Remember your first “accountability group?” That was so awful! You sat down with someone you knew and were supposed to lay out every sin and secret that you have ever committed or hid. Yuck! Truthfully, that has nothing to do with accountability.

More and more organizations and creative teams are learning the rhythms of accountability. It’s actually a really healthy and necessary requirement to any culture that plans to grow, succeed, and steward momentum.

Accountability is not just making sure we do what we have committed to. That’s part of it, but it is so much more:

• Accountability is about encouragement. It’s important to praise people when they succeed. This is especially true of artists. Celebrating wins and noticing the rhythm of accountability when people do well – and vocalizing it – helps build good culture and puts equity in our relationship tanks. This gives us the depth to be able to deal with harder issues as they arise.
• Accountability is about education. We learn more when things go wrong than we do when things are all good. Accountability provides the right environment for coaching and correcting – things necessary to improve.
• Accountability is about communication. It requires us to set and clarify expectations. Without clear expectations, targets get missed – especially in creative environments where our products are so subjective. Creative teams need to spend a disproportionate amount of time in this, followed by visiting the scoreboard to ensure that the expectations have been met.
• Accountability is about responsibility. If we say we’re going to do something, do it. Under promise and over deliver. Accountability, at its core, is being who we say we are and keeping our word.

How do you approach accountability? Are you buliding healthy accountability on your team?