If you don’t want to be held accountable, are you really interested in being successful?

O.K., I’ll admit it, I’m evolving – or some would call it devolving – in my beliefs about motivation. There’s been a growing belief for decades about all motivation being internal, that we can only hold people accountable if they’re properly self-motivated, and that imposing expectations on people is useless unless they have first imposed these expectations on themselves. I’ve heard it all about self-starters and people who “get it” and people who have “work ethics.” All of these things are real, and all of them matter – an ideal employee has an engine that drives them to do their best – but everyone needs to be held accountable by others. Everyone.

I’ve had my fill of managers who refuse to challenge their people. They hide behind their “belief” that it’s not a manager's job to put their feet on the gas pedal, create high expectations, and create consequences for mediocre performance, but rather just to “hire good people and get out of the way.” This is one of those business truisms that deserves to be buried out behind the barn. And I’ve had my fill of managers who don’t hold their people accountable for anything other than technical competence and financial results. There’s so much more that we need to be held accountable for – for our contribution to the well-being of others, to create new ways to run the business more effectively and to create truly superior customer outcomes. 

Your best people will want to be held accountable because they want to be successful. I’ve done my best work for the managers and clients who expected the most from me, and who had the courage to tell me when I wasn’t doing my best work.

Not holding people accountable isn’t good leadership – in fact, you could argue that you dishonor people when you accept something less than their best.