As we continue our week of asking important questions about finishing well as leaders, today’s question is: What does accountability have to do with it? In a word–everything! Life is a team sport, and leadership is most certainly a team sport. John Maxwell has long pointed out that those who say, “It’s lonely at the top,” don’t truly understand leadership. It’s only lonely at the top if we have bought into an autocratic style and model of leadership. If we subscribe to a collaborative style and model of leadership, then we will seldom be alone as we lead.
Specifically, when it comes to finishing well as leaders, we need to be held accountable for who we are and how we are leading. Both our integrity and character and our leadership effectiveness depend on our being accountable personally and in our area of leadership. I’ve spoken about accountability directly and indirectly in many of my previous posts, because it is so vital to every aspect of our lives. How does it impact finishing well as leaders? To put it simply: Human beings left to themselves eventually drive into a ditch.
What I mean by that is when we are young we are prone both to mistakes and sin. (If you aren’t a person of faith, you can just leave it at mistakes, but as a friend of mine always says, “Every sin is a mistake, but not every mistake is a sin.” What he means by that is some of the things we do are evil, wrong, against the will of God, and those are both sins and mistakes. Other things we do are done out of ignorance or a lack of thinking, and may or may not be evil, wrong, or against the will of God.) Without parents and/or mentors we will make many more mistakes and commit many more sins along the way. Parents and/or mentors provide our primary form of accountability at that stage in our lives, at least they do if we are blessed.
As we mature into young adulthood, we have the opportunity to develop peer accountability. If we marry, hopefully our spouses provide accountability in our lives for living with integrity as well as for growing in our chosen vocations. If we gain leadership positions, they can offer us input about our leadership as well. In addition, my experience has shown me that having someone else who holds us accountable personally and in our growth as workers and leaders is crucial. I have been in accountability relationships my entire adult life, with the exception of a few years in my late twenties, and those years my effectiveness personally and as a leader waned.
I’m not pointing only to my personal experience to affirm the need we all have for accountability. The Fuller Seminary study I pointed to the other day, regarding those who failed to finish well, included the finding that a common factor among them was they were accountable to no one. Socrates reminded us that the unexamined life is not worth living. My experience, and the research of others reminds us that we need to have someone else examine our lives with us. We don’t always tell ourselves the truth, so it’s helpful to have someone who cares enough about us to challenge us when our examination of our lives is really just rationalization.
As we have said all week it is crucial that we finish well. Our legacy will be much more powerful when we do. Our daily impact as we lead will be much more effective as people see that we are finishing well. While this may not seem important to you right now if you are in your twenties or thirties, those of us in our fifties, sixties and seventies know from experience what I’m saying. While we don’t live in a culture that honors the wisdom of age as in many cultures around the world, part of the reason for that may be the multitude of leaders who have reached those ages and either flamed out, burned out, or just turned off the burner. (More on that another time, but suffice it to say, the most effective leaders and the most effective lives not only start well, but also finish well.
Let me ask you again, Do you have an accountability partner? If you do, is he or she asking you tough questions that will help you finish well? If you don’t have an accountability partner, will you make finding one a priority, because being held accountable is a key to finishing well? Let me conclude as I generally do when I write or talk about accountability. Ultimately, our goal is to be accountable to God. After all, He is with us 24/7. Even so, having another human being “with skin on” as some have put it, to hold us accountable is such a key priority for those who would live and finish well.
Here’s to leading better by making sure we are being held accountable in helpful ways–today!