When no one calls it out

Accountability is not performance management. It is not about control or punishment. In a leadership team, accountability is something quieter and harder. It is the moment when something slips and no one says anything. A missed commitment. A falling standard. A pattern that everyone sees but no one names.

This is not about discipline. It is about presence. In serious teams, accountability is built into the air. You know when you have not delivered. And you know someone will ask. Not to punish you, but to name what happened and decide what to do next.

I was not always good at this. As a young manager, I avoided conflict. I believed, wrongly, that saying nothing was a kind of kindness. That a professional would fix it quietly, and that silence was a sign of trust. Later, I realised that avoidance creates drift. It signals that standards are optional. It leaves people uncertain, even the good ones. And it tells the team that discomfort is more dangerous than failure.

You cannot build a functioning leadership team without accountability. But it is easy to let it slip.

When structure is there, but pressure is not

I once led a management team in China that had all the visible signs of structure. We tracked actions. We assigned owners. We followed a clear process in our meetings. The meetings were genuinely enjoyable, lively, social, and often full of laughter. Everyone said yes. Everyone agreed.

But nothing moved.

After a few months, I realised we were creating alignment in the room and letting it evaporate the moment the call ended. Because the meetings often ran long, we never made time to review what had been promised. Sometimes the same actions were agreed again, without anyone noticing. Everyone was still engaged, but no one was really being held to anything.

The problem was not the team. It was me. I had built a structure that looked right, but I had not followed through. There was no tension. No moment where someone had to answer for what had, or had not, been done.

Accountability without follow-up is not accountability. It is ceremony.

When ownership does not reach the ground

In another project, I had been working hard to structure decision-making. I helped set up forums, coached project managers, and built what I thought was a clear governance flow. From the top, it looked sound.

Then one of the junior architects came to me and said, “Nothing is working. Why can’t you take some accountability and make decisions? Be clear about who is supposed to be doing what.”

I was surprised. I felt I had been doing exactly that. But I listened. I asked questions. And eventually, I traced the issue back to a structural failure. Our decisions were not arriving. Somewhere between the management layer and the team level, they were being filtered out. Well-meaning gatekeepers had decided their job was to protect the teams from management. They had made it their mission to defend the developers from top-down influence. And in doing so, they had broken the system.

The teams were not rejecting leadership. They just were not seeing it.

That was a difficult lesson. Accountability is not just what happens in the meeting. It is whether decisions land, clearly and consistently, where the work happens. If people on the floor do not know who is responsible, and do not see consequences, then accountability is gone, even if the spreadsheet says otherwise.

When the failure is yours, and you do not flinch

The most difficult lesson in accountability came when I led a project that failed late.

We were four months from release when I realised we had eight months of work left. The plan did not hold. The estimates were off. The teams were scattered. The signals were clear, but they had been missed. And the responsibility was mine.

I called the lead producer and explained the situation. He did not take it well. If we had been in the same room, I think he might have thrown a chair. He shouted, questioned my judgment, and made it clear that he blamed me.

I let him speak. Then I said, “This is on me. We made a mistake. I own it.”

I proposed we go to the VP together. I made it clear he was not responsible for what had happened. The failure belonged to me and my team.

In the meeting with the VP, things got tense. He asked questions. Pressed hard. Looked for someone to blame. I told him the same thing. “This is mine. If you want my resignation, say the word.”

He didn’t. The conversation shifted. We began to talk about how to recover and how to reset. The room moved from blame to solution. And I was no longer the problem. I was part of the fix.

This is what accountability does. It does not protect you from criticism. It earns you the right to lead again.

How to design for accountability

You cannot hold people accountable if the structure does not support it. Politeness will always win. The team will revert to updates. Real follow-through only happens when the room is designed to expect it.

There are a few structural habits I have seen work.

First, close the loop. Every serious decision needs follow-up. That does not mean a status email. It means the topic returns to the table, and the owner is asked directly, “What happened?” You do not need to be aggressive. You just need to be consistent. The team must believe the conversation will come back.

Second, name ownership in the moment. Do not assign tasks vaguely. Ask, “Who owns this?” and do not move on until someone says, “I do.” If no one raises their hand, you have not decided anything. Write it down. Say it aloud. Name the owner, not the function.

Third, track decisions in plain sight. Keep a living record, not hidden in a folder, but open to the whole team. Not to control people, but to remind them. The visibility itself creates pressure. Everyone can see what was agreed, what was delivered, and what fell through.

Fourth, make space for peers to challenge each other. If the leader is the only one giving feedback, the team will not self-correct. Ask regularly, “Are we still holding the standard?” Make it normal to say, “I don’t think that landed.” Not just upward. Sideways.

And fifth, stay with the tension. When something goes wrong, hold the moment. Do not soften it. Do not deflect. Ask directly, “Why did this slip?” and listen. That is not cruelty. It is respect for the work. And over time, it becomes culture.

What it feels like when no one holds the line

In teams where accountability fades, the change is not immediate. It starts with missed deadlines no one mentions. It shows up in vague feedback and conversations that avoid tension. Everyone stays polite. But over time, standards fall.

The people who care the most begin to hesitate. They look around and realise that no one is naming the gap. So they stop pushing. They start managing around the system. And slowly, the team shifts from ambition to protection.

People do not speak up because they are lazy or political. They stay quiet because they think someone else will step in. Or they are afraid of damaging the relationship. Or they believe the bar has already moved.

And that is how serious teams lose their edge.

A public failure: Uber before the fall

Uber’s internal culture under Travis Kalanick became a textbook example of accountability failure. Toxic behaviours were tolerated. Employees raised concerns about harassment and ethics. But leadership looked the other way.

The company was growing fast. Results were strong. And no one wanted to be the one to slow things down.

Eventually, the system collapsed. The scandals became public. The founder was removed. But the damage had already been done. When accountability is avoided at the top, dysfunction spreads quietly until it is no longer quiet.

What accountability actually sounds like

In serious teams, accountability is not dramatic. It is quiet. Normal. Built into the way people speak.

Someone says, “We agreed to move this forward. Has it happened?”
Or, “This is your area. What are we doing about it?”
Or simply, “That didn’t land. What is the next step?”

No one raises their voice. No one needs to. The tone is not blame. It is focus.

People know they will be asked. And they ask each other, not as performance, but as habit. Not because something has gone wrong, but because this is how the team stays sharp.

That is what real accountability feels like. It is not tension. It is not fear. It is clarity, reinforced in language, over time.

One book, if you struggle with this

If there is one book I would recommend here, it is Kim Scott – Radical Candor. Ignore the title if it puts you off. What matters is the core idea: that real accountability means you care enough to challenge someone directly. That you speak early, speak clearly, and do not flinch when it becomes uncomfortable. Scott does not write in theory. She writes from leadership failure, and from trying to do better next time.