Accountability

He was someone I worked with very closely, knew very well; a very smart leader who understood how to use the power of his position. He invited the business unit manager who managed the area to a meeting, and asked me to sit in, as I played a supporting role for safety and environmental. 

So, there we were, the three of us sitting in the conference room right off the Site Leader’s office. The first thing he said was, “Thank you for being honest about this event.” Then questions were asked, but not in an intimidating or blaming kind of way. I wasn’t the least bit surprised.

• “Please explain, what went wrong?”
• “As you see it, what were the potential consequences for what happened?”
• “What do you think could be done to make sure something like this does not happen again?”

That all happened a decade ago, at a time when I was learning the practice and process of managing accountability found in Alive and Well. I wasn’t just learning, I was living it. I watched the body language of both leaders, the tone, and the atmosphere in the meeting.

Now, when I find myself teaching leaders safety leadership best practices, I look back and appreciate this case as the perfect example of a leader holding someone accountable. 

My Experience

I spent my forty-year career working for big companies in the paper and pulp industry. While there were a few leaders who gave me a great appreciation for the practice of holding people accountable, I can tell you most of the leaders I worked for never used the practice. At the first company I worked for, managing accountability wasn’t part of the company culture; pinning the blame was. Looking back, when it came to managing accountability, I can see my mistakes in developing the people who worked for me.

Managing accountability falls between the relatively simple process of correcting behavior and formal corrective action. I say relatively simple process of correcting behavior because there’s a lot more to correcting and coaching behavior than just telling someone to “Put your PPE on!” For those who just won’t to wear theirs, there’s what is known as corrective action such as verbal warnings and letters in files. 

Holding people accountable is one of the most important things leaders can do to lead and manage safety performance.

The Process

When something goes wrong, pinning blame can succeed in getting someone to not make that same mistake again. But they’re primarily motivated by fear, and fear of the leader. Managing accountability is much more a learning process: the leader is in a sense playing the role of teacher, increasing the capacity of the follower to understand, change, and do things differently.  Accountability creates buy in as to how something needs to be done correctly.

Holding followers accountable isn’t something leaders are naturally inclined to do. It takes learning and motivation and self-discipline to put something new and different into practice. It takes a bigger investment of time on the part of the leader. And it’s very much a two-way conversation.

Still, even leaders who know how to manage accountability don’t always practice it. Culture makes it hard. Managing accountability requires a leader to get out of their comfort zone, and themselves change and do things differently. If there are no expectations set or reinforcement from their leaders, they’re just not very likely to do something that isn’t easy. 

So, back to blame, which is easy.

Learning the Process

Managing accountability starts with learning the process. It’s not a hard process to learn, but defining the term does require some explanation, particularly for students for whom English is not their first language. My teaching is carried out largely in South America, and that is generally the case.
 
Dictionaries translate the term “accountability” as “responsibility.” As we know, in English there is a significant difference between those words, and “responsibility” is not the word that explains the essence of holding someone accountable. So, I translated it to the Portuguese term “prestar contas” which better aligns with how the process works in practice, meaning to “render an account.” 

That makes sense, and when I teach, I see body language telling me leaders understand the process. They also agree it’s important, and there’s a wide space between correcting behavior and corrective action that needs to be managed by accountability.

Students regularly tell me two things. First, they totally agree with the idea of holding people accountable. Then they say, “I’d like to do this, but I don’t have the time to do it.” It does take time. But considering all the problems it can solve, holding people is a very valuable use of time. 

Teaching leaders the process and giving them the chance in the classroom to practice can make a big difference in a leader’s use of the process.

Where The Process Starts

Finally, there’s one more very important thing that makes practicing this a tough challenge for the leader: the need to fully understand what went wrong before holding a follower accountable. You can’t hold someone accountable if you don’t know what they did or didn’t do. Finding that out calls for a different process: investigation.

Yes, that is obvious. But think about the implications of that simple statement. Is accountability to be practiced only when there has been a formal investigation done and report written? 

That takes us back to that meeting I sat in on, a decade ago. The Unit Manager looked into what went wrong, found problems, including some of his doing, and brought them to the attention of his boss. That’s what led to the meeting.

What would cause a leader to do something like that? 

I see it as an example of an important principle of safety leadership: what we like to call The Principle of Honest Dialog: leaders and followers owe it to each other to be honest about safety.
 
Newton Scavone
November 2025