Demystifying Accountability: How to Hold Yourself and Others Accountable

Accountability. We often shudder when we hear the word. We might think of blame, shame, and tense conversations. It’s not pretty, and most of us would rather avoid anything that even smells like this.

But accountability is really important. Without it, our team culture disintegrates quickly, as it morphs to anything that is allowed to happen, and performance degrades just as quickly.

And Scrum is built on accountability. Some key accountability quotes from the Scrum Guide include:

• “The Developers are…accountable for…holding each other accountable as professionals.”
• “The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team.”
• “The Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness.”

Accountability is critical to effective product development.

Defining Accountability

So, what’s a healthy way to look at accountability?

Let’s break down the word into two parts: account and ability. Said another way, accountability is the ability to give an account. 

Healthy accountability is empirical, providing transparency of the actions taken, inspection of the results, and adaptation to identify next steps.

As a Scrum Master, I’ve often been frustrated by a lack of accountability. I’ll see Developers not holding each other accountable when someone doesn’t do what they said they would, the Product Owner not holding themselves accountable when the value of the product is degrading, and leaders around the team not holding themselves accountable when they interrupt the team or don’t address the challenges they agreed to.

So, I’ve taught about the value and criticality of accountability, facilitated engaging retrospectives to invite the team to hold itself accountable, and coached leaders with powerful questions. Often, there is little impact.

Self-Accountability

So how do we, as leaders, foster a culture of accountability? By starting with your own self-accountability.

• Define Your Commitments: Clearly articulate your commitments, both personal and professional. Write them down so you don’t forget or ignore them.
• Create a Plan: You don’t need anything fancy or long-term, just a few steps that you will act on to fulfill your commitments.
• Schedule a Self-Review: Set a specific time to reflect on your progress and assess your actions.
• Retrospect: Evaluate your performance honestly. What worked well? What didn't? What can you improve upon? What makes sense to do next?
• Share and Discuss: Hold yourself accountable with your team, openly communicating your self-accountability practices. Encourage feedback and learn from the experiences of others.

Good leadership is holding yourself accountable and inviting your team to do the same.

Powerful leadership is engaging others in your self-accountability activities - you’re mentoring them in the skills they need to hold themselves accountable.

Others-Accountability

But if your team members or leaders aren’t holding themselves accountable, what do you do? You ask them to give an account.

• “Hey, I noticed that the [activity] you said would be done yesterday isn’t complete. Can you help me understand what’s going on?”
• “In the last retrospective, we all agreed do [activity] so that we get [outcome], and it doesn’t look like you’ve done that. Can we talk about it?”
• “We’ve discussed how you were working to improve the registration process so more people can easily complete it. The latest metrics don’t reflect an improvement in registrations. I’d like to understand what’s happened - can you tell me more?”

It’s really this simple: point out an apparent discrepancy and invite a response.

Point out an apparent discrepancy and invite a response.

This powerful simplicity is based on three critical things:

1) A previous agreement the person was committed to

If there’s no agreement, the accountability conversation will revert to a disagreement about the commitment. In this case, learn together how to have clearer commitments, even writing them down together.

2) An invitation to explore in conversation

If you don’t invite further conversation, you loose the opportunity to understand what happened and help the other person figure out what to do next…and this is how you are mentoring them in their own self-accountability.

3) A relational container of connection

Without the relational container of connection, the other person will be unconvinced that both of you care about the outcome (stance: alignment) and you’re trying to understand (stance: curiosity). This leads to defensiveness, which plays out in reduced transparency.

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