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FREE ACTION CHECKLIST: 10 Actions for Embracing Accountability
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Why is being accountable so important?

By Darren Finkelstein
By Darren Finkelstein

The Accountability Guy®

Working on an iPad

Accountability holds vitality for every success-oriented business!

Accountability is the most desired trait when it comes to being a part of an organisation. Your boss, your colleagues and all the stakeholders expect accountability from you as it’s the essential quality of a responsible worker. When coaching people on how to be accountable, one question which I hear almost every day by every one of my clients is: “why do you need to be accountable?”

I mean there must be something which gives it so much importance, right? I will inform you about all the benefits of an accountable lifestyle and how it can make you successful.

FREE ACTION CHECKLIST:

10 Actions for Embracing Accountability

Here are the benefits to being accountable.

1. Makes you responsible

Accountability makes you reliable by highlighting your goals and effectively enforcing you to best your past self. It teaches you to assume responsibility for your actions by putting you through personal challenges.

2. Promotes Ownership

When you hold yourself accountable for your decisions, you effectively teach yourself the value of hard work. Taking ownership of your actions is the basic building block of a responsible personality. It makes you headstrong, and you no longer feel the need to play the blame game. Recruiters look for this ability when looking for new people to lead projects.

3. Lessens Conflicts

It’s a well-known and tested fact that conflicts arise when people blame each other for errors that occur in a project. When a person is accountable, they don’t feel bad assuming responsibility for their fault. They take criticism positively, accept their mistake and deliver excellence in the future.

4. Improves Performance

Every advantage of accountability links to each other. When a person holds himself accountable and uses criticism positively, their performance sees a clear incline. This is beneficial for all the stakeholders and is yet another reason why recruiters prefer people who demonstrate a developed sense of accountability.

5. Helps Measure Progress

Accountability is an ability through which a person measures their individual capabilities. It’s like scrutinising yourself. When you hold yourself accountable in every aspect of life, measuring your success and progress is extremely easy. It shows you how far you have come since starting out.

6. Inspires Confidence

When you realise how far you have come by building upon your personality step-by-step, you feel more confident in your abilities. I don’t think I need to explain how great a confident person is at their game.

7. Builds Trust

People trust confidence. When you are confident at your game, no power on earth can stop you from proving your point. Believe me, people dig confident folks who show a sense of belief in their abilities. How can you be confident? By being accountable, of course. As I said before, it all connects.

8. Helps You Validate Your Thoughts and Ideas

When you meditate on your thoughts and ideas, you can potentially find numerous other ways of doing the exact same thing. Every road that comes to your mind might lead to the same destination, but it’s the journey that matters. Accountability helps you validate your thoughts and helps you find the best approach possible.

9. Supports You in Doing New Things

Accountability enables you to think out of the box. It allows you to take challenging steps to better your skills. Remember, every challenge is a step towards the perfection of your personality and skillset. Therefore, one should never shy away from a challenge.

10. Eliminates Things That Hold You Back

Accountability gives you an insight into your abilities. It removes obstacles and helps you judge your limits. Where you place your limits is all up to you, though. Human beings are capable of doing everything they set their minds to, so there’s always that extra mile you can go to deliver superior quality and experience. Accountability teaches you to take that initiative.

11. Minimises Self-Pity

Self-pity is the demise of every talented person. Accountability enables you to grasp this limitation and eradicates it from your existence. It teaches you to be calm and collected about your problems as opposed to an unaccountable individual who’s unhappy and insecure over them.

12. Helps You Build Connections

People like socialising with individuals who are confident, secure, collected, calm and accountable. Therefore, accountability ultimately enables you to build stronger long-lasting bonds. Be they be friendships, personal relationships, corporate relations or any relation for that matter.

Final Word

As you can see from everything I have written on the topic of accountability’s importance, I have, however, only touched the tip of the iceberg. There’s more to it than meets the eye.

Accountability has several social, professional and personal benefits as I have listed above. I’d like to add; accountable people are an inspiration for others. They motivate the accountability culture all around them. If you are a responsible individual, people will follow your suit and prefer you over anyone else.

“It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.”

Moliere