Take Ownership Of Your Actions: Be Accountable
When you take an action or a decision, or speak words, or even remain inactive, there are always effects and results that will come from them. The conscious attempt to bear the results and take full responsibility for these effects is accountability. I have come to discover that accountability is among the very vital tool to achieve success growth, and integrity. The outcome of your actions or inactions may not always be positive, some may be negative, but you also have to learn to bear the full responsibility. Accountability is not just when things are going well, but even at the point where it looks like they are going south. You have to understand that accountability places you as a driver in your own life, not as a passenger that sits and waits for things to happen randomly.
When things happen, it may be easy to point accusing fingers at someone else, or even come up with excuses as to why what happened had happened. But accountability begins when you stop giving excuses and accusations, and start to ask yourself what you could have done that you did not do or what you would have done differently. This mentality will help you to grow from your experiences and not get stalled by them.
While I was in school, I belonged to a particular choral group. The group policy was that the tenure of the leader is for one semester, which can also be re-elected for one more semester. There was this particular leader who was elected because of her singing prowess. She would take glory for anything that works, and would trade blames for the things that do not seem to work. She was a good singer but not a good leader. Even when negative things happen as an obvious result of her actions, instead of her to take responsibility, she would rather look for what or who to blame. After her first tenure, she was not re-elected, which was actually the first time a sitting leader would lose a re-election. This was because she lacked accountability for her actions and inactions.
One of the benefits of accountability, as a leader, in your place of work, and in other aspects of your life is that it builds trust. In relationships, at home, in the community, in your place of work, people will naturally trust and respect you when they know that you are accountable, not just to your words but to your actions. When you constantly and consistently stand by your promises and your words, you will build a form of trust in the hearts of people. As an employer for example, if you have a worker who is never accountable for their words or actions, and can do just anything. But you also have an employee who is always consistent in keeping their words and taking responsibility for their actions, who will you entrust more to?
Accountability also has a way of building personal discipline. When you begin to hold yourself accountable, you will set high standards for both your behaviour and your performance. That is, it will push you to achieve greatness, because it will make you to set and meet your personal deadlines, take up daring actions, take risks, and become more committed in life. Without accountability, you may see yourself procrastinating a lot, neglecting your responsibilities, or even abandoning your goals. Accountability gives you the subtle reminder that your success and a lot of things about you is in your hands.
You have to understand that accountability is not a gift or what you are born with. The people that are accountable made it as a choice without a recourse to what happens around them. You are not only accountable when things are going rightly, but even when things go the other way round. It is how you react when things happen that will show who you really are. It is true that when you accept your mistakes, it will not edit what has been done, but it will make you to learn from them, and then know how to take better actions to produce better results.
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