Several years ago, I heard Ari Weinzweig— co-founding partner of the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses in Ann Arbor— speak. During the Q+A, someone in the audience described a team member who kept missing expectations, and Ari asked a simple question that shifted the entire room:
“When did he agree to those objectives?”
That was the moment I began rethinking accountability. Your team members have to say yes before they can be held accountable. If they didn’t agree, then what you have isn’t accountability, it’s pressure.
As Ari writes, “While a top-down imposition of accountability can quiet opposition for the near-term, mostly, over time, it just gets compliance.”
And compliance is not what most leaders actually want. We want engagement. Ownership. Initiative. Pride.
Empowerment Is Harder Than Control
Empowerment requires clarity, conversation, and consent. It means resisting the urge to step in, fix, or push. It means letting people take responsibility because they chose it.
Peter Block put it this way: “Accountability at its best is never imposed; instead, it’s internally driven. People do not resist change; they resist coercion.”
When I work with leaders on accountability, we start with one simple shift: don’t impose accountability—build it together.
Here are three questions that help:
- Do you understand what success looks like?
- Do you feel confident you can follow through?
- Is there anything you need from me or the organization to make that possible?
These questions turn accountability into a shared agreement. They make room for autonomy and support in the same conversation.
The Payoff
Mutual accountability takes more patience upfront, but the payoff is enormous. People rise to commitments they help create. And as Ari reminds us, “Maybe accountability is not about making demands, but about the willingness to engage, daringly, in awkward conversations.”
That willingness—to have the real conversation instead of issuing the directive—is what separates leaders who get compliance from leaders who build ownership.
If you want to go deeper into Ari’s thinking, here’s his essay on accountability (it’s long and worth every word). You can also find all of Ari’s books and pamphlets on leadership, life and business at Zingermanspress.com.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
2 Responses
You can hold someone to account, but if they never had the authority to negotiate they are a lot less likely to take responsibility.
RACI has bastardised the meaning of these words, but if you stick to the actual meanings – if you have accountability, authority, and responsibility in balance, you get ownership.