How Do You Demonstrate Personal Accountability?

The Accountability Guy®

Home » Accountability » How Do You Demonstrate Personal Accountability?

Did you know being accountable is not always easy? However, you can start demonstrating personal accountability by following the tips given in this blog.

Accountability is taking ownership of your actions. It is understanding, analysing, and accepting the consequences and rewards of your actions courageously. Are you aware that when you fail to take accountability, you let yourself and your organisation down? Low accountability can stagnate progress and can destroy an organisation.

As mentioned above, this blog aims to give you tips to demonstrate personal accountability. You will also know a little about accountability and responsibility in this blog. So, read on for your betterment.

HOW ACCOUNTABLE ARE YOU?

Discover your Accountability Score and increase the probability of smashing your GOALS and Getting Sh!t Done!

What are Accountability and Responsibility?

Accountability is taking ownership of your results, and responsibility is taking ownership of your activities.

For example, if you are a project manager and your team has a task to complete. Your team will be responsible for those tasks. In contrast, you, as the project manager, are accountable for the results of those tasks.

You can be accountable even if you haven’t performed the task. Showing accountability means you accept the consequences for the results without playing the blame game.

Why is Personal Accountability Important?

Now you know what accountability and responsibility is. You might wonder why personal accountability is vital.

Personal accountability is vital for the following reasons:

To build healthy relationships
Enables positivity in your interactions
Helps you develop problem-solving skills
Helps to foster trustworthiness
You earn respect
You become someone who your team can depend on

Plus, developing and demonstrating personal accountability helps you get promotions. It also makes you a strong and capable leader who can guide your team properly. Plus, your superiors will trust you and depend on your word if you demonstrate personal accountability.

Demonstrating Personal Accountability

Knowing what personal accountability is and why it’s important is not enough, is it? You also need to demonstrate personal accountability. Here are some tips you can follow to show personal accountability successfully.

Define and Comprehend Your Role

One of the first steps to demonstrating personal accountability is understanding what your role is. You need to know your tasks, goals, responsibilities, and expectation to have clarity. Only when you have clarity, you’ll be able to take ownership of your results.

Suppose you are the manager; you need to make the goals clear to your team. Only then are you demonstrating personal accountability.

Practise Honesty

Practising honesty is crucial to demonstrate accountability. When you are honest, you foster integrity and trustworthiness. Plus, telling the truth makes you reliable for your opinions, advice, and assessments.

When you are honest about your role in a result, you ensure you take ownership of your actions. Plus, you ensure your reliability and dependability. Moreover, you reduce the consequences for yourself.

However, ensure you don’t use honesty to blame others. That doesn’t demonstrate personal accountability.

Being honest with other people is not enough. You need to be honest with yourself too. If you are unable to perform a task, be honest and seek help.

Apologise Quickly

Suppose you feel like you have done something wrong and caused a bad result. Apologise immediately and work towards rectifying your error. When you apologise immediately and follow it up with fruitful action, you increase your dependability and reliability. You also demonstrate personal accountability.

However, note that the onus of rectifying the error doesn’t lie on you alone. You can and must seek help and delegate as required.

You also need to consider when to apologise. Some situations may not warrant an apology but legal guidance. Use your intellect and instincts to seek help accordingly. Otherwise, you might jeopardise your organisation or you.

Practise Time Management

Time management is a crucial element of personal accountability. When you are productive and effective in completing your task within deadlines, you become reliable for critical tasks.

Suppose you procrastinate a lot, you become unreliable, and your personal accountability drops drastically. If you find you have less resources or feel unchallenged, or anything else that makes you procrastinate, seek help to avoid being labelled the procrastinator.

Manage time effectively to get things done and demonstrate personal accountability.

Understand Your limits

Part of personal accountability is understanding your limits. Make it clear if you are unable to undertake certain tasks. Show mindfulness towards your schedule and ensure you don’t over-schedule yourself.

You will not only become unreliable and unsuccessful in your work; you’ll also face mental exhaustion and burnout.

So, understand your limits and set boundaries in your professional and personal life. You’ll demonstrate accountability successfully.

Endnotes

Personal accountability is crucial in the game of life and work. Showing accountability makes you trustworthy, honest, caring, and responsible. It showcases your intellect and your drive to perform well in life.

If you ever have issues with demonstrating personal accountability, you can consult an accountability coach like Tick Those Boxes. When you work with an accountability coach, they’ll be able to guide you on how to achieve your goals and increase accountability.

Plus, an accountability coach will help you gain clarity and meet your deadlines or commitments easily.

So, increase your personal accountability game and keep earning your success.

About The Author

Darren Finkelstein, The Accountability Guy®, is the founder of TICK THOSE BOXES, a specialised accountability coaching practice. Darren is a formidable international accountability coach, business advisor, mentor, and author/speaker, fostering development and measurable results in entrepreneurship, leadership, and accountability. Darren’s tale is one of perseverance, self-reinvention, and resilience.

With compelling execution, Darren has empowered high-achieving individuals and teams from Australia and New Zealand to Latin America, Europe, Asia, the UK, and the US to embrace accountability; after all, it is your superpower.

Darren’s one-on-one and group coaching programs are based on his bestselling business book, “The Accountability Advantage – Play your best game” and the latest, release “NO’ – Building a life of choice without obligation”.

Darren has an impressive background in business, having held the role of “Manager of Commercial Markets” at Apple Australia during the Steve Jobs revolution.

He enthusiastically “walks the talk,” having also successfully sold and exited his lifestyle businesses, which served as the impetus for establishing his coaching and mentoring business.

Join Darren on this transformative quest to accomplish the remarkable.

Read Darren’s full bio here:
https://tickthoseboxes.com.au/about/