When executives refuse to accept accountability, they think no one will notice. They begin to “eat their own dog food”. That is to say, they think that if they say it, others will accept it as the truth. In most cases, they DO believe it themselves. That goes for accountability. When they blame others, they think that their teams are too ignorant to see the reality that it is the executive themselves who are responsible.

In these cases, the damage goes well beyond the illusion they have created because they cannot accept their own shortcomings. In doing so, they have eroded the confidence others had in them. They have done irreparable damage to their ability to lead. Their teams will be skeptical of everything they say and their ability to lead will be severely diminished.

On the other hand, accepting appropriate responsibility is an act of courage and leadership. It does not diminish the executive’s image with their teams. It enhances it. Oakley Advisors coaches help executives to see this simple equation and learn the key leadership lessons of accountability.

Jerry Kleinhaus
Oakley Advisors
Certified Executive Coaching
Cincinnati, Ohio
Nationwide Executive Development and Talent Management Services

When executives are totally focused on their own invincibility, it becomes impossible for them to accept or even acknowledge that someone else may have a better idea. If they think they have heard a better idea or a different viewpoint that has merit, they may be afraid to acknowledge it. Why? Because it might be perceived as a weakness. In our winner society, everyone acts as if only their opinion counts and that they are always right. If someone else has a better idea that implies that person is number one and you have lost the competition. Your are number 2. That is unacceptable at any costs.

The easiest way to describe this tragic byproduct of this behavior is blindness. Blindness to taking advantage of the pooled knowledge of the team. Blindness to their own insecurities. Blindness to understanding that the business benefits most in an open environment with a free and unthreatened exchange of ideas.

Accountability, or lack of it, is a huge blind spot in America’s executives. Harry Truman’s famous adage that “The buck stops here” is often quoted, but seldom followed. More and more, executives are becoming comfortable with blaming their teams for failures. They reason that it was their employees who were being paid to get the job done and they failed (they are NOT number one, but I am!).

The flaw with this reasoning, of course, is that it was the executive’s responsibility to make sure the team had the resources and the opportunity to succeed. Team failures fall on their shoulders. Only the most courageous and strong leaders recognize that they are accountable to their teams in the same way their teams are accountable to them and both are accountable to customers and shareholders. Executive coaches help their clients to understand and embrace this critical element of leadership.

We’re number one! We’re number one! We have all seen it. Most of us have done it – chanted how our teams, our kids, ourselves are NUMBER ONE.

Certainly there is nothing wrong with wanting to achieve excellence and having the self-confidence to celebrate it when we do. Aspiring to being “number one” creates motivation and can result in excellence. But in the United States, it has moved beyond that. It has become an obsession. It is an obsession can be seen everywhere. We have a total fascination, dare I say worship, of celebrities because we perceive them as “being number one”. We brag endlessly about our kids, our schools, our companies, and ourselves because everything associated with us is “the best”. Ever notice how many people say their personal physician is “one of the best in the city”. By associating ourselves with groups and people that we perceive as the best, we must be number one ourselves. Right?

This obsession spills over into everything we do and exhibits itself in some pretty ugly ways – cheating in sports when we play and becoming obnoxious fans that will settle for nothing except wining when we watch. We use terms like “Uh duhhhh” and “Well, yeaaa” to imply that others are stupid. They are not number one because they are dumber than me, so I must be number one. In business, it results in disasters like Enron where the pressure to produce ever better results turned a talented executive team into some of history’s greatest crooks.

This epidemic of the need to win at all costs creates an incredible challenge for executives in today’s business world. Over the next few days, I will dedicate these entries to how blind ambition can create very negative business results and how executive coaches help their clients deal with this pressure and behavior.