7 Ways to Practice Accountability With Heart
You elevate your leadership when you express your heart.
Weak leaders hide from heart. All they care about is the bottom line.
Heart is the strongest thing about you. You project strength when you declare your heart.
Heart expresses noble reasons.
What noble reasons do you have for accountability, initiative, engagement, or ownership? Let’s focus on accountability as an example.
A rudimentary reason for accountability:
Accountability in its base form is about getting things done. But it’s heartless if leadership is only about getting things done.
When accountability is only about getting things done, it’s pushy, self-serving, manipulative, and unsatisfying.
7 heart-based reasons for accountability:
Heart-based reasons honor your best self and serve the best interest of others.
#1. Trust.
Your heart might say, “I want us to trust each other. Accountability demonstrates that we count on each other.”
#2. Stability.
Your heart might say, “Accountability builds stable environments. Stability provides predictability. Chaos prevails when we aren’t accountable to each other.”
#3. Humility.
Your heart might say, “It’s humbling to hold ourselves accountable.”
Mutual accountability levels the playing field.
#4. Pride.
Your heart might say, “I want everyone to feel proud that we depend on each other. There’s no self-respect when you let others down.”
#5. Enjoyment.
Your heart might say, “I want us to enjoy coming to work. Work is more enjoyable when we all do what we say.”
#6. Teamwork.
Your heart might say, “I want us to feel like we’re all pulling together. There’s no teamwork when we can’t depend on each other.”
#7. Connection.
Your heart might say, “I want us to feel like we’re part of something bigger than ourselves. So lets be accountable to each other.”
Heart-based reasons provide clarity, focus, and energy for teams.
Why do we sometimes see lack of heart in leadership?
What heart-based reasons might you have for accountability, initiative, engagement, or ownership?
Why do we sometimes see lack of heart in leadership? Leaders with an ego to feed comes to mind, all them and no one else. they may only look at the bottom line, profit and getting the job done. They need to remember the clients and workers see their issues and may come back to haunt them in future projects. Letting people know they are appreciated speaks volumes.
What heart-based reasons might you have for accountability, initiative, engagement, or ownership? The heart can drive you to “being the best with compassion” towards your fellow workers, students, familty, clients and life in general. If you practice accountability for yourself the other will follow, and if you have the iniative to share these practices with others they all will own it. ( Unless they are heartless and these people do exist).
Why do we sometimes see lack of heart in leadership? Insecurity and blind ambition are two reasons that come to mind. The person who doubts their own abilities will not recognize and appreciate the abilities of the people they serve. Those with ambition propelling them forward at all costs will use people to get things done.
What a powerful article Dan! As we honor our best self AND serve the best interest of others focused on our shared Mission, Vision and Values — it is a win-win for everyone — all of our customers including our co-workers. Thanks for your daily blog . It is truly helpful to my working on my relationship with others at work and at home.
Dan, I hear so much on accountability as a way of holding people to do what the organization expects. Leading with heart allows followers to understand the why and the rationale for moving in a specific direction. Your points really punctuate the “one another” emphasis of team work. We are there for one another regardless and provide support, encourage, and challenge so all of us can excel.
I have always found that if you care about people long before you need to hold them accountable, it makes it a lot easier to hold them accountable when you need to. Sometimes you never have to hold them accountable because they don’t want to let you down.
Why do we sometimes see lack of heart in leadership? Because for 90% of the population, leadership and accountability really are only about getting things done. The person at the very top can talk about trust, stability, enjoyment and connection in the blog or the quarterly comic, but to pretty much everyone below that level, nobody will give a damn how you’ve grown trust, stability and enjoyment if the bottom line is a penny short.
This is my new favourite post of yours, so far Dan!
Heart is an interesting topic because it is also partly about perception. A lot of the other comments so far are about leaders who havr huge egos and cut throat and that’s why there is no heart. Some people would probably apply this to myself, however, that is an incorrect perception. Learning to express my heart is something that has been an ongoing process, I have always cared about my team but I haven’t always made that known to them. Having the team know that you care is so important but depending on your team it is not always easy to express. Thanks for the thought provoking tea break read Dan ☺.
Whatever level of “heartfulness” one’s leader might have, showing some “heart” at work is up to the individual worker. And, thankfully, I might add.
Why do we sometimes see lack of heart in leadership? Guess before I can analyse others, I think I need to look within myself – my own heart! Lots of people have a lot issues within themselves , including myself. Before I point a finger at others, 4 points back at me!!! There is leadership qualities in all individuals , unfortunately no one see it!!!
What heartbased reasons might one have for initiative, accountability,engagement or ownership?
Frankly speaking in my opinion , one must feel that one is a part of a bigger piece! One needs to be passionate and caring! When everyone top or bottom feels that they are all equally valued and a part of a jigsaw puzzle, one will engage better. Without one taking the first step and sharing together , holding each other and be supportive of each other, there is no ownership. Ownership belongs to all!