Drives Accountability - Building a Culture Where Responsibility Sticks

What happens when no one knows who’s really responsible?

Accountability forms the backbone of effective leadership, yet it remains one of the most misunderstood organizational traits. 

In this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded, Cynthia Kyriazis and Drea Martin unpack the leadership trait of drives accountability, exploring its dual nature as both personal responsibility and the ability to instill ownership in others.

Diving into the four cultural dimensions they measure - communication, trust, alignment, and accountability - they reveal how accountability often surfaces last in the chain of organizational breakdown. 

Communication typically falters first, followed by trust and alignment, with accountability issues becoming visible only after the others have deteriorated.

You’ll Learn:

•  Why driving accountability involves both personal responsibility and instilling ownership in others
•  The three common struggles: poor follow-through, lack of ownership mindset, and insufficient clarity
•  A simple three-step development plan: encourage ownership, build accountability systems, and create clear structure
•  Why accountability often fails last - after communication, trust, and alignment have already eroded
•  Why organizations consistently value higher accountability — and why it can be taught and developed. 

Whether you’re strengthening your own accountability muscles or coaching others to step up, this episode offers insights and practical steps for building resilient, results-driven teams.

Ready to explore your leadership traits? Connect with us on LinkedIn or visit www.plllab.com to see how we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Leadership Traits Decoded
• 1:12 Defining Accountability and Its Benefits
• 3:00 Characteristics of High Performers
• 5:24 Development Plan for Driving Accountability
• 7:48 Interconnection of Four Culture Dimensions
• 10:30 Key Takeaways and Episode Closing

Transcript

Cynthia Kyriazis: 0:03

Welcome to Leadership Traits Decoded. I'm Cynthia Kyriazis, Chief Experience Officer at the Culture Think Tank.

Drea Martin: 0:10

And I'm Drea Martin, Chief Operating Officer of the Crucible. We are collaborative partners at Performance Leadership Learning Lab, where we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 0:22

Today, we're unpacking the leadership traits essential for building, investing in and scaling successful companies. Our insights come directly from data-driven metrics within our platform's solution. So let's dive in. Hi Drea, how are you today? Yeah, doing well. How are you? I'm good, I'm good. I was thinking about a topic, a trait that we could discuss today. I'm sure that you have a wealth of information about it, but I think it's something. It's one of the four dimensions of culture that we measure with our platform. I've said it before, I've shared it before. The four dimensions are communication and trust, accountability and alignment. Now, communication and trust will come up more often. They carry more weight. There are more out there, so to speak, at all times. Accountability and alignment are very important as well. I think that what I'd like to do is talk about driving accountability. You good with that.

Drea Martin: 1:18

Yeah, happily, let's dig into it. Yeah, do you want to start by defining it or want me to take a crack at it?

Cynthia Kyriazis: 1:23

I usually start from the point, which is not necessarily what we do on this podcast, but I usually kind of start from the point of what are the benefits of a trait for someone who can drive accountability? I can think of several, and I can also think of what is it that causes employees to say, oh, who's responsible for that? Or I'm not taking responsibility for that, it's not my thing. However, it is that they approach that issue of accountability. I will tell you that most of the time when I hear it in my environment, when working with clients, it's like it wasn't clear Somewhere along the line the message of accountability on the team at the levels regarding XYZ projects, somewhere along the line lines crossed or lines weren't shared around, who's responsible for this and when, right? So that kind of goes back to the dimension of communication. That's why they're all tied together right, because one impacts the other. So I was wondering how do you see what the benefit is of being able to drive accountability, and have you had any experiences in discussions with clients?

Drea Martin: 2:26

Yeah, definitely so.

Drea Martin: 2:27

Drives accountability is an interesting one, and it sounds like from what you're saying, this is maybe one of the traits where you truly want everyone on your team to at least have a healthy level of an ability to drive accountability, because then it's not only the fun part about this trait is it's really not only someone being able to instill a sense of responsibility themselves, their personal responsibility and respect around that achievement, but also pushing other people to have that responsibility and own up to something and stay accountable for the things that are within their level of what they're supposed to be in charge of.

Drea Martin: 3:01

So it is an interesting one in that this is one of the traits where, if somebody is lower on this, it's a little bit more difficult, because it does create a gap and then creates problems sometimes with that communication aspect of then you have to really overcompensate for who was supposed to be doing this and who's in charge of making sure the person who's lower in this is keeping up with just making sure everything gets done by the right people. That's an interesting distinction there of something that's not only a personal trait, of like driving your own accountability and having that level of respect for something that you feel like it's a priority and something that has to be focused on and emphasized within a team, but then also that level of pushing that out to people around you and making sure that anyone you're accountable for is also kind of driving their own level of accountability.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 3:47

Yeah, and it goes back to that connection that I see, obviously with communication. If a leader says, okay, andrea, I would like you to be in charge of XYZ and create reports, that's fairly a clean cut. But we don't know what happens after that. We don't know how it filters down, we don't know necessarily how they communicate with one another.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 4:07

That drive of accountability if somebody's trying to drive that, they get likely as with any trait, they get frustrated if they can't get to where they need to get to. Is there two or three definitions? Not definitions, but what does a high-performing individual look like who is challenged by this particular trait? What kind of things happen?

Drea Martin: 4:26

Challenge by this trait would mean that there's probably a few areas where there's issues that arise. First one would be on just individual follow through, like are they letting things slide when maybe things are? Another one is just that general ownership mindset, the sense of taking responsibility for results and for any challenges that are faced or any struggles that kind of come up, any failure that occurs there. And then the final part that I'd say is impacted by someone struggling with drives. Accountability would be a little bit of that clarity and structure. As you mentioned, there would be greater hardship when it comes to communication. You have to lean on these other attributes more because there would be less definition around what success looks like for the group and who's in charge of what and how do we hold the team to that standard?

Cynthia Kyriazis: 5:23

You described the actions that the leader can take to get members of their team that may need help in developing that skill set. What if we said, okay, what would a very simple I don't know two or three step development plan be for a leader who needed to work with someone to drive accountability, or for the leader themselves?

Drea Martin: 5:42

I think the main part in this, when you think about so, the things that are falling apart right, are that follow through that ownership mindset and then some of that clarity and structure, and each of them can be addressed in different ways.

Drea Martin: 5:53

The first place to start would probably be with the ownership mindset Having a conversation with this individual, especially if this is part of development, something they're trying to work on, of encouraging them to step up to the plate, of taking responsibility for things that are theirs to take responsibility for.

Drea Martin: 6:09

And then that next step would be encouraging that follow-through setting up accountability systems that make sure follow-through is taking place and really honing down on either the person who's training this individual or the manager of this individual to make sure that you are deriving accountability that much more in the intermediary time, to make sure that it counts for and helps train that person who's underneath you, who's kind of learning and following through with that necessary support.

Drea Martin: 6:36

And then the final piece of that is really how do you address that clarity and that structure? Part of it is, if there's problems with that, address it. Set more structure. Look at how do we map out and make sure this person's aware of exactly what falls under their purview exactly what they have to take ownership for and then help them kind of understand exactly what it is so that there is no more potential confusion that might lead to either a little bit of an ability to kind of bypass some responsibilities, even just an excuse at the end of the day that you might get of like, oh I didn't know, I was in charge of that. Making that very clear is a great way to support that development.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 7:14

That's really good. It's really interesting because, as you're talking, I'm thinking about, of those four dimensions that I talked about communication, trust, alignment and accountability. We see plenty of information come back with our metrics around the issue of communication first, and trust second, alignment third. But we don't always see a lot of big markers around accountability. Maybe our clients are doing a wonderful job with accountability but nonetheless it's important to hear this because, again, those four things are always interconnected, always interconnected.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 7:48

The other thing I think maybe we can remember is people change. There's change of positions, there's new people, there's people with less experience, with different experience, and therefore changing people requires changing understanding how people work and identifying their skill sets and understanding clearly, as the leader, where their strengths are and where their developmental needs might be, which, of course, the Crucible has great assessments to help us with that, to help leaders with that, but that would be. The other thing is just when you think you know how to work with someone or how to supervise someone and their growth things change.

Drea Martin: 8:23

I wonder if you mentioned, kind of within these four, if the reason accountability is maybe the one you see less kind of markers that indicate issues in that area, is because the first and most noticeable thing would be communication. The next thing is, once that communication's deteriorated a little bit, trust goes. And then, once trust goes, there's a lack of alignment. So it's maybe this sense of it's the last piece to really fall through, because it's multifaceted. Trust has a lot to do. I mean and you could argue otherwise that both of these are both personal and what you put into the organization. But I'd say it seems like accountability is one of the ones where, because there is that personal aspect to it, it may be, as long as someone feels like they're accountable for their own things, that interplay of like holding other people accountable and making sure that there is great clarity and structure around some of that is able to fall through until all of these other factors have diminished and then accountability becomes the problem.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 9:21

A really interesting take on it and I'm going to spend some time thinking about that. In my world and what I do around this trait, it's like everything falls within the first two. Everything that's going to happen happens in communication and trust those two. Yes, it impacts everything else, but I think what you brought up is very interesting and I'm going to think about that some more.

Drea Martin: 9:44

Great, we'll have to think about it more another time, then maybe see what you think, yeah.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 9:48

All right, it's hard. Can you sum up one takeaway for this from your end?

Drea Martin: 9:54

I'd say accountability is really important and I'd leave it at that. I'd say maybe we've established that it's less important than other factors like communication, that there are ways to compensate for accountability and driving accountability. Maybe we hadn't pinpointed so much before. So that's an interesting insight from this conversation. Overall, just say how more of it is typically better, and I know most traits. That's the case, but this is one I will say too in any client interaction they always want to see more drives accountability. It's definitely one where the higher the better is typically the perception of it. So it's interesting.

Cynthia Kyriazis: 10:30

All right. Well, that's really good. My takeaway was to really start to think a little bit more about the connection between those four dimensions of culture that pop up and how we see them in the results of the metrics that we have, and to think a little bit more about the level of communication around that type of thing. That sounds great and, whether it's natural or not, it can be taught. Thank you again for an insightful conversation, drea, talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded. You'll be able to find all our episodes on the Performance Leadership Learning Lab website at wwwplllabcom, or you can listen on your favorite streaming platform.

Drea Martin: 11:15

We'll be back soon to explore the next essential trait. Until then, feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn if you have any questions or ideas.