ntgr8 - a blog for people who like to think.
3 Obstacles to Accountability
Much of the discussion about accountability assumes that people have to be held accountable. What if the opposite is true? What if most of our organizations make it harder for people to follow their natural desire to be accountable for their actions and impacts?
People only have to be forced into false accountability. It's not real accountability if:
People only have to be forced into false accountability. It's not real accountability if:
- Someone else sets all the rules and all the benchmarks - and wants you to show that you are wrong because you didn't accomplish something that was always out of reach.
- It's all about the rules. . . rules always leave out too much of the story. If you want people to notice all of their impact, you can't begin by putting blinders on them. Rules are blinders: they limit what we can see.
- There's no one to listen to their account. Accountability is a communal concept: it requires people who want to understand the impact of one person on a group, team or community.
Books about accountability and ethics
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted ge more...0 points
After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path by Jack Kornfield
"Enlightenment does exist," internationa more...0 points
Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Since the publication of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's more...0 points
Leadership is an Art by Max De Pree
Max De Pree claims that leadership isn't a science more...0 points
Accountability
YouTube picks people talking about what they believe it means to be accountable.
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Amazon's Picks on Business and Accountability
Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution: Solving the One Business Problem That Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier
Amazon Price: $10.36 (as of 12/28/2009) 
Doug Petch's ARC Builder Blog
Amazon Price: $0.99 (as of 12/28/2009)
AirTight Systems #1 to #3 Complete Training and Implementation Kit
Amazon Price: (as of 12/28/2009)
Thinking at the root of accountability
Visit NLP Canada Training in Toronto for events that give you fresh perspectives and practical techniques for taking a second look at the issues that matter to you. You'll learn how to pay closer attention to what you want, what you notice and what you do. It's the root of accountability.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byWhat Bloggers are Saying about Accountability
- Your Best Business Asset: An Accountability Partner
- An accountability partner is someone who can help you stay on track toward reaching your goals and creating a life ...
- Accountability Partnership Q&A
- When my accountability partner and I began our relationship, we were navigating the waters of business together. If this makes sense, we didn't know what we didn't know, and that was an important part of learning how to succeed. ...
- Phoenix Blogs — Blog — Small Business Liability Insurance
- A baby business should attending into several things afore purchasing accountability insurance. A BOP (Business Owners Policy) is one amalgamation that can be benign to a baby company. BOPs serve a bifold purpose of giving basal ante ...
by Linda_F
I love to teach people to be wide awake to what they are thinking and communicating. Life is too short to live on auto pilot: we all need to practice... (more)
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