What's the Difference Between Accountability and Responsibility?

What’s the difference between responsibility and accountability?

In the land of manager-dom.

How are you accountable for the work but not responsible for it? 

It takes a shift in mindset, communication and tracking – in order to hold your team members responsible for their work.

One of the biggest challenges I hear from managers is around accountability.  How do you get the person to do the thing, when they say they are going to do it.

A question I often ask is: how are you holding them responsible? 

- Are you following up? 
- Are you asking about their process? 
- Are you holding them to their due date?
- Holding regular 1:1's to discuss pitfalls, and brainstorm together?

Or are you sweeping in and cleaning up the mess?

Many a client gets a little squirmy when it comes to THEIR part of holding their directs responsible.  They just want them to DO IT.

Which is absolutely appropriate.

But if they aren’t, then YOUR behavior has to change. 

Maybe not forever, but just until you can create a new pattern. 

This isn’t micro-managing, it’s allowing freedom in the how, while holding them to the when.

When you hold them to the when.  You follow up.  You don’t let them out of their responsibility. 

And you definitely DON’T do their work for them and sometimes you let them fail, so they learn how to do it better next time.

Think about it from a ships perspective:

Accountability:   Is the captain’s commitment to reaching the destination safely, ensuring the crew and the ship’s overall success.

For you it might mean, acknowledging the results, good or bad, and learning from every wave encountered and encouraging your team to tackle the next one.

Responsibility:  The crew members on the ship - managing the navigation, sails or engine, communication, making food and providing clean water. 

It's about each crew member understanding their role and executing to the best of their ability.  And if someone forgets their duty, and a mistake happens, chances are they won’t do the same mistake a second time.  It’s the collective effort that propels the ship forward, with everyone knowing their duties and actively contributing to the shared goal. 

A well-led ship doesn’t just sail smoothly; it weathers storms and lands on new shores that it might not have knowledge of, but then shares a pint of rum and celebrates that you got there together.