How Leadership Accountability Drives Company Performance

Leadership plays a big role in determining the success of an organization.

Effective and accountable leadership can help propel a company forward. On the flip side, a failure to live up to the expectations of leadership can have cascading and lingering effects across an entire organization.

Bridging the Leadership Accountability Gap

Today’s infographic, from bestselling author Vince Molinaro, is a revealing look at the impact that leadership accountability can have on an organization.

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The Value of Leadership Accountability

The majority of people within organizations understand the value of leadership accountability – yet, in practice, many leaders fail to deliver on that promise.

A global survey of over 2,000 HR leaders and senior executives revealed that a mere 27% believed they had a strong leadership culture. Two-thirds of those surveyed believed that leadership accountability is a critical issue within their organization, while only one-third are satisfied with the degree of leadership accountability demonstrated at in their workplace.

What impact does this leadership accountability gap have on the performance of a company? As it turns out, a lot.

The Critical Link Between Accountability and Performance

Once survey responses were organized into three distinct categories – low performers, average performers, and industry leaders – interesting trends began to emerge.

Companies in the “industry leaders” category were far more likely to have a culture of leadership accountability. In fact, industry leaders were twice as likely to have clearly established expectations for their leadership team than respondents in the average or lower performing categories. These high performing companies were also far more likely to:

• Have formal succession programs to help identify high-potential leaders
• Have practices in place to foster more diverse leadership teams
• Implement development programs to effectively build the capacity of leaders

Industry leading companies had leadership teams that ranked higher in a number of key areas. Leaders at high performing companies were far more likely to:

• Understand customer needs and desires
• Understand external trends affecting the business
• Demonstrate a high level of emotional maturity
• Demonstrate passion for executing on the company’s vision

In many of these areas, the gap between industry leaders and the other categories is significant, which presents a compelling case for embracing leadership accountability as a core value.

Building a Strong Leadership Culture: Questions to Ask

The first step to building a culture of leadership accountability is self reflection. Here are questions leaders can ask to help assess how their organization is doing:

1. Is leadership accountability a critical priority in your organization?
2. Has your organization set clear leadership expectations for leaders?
3. Do you believe your leaders at all levels, are fully committed to their leadership roles?
4. Have you built a strong and aligned leadership culture across your organization?
5. Does your organization have the courage to identify and address mediocre leadership at an individual and team level?

Answering “no” to any of the questions above means there’s an opportunity to develop a more accountable and effective leadership team.

Only three things happen naturally in organizations. Friction, confusion and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.

– Peter Drucker