The Three Levels of Leadership - Scouller Leadership Blog » Shared Accountability
Shared Accountability
Last year, I was coaching the President of a large European business. The subject of “accountability” arose. She remarked that, “Shared accountability is no accountability.”
In my CEO days, I would have agreed with her. Like most corporate men, I assumed that one person in the team must hold accountability for results on behalf of the business. Eleven years on, I hold a different view.
Since those days, I’ve learned the important difference between a “working group” and a real “team”. In fact, in my CEO days I didn’t realise these two ideas existed – I was only aware of “teams”. But most executive so-called “teams” are really working groups.
The distinguishing feature of a working group is the single leader – the person who holds other members accountable for their individual performance. Leaders in this scenario are like the hub of a wheel, connected by spokes to their colleagues. The key relationships are one-to-one between leader and the “followers” … even though the group might get together to share information, make decisions and coordinate actions.
But in a real team you find shared accountability stemming from shared leadership.
In fact, that’s the main distinguishing difference between teams and working groups.
Yes, there may be an official leader in a real team, but all members hold themselves accountable for their own contribution and are prepared to hold others accountable for theirs if they feel they are underperforming. They don’t wait for the leader to intervene – they speak up.
You’ll see this in genuine “high performance teams” – which, by the way, is an overused term in business because they are so rare.
Examples include elite sports teams and Special Forces units in the army. People I’ve spoken to say that if you were watching such teams in action, it would be hard to spot who the leader was by observing everyone’s behaviour. Why? Because everyone is holding everyone else accountable. So, perhaps surprisingly, shared accountability means greater peer pressure and accountability, not no accountability.
The trouble is, in industry, we assume someone has to carry the can if it all goes wrong, meaning that when we use the word “accountability” our real intent is often having someone to blame. As in, “I recognise the CEO wasn’t directly responsible for what his people did lower down in the organisation, but he had to be held accountable.” What we really want is a scapegoat.
I feel that we in industry have a crude, incomplete understanding of accountability and we’re using outdated presuppositions (for example, that “you can’t share leadership” or “we are a team”). Time, I believe, to think again about working groups, teams, accountability and the assumptions we’re making.
The author is James Scouller, an executive coach. His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published in May 2011. You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com. If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews. If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE. You can read more about his executive coaching services at The Scouller Partnership’s website.
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