I have read many leadership books and blogs on accountability, and most talk about the importance of holding yourself accountable to the highest standards and accepting responsibility for your actions. It is important that you are not trying to find excuses when things go wrong or that you are trying to shift the blame to other. On the contrary when things go wrong, try first to understand what you could have done differently to change the outcome – and trust me it is very liberating to start accepting responsibility!

Starting to accept responsibility will increase your influence, help you grow, and more importantly it will evolve the mindset of your teams who are really just mirroring the behavior of their leaders.

I remember working within teams with everyone being more focused on covering up their own mistakes and looking to point out faults and problems of others, than working together as a team trying to get better. Why? Because their leader could not accept responsibility for his own mistakes and was more focused on blaming others around him than working on making things better and learning from when things went wrong.

Creating a culture where people are not afraid to step out of their comfort zone and try new things, make mistakes, even fail, but then stand up and try again, is the foundation of building a winning team and a successful organization.

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