The Story We Tell Ourselves About Accountability
Accountability, like vulnerability, is something we want for others. The moment it is turned on us, we want to add context, add color or explain the circumstances.
There is a concept in social-psychology called The Actor/Observer Bias. This form of bias is defined as seeing other people’s mistakes as caused by things that are internal to them, but seeing one’s own mistakes as more about the circumstances, context or explained only with the details of the situation. When we are observing behavior, we are more judgmental, we are less empathetic; when we are the actor, we perceive our mistakes best explained by the things around us. This is human nature.
The story we tell in leadership is that it is our job to hold people accountable, and further, that we need good systems of accountability. We accept this with almost no intellectual pushback; in fact, most of the schools that I partner with are looking to do this better. When people are behaving in ways that others perceive as negative, or when someone is clearly underperforming, we want someone or some system to hold them accountable.
Behind this verb choice is an implicit belief that accountability is enforced by external forces, but I would encourage us to think carefully about whether that is what we want to aspire to in school life.
In my second year as a teacher, I opened a classroom for students who had been expelled from school. What discipline could I use to control them? I, with them, was forced to confront a new reality. We had to explore actual accountability.
For the sake of thinking about it, let’s define accountability as a co-created and shared agreement about how we would like to exist together, defined in real time, and agreed to and in service of everyone involved.
I taught fourteen boys from ages 12-18, and they were all incredibly angry. They had been physically and sexually abused and almost every aspect of their lives and society confirmed the hurt, anger and lack of love that they exhibited on a daily basis. School was not the worst offender, but it was part of a long line of systems that refused to see them.
We put these students in a normal 8th grade English class, and we told ourselves the story that they would be fine if they were held accountable. My boss said, “They need clear and consistent boundaries.” We ignored facts because those facts were inconvenient and we didn’t have systems to address the actual problems. Most of them couldn’t read much higher than about the 2nd grade level. How do you think they experienced Shakespeare or The Lord of the Flies? When we exerted control, they showed us who was really in control, and it wasn’t us. They exposed the inherent fallacy in the accountability story…accountability is not enforced.
This was formative for me as a teacher. I was 22, and I had taken two classes on classroom management. They didn’t want my rewards, they didn’t care about punishment; in fact, they sought it out if given the opportunity, and I was forced to consider other options.
The only thing that worked was a deep human commitment to not organizing any covert or overt systems of control. Their lives were already out of control, and they showed me that what humans want is the ability to decide for themselves, and if respected, even students with deep and valid fear and wounds could negotiate and build positive things together.
The purpose of sharing this vignette is to make visible what is always true. Control – or the idea that one can hold someone else accountable – is an illusion we participate in together.
As a school leader, if you want to help build systems where impact, behavior, and challenges are addressed directly without this underlying and often insidious desire to control and create compliance, there are a few things you can do to start:
Build or Audit your Mindset As It Relates To Other’s Capability: First, address whether you or the systems in your school are built with an underlying belief that people are capable. You don’t need systems to hold others accountable if the belief is that people do not need to be held, but rather encouraged and supported. Consider two possible stories about the same situation :
Ex. 1 - I don’t believe an employee knows how to do ___________ well, and everything I do as their supervisor is based on this belief (a belief is a story). I try showing them what doing it well is (built on the assumption that I know what doing it well is). I try coaching them towards what I think doing it well is. All to no avail. They passively resist, and I am frustrated. I resort to letting them know that if they are not open to my understanding of what ________ looks like when it is done well, they may not get a contract. I used the systems of control at my disposal, and they did not respond. This leads to reinforcing my belief that they are flawed, resistant, or even worse: a root problem to be fixed or eliminated.
Ex. 2 - I believe that an employee is innately capable, and it is a mystery why they are doing what they are doing (which I judge as not what is right). I come to them and my primary mode is curiosity. I am curious whether they have a shared understanding of what ________ looks like when done well. We negotiate a new understanding of success that makes sense to both of us, and we make plans to monitor progress. The key difference is that the employee feels my underlying belief that they are capable and this is paired intentionally with a built in skepticism of my own story about the issues. They feel my belief that they are not just capable of doing a great job, but also capable of getting help if needed.
In the second example, you can replace systems that hold people accountable with systems to build shared understandings of what success looks like and systems to expose different narratives about the same set of objective facts. Problems are always mysteries to be solved. Instead of blaming people in judgment, these systems seek understanding and learning.
And while these systems look different on paper, the paramount difference is how they feel. Addressing a challenge with a mindset that people are capable feels different. The elephant in the room is that in order to do this, a leader or school must first admit that there is a higher goal than compliance or control.
Look beyond symptoms: Most challenges and/or problems where a system/leader is seeking accountability from a team/person are actually symptoms of a larger or more complex systemic challenge. This concept is best articulated through examples:
Ex. 1: Department Chairs are not actually working to supervise teachers. They are willing to advocate for teachers but not address challenging behaviors or things that need adjustment.
Ex. 2: Teachers are regularly fearful of meeting with parents, and they avoid it. When parents and teachers do meet around challenges, teachers are defensive and parents get frustrated and have poor behavior.
Ex. 3: A teacher or a few teachers are regularly late or exhibit behaviors that are perceived by others as being “above the rules.” This example can also apply to certain students that seem to get away with ______ all the time.
Ex. 4: Division Heads are great at getting the trains to run on time, but they are not doing the work to build shared vision, in particular, around change initiatives that would require faculty to grow and change their long standing habits and practices. They shy away from difficult conversations or conflict, and while they say they want to move the work forward, their behavior suggests they are unwilling to do the hard things necessary to move this work forward.
In each scenario above, the symptom is what people are paying attention to. In example one, we want Dept. Chairs to step up and address challenges head on. At Leadership + Design, we use a tool called the Waterline Model, and this model helps us diagnose challenges at a systems level, and get beyond the symptoms. The model helps us look first at what Harrison, Scherer and Short refer to as the level of Structure. The key question at this level is whether people really understand their role, and whether the system is clear about a shared goal that they are working towards.
In this example, it may lead to examining whether Dept. Chairs understand and buy-in to the goal that is behind why leaders want them to intervene with teachers. There are usually conversations that have gone undiscussed about how and why certain things are important, and schools must confront the common habit of setting goals without involving the key people that those goals rely on and affect. This requires giving up the belief (story) that is so commonly held that teachers are avoiding doing what is hard because they are not good at doing what is hard. We must replace this story with a new one. Dept. Chairs are capable of doing what is hard, and they are avoiding it for some reason. What might we be doing as a school that is contributing to this symptom?
Accountability is always relational, co-created, deeply human, and messy. It is never enforced if what you seek is anything beyond short term relief. Control and compliance are for fire drills, lockdowns and other emergency situations, and I hope you will join us as we build a new story of capability and interdependent responsibility for our results.
