Why leaders find accountability difficult (and steps to improve)
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Accountability remains one of the hardest parts of leadership because modern organisations are complex systems. Multiple factors may prevent accountability from taking hold in an organisation, including...
Shifts in structures
Blurred reporting lines
Strategies being redefined or unclear
Changes in expectations
With these factors at play, maintaining both personal and systemic accountability becomes a constant leadership challenge.
In our State of Culture Strategy Alignment Report 2025, the management of poor employee performance was identified as the third-highest barrier to strategic success by HR professionals, the same as when we ran the survey in 2017. This is because poor performance isn’t addressed in a timely or appropriate manner. Why? Usually, because true accountability isn’t present in an organisation.
What is accountability in business?
A common misconception of accountability is that it’s viewed by managers as a behaviour, when it’s actually a relationship. It goes both ways. Carolyn Taylor describes it as a contract between two people: the Asker and the Giver. When each plays their role with clarity, honesty, and skill, performance becomes predictable, trust strengthens, and surprises disappear.
There are mindsets and skills that the asker and the giver must develop to ensure that accountability is met and delivered. To find out more on this, read our blog, Accountability is a partnership.
Personal reasons leaders find accountability difficult
1. The psychological barrier
Leaders, under pressure, often slip into self-protection mode. They make excuses, point blame, or deflect - especially when the system around them is unclear or unstable. Research across sectors consistently shows that fragmented systems, unclear decision rights, and cultural resistance all contribute to leaders finding accountability difficult.
2. The social barrier
Leaders fear being seen as harsh or as the one damaging relationships by direct reports or peers. The challenge intensifies in matrixed organisations where leaders rely on people who don’t report to them, e.g in global companies with shared services or cross-functional responsibilities.
3. Misalignment between authority and accountability
Many leaders carry responsibility for outcomes but lack the authority to make decisions. This “accountability without authority” dynamic creates frustration, slows progress, and leads to burnout.
4. Changing systems make accountability unstable
Large global organisations undergoing transformation face complex governance, overlapping responsibilities, and inconsistent priorities, all of which weaken accountability. In periods of change, systems often move faster than the people within them.
Organisational culture can impede accountability
Accountability is not merely a personal behaviour; it is a cultural property.
Organisations with strong accountability systems tend to demonstrate:
Clarity of roles, responsibilities, and decision rights
Alignment across leadership
Faster execution of the strategy
Higher trust and transparency across teams
Studies of cross-industry organisations show that accountability strengthens when systems reinforce clarity, commitment, and consequences, and when leaders at every level understand who is answerable to whom.
Strategic alignment research shows that organisations succeed when senior leaders are not only committed to a new direction but fully accountable for executing it.
5 challenges of accountability in leadership
1. Taking on too much responsibility
Leaders frequently compensate for system gaps by doing the work themselves, especially in organisations where responsibility is clear, but authority is not. This links into ‘The Hero’ complex for many leaders, which is not sustainable for the leader or the business.
2. Struggling with empathy
Empathy becomes counterproductive when leaders set lower standards instead of supporting others to meet expectations. This is often observed in cultures where leaders avoid conflict or fear appearing unsupportive.
3. Misaligned executive agendas
Global studies of leadership misalignment show that competing priorities at the top create organisational drift and weaken accountability throughout the system.
4. Holding people to account without formal power
Matrix structures, shared services, and cross-functional teams frequently produce accountability gaps. Leaders are accountable for outputs they cannot directly influence.
5. Complexity during transformation
Major global organisations report that transformation increases uncertainty, making clarity and accountability harder to maintain unless explicitly built into the change process.
The result of a lack of accountability
When accountability collapses, especially during organisational change, predictable consequences emerge:
Misalignment and conflicting priorities: Leaders pursue competing agendas, creating strategic drift.
Siloed behaviour: Teams duplicate work, operate in isolation, and struggle to coordinate.
Poor decision-making: Lack of authority and unclear ownership creates bottlenecks and delays.
Erosion of trust and morale: Employees feel disconnected from strategy and lose faith in leadership.
Without systemic accountability, even the most talented leaders cannot drive sustainable results.
6 steps to improve accountability in organisations
Build accountability into your culture: Ensure accountability is built into your culture by creating psychological safety to hold each other to account at all levels of the business. Ensure leaders take their share of responsibility for failures and work with their teams to understand how they can help prevent the same issue in the future.
Define clear expectations and roles: Make sure targets are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, and communicate to employees how their work affects the bigger picture.
Remember the 5 Cs of Accountability: Clarity, Commitment, Communication, Collaboration, and Consequences.
Create time for feedback: Don’t just talk about accountability. Show you mean business by ensuring meetings are created that allow for feedback loops at all levels of the business.
Role model accountability: Lead by example. When leaders admit to their mistakes, and take ownership of team results, it reinforces a culture of accountability, and employees will follow in their footsteps.
Review and enforce performance management systems: Don’t fall at the final hurdle. You can model all the right behaviours, but if you don’t have the systems in place to reward high performance and hold poor performance to account, all your work will be for nothing. (By setting SMART targets earlier on, you’ll make performance easier to track and manage performance)
Give employees a framework and training: With a framework to follow, you set employees up for success. We often use the accountability ladder, which helps establish what level of accountability you’re at (denial, blame) to where you need to get to (finding or implementing a solution). We go through this and other tools and frameworks in more detail in our accountability workshop. Request a brochure.
When accountability has worked well: Real-life case studies
Elis’ employee “voice” and management accountability
With 4,000+ staff across 30 sites, Elis recognised that strengthening accountability needed to include not just holding workers to goals but also holding leaders accountable to employees. They launched an Employee Voice initiative to improve accountability from the ground up. They implemented company-wide engagement surveys (74% participation growing to 79%), created Employee Voice Committees at each site, and empowered local managers to act on feedback.
As a result, leaders committed to act on the survey results through transparent communication and addressing issues raised by employees. Local managers at each of the company’s 30 sites developed site-specific action plans addressing issues raised by their teams, and formed Employee Voice Committees at every site, ensuring continuous dialogue between staff and management and monitoring the progress of improvements.
Results: By treating employee feedback as a core part of accountability, Elis achieved notable improvements in engagement, retention, and productivity. In the two years after the programme’s launch, the company implemented over 500 concrete changes based on employee suggestions – ranging from quick wins to larger projects. The impact was measurable: company-wide employee satisfaction scores rose by 20.8%, and employee turnover dropped by 13.8% over the period.
Quilter’s culture transformation centered around accountability
Quilter, a UK-based wealth management company, launched a culture survey and board review which revealed gaps in key behaviours, such as a need for greater ambition, accountability, and a growth mindset across the organisation.
A dedicated Culture Activation Team and 50+ employee “Culture Champions” gathered feedback every few weeks, ensuring broad input and buy-in. Through a phased process, they created four new company values, which included “Do the Right Thing”, which was designed to reinforce accountability and ethical responsibility in daily decisions.
Results: Quilter’s values-driven, employee-owned approach to accountability received “overwhelming support” from employees, with many reporting that they felt proud and inspired to have shaped the new cultural direction. Because the values were built collaboratively, there was a strong sense of ownership and accountability among staff to live them out. These values have strengthened internal collaboration and trust, as colleagues hold themselves and each other accountable to the agreed standards.
Amazon's leadership ownership
Amazon’s culture expects leaders to “own the problem,” and Jeff Bezos has publicly modelled this by taking responsibility for failures. This is a visible signal that accountability is expected at every level, which in turn will encourage its adoption
Support Your Leadership Through the Unlocking Programme
If your organisation is navigating rapid change, misalignment, or accountability gaps, our Unlocking Leadership Programme helps leaders:
Build clarity and alignment even in fluid systems
Strengthen cross-functional accountability
Hold others to account without relying on hierarchy
Communicate expectations clearly and consistently
Role model the accountability behaviours that shift culture