A Leadership System of Authentic Accountability: Part II
Shifting from Control to Trust and Compliance to Ownership
In my last post, I introduced a different equation for workplace accountability: Radical Trust + Unflinching Ownership. I explored what each element includes and how they create productive tension that helps leaders discern when there's healthy balance or destructive bias.
Now comes the harder question: How do you actually make this shift? How do you move from control-based systems to trust-based cultures without everything falling apart? As Margaret Heffernan wrote, "The road to success is littered with mistakes, it matters more to build trust and encourage ambition than to reward obedience."
I spend most of our time in this article focusing on what you as the leader must do to create a culture of authentic accountability, the ways you must shift your mindsets and behavior to create the virtuous cycle of radical trust and unflinching ownership. I also spend some time outlining what unflinching ownership will look like within your team so you can guide their growth.
From Control to Radical Trust
Here's the thing about control-based accountability: it feels deceptively simple. You know exactly what "good" looks like because you defined it. You know exactly when someone's off track. It feels clear, measurable, and efficient, even when it delivers lackluster results.
The trade-off? It kills creativity, innovation, and engagement. You get compliance, not excellence. Studies show that micromanagement reduces employee morale by as much as 85% and productivity by 55%. Making the shift to trust-based accountability better for culture and essential for business performance.
But going cold turkey won't work. You've trained your team to turn off their brains and listen to yours (and trained yourself to tune them out). If you suddenly remove all direction today, your team will wander rather than spring to life with fresh ideas. And you'll likely panic and double down on control rather than discover the power of radical trust.
Instead, if you've been holding the baton long after it's their leg of the relay, start by passing it while continuing to run alongside them:
Start With Guidance Without Prescription
Share the why and your perspective on the what, but remember, your "what" might be wrong. Let your team take ownership and experiment to find the right approach. Set regular check-ins to ensure they can get clarity or resources to keep moving forward.
You're learning how to communicate clearly and trust radically. You'll get it wrong at first. Share what you know and what you're thinking, then follow up proactively to ensure they have what they need.
Normalize that:
You likely left important insights out
They should feel empowered to connect with other sources, not just you
They should ask when there are gaps they can't fill
Key questions to ask:
What else would be helpful to understand?
Who else do you need to talk with to better understand this opportunity?
What inspires you most about our vision?
Celebrate Divergence Without Chaos
When they share divergent or dissenting ideas, even shakily, you must embrace them. Assume the new idea is brilliant, then coach them on how to talk about it in a way that connects back to the why and the proposed what. Help them build the business case and create a vision for how this fresh approach can move the needle.
Most importantly, help them plan for what they'll do when it fails.
Key questions to ask:
What would our customer say is missing from this solution?
What other approaches are you considering?
What trade-offs would we have to make, and what makes this the right choice?
How will we know if we're making progress?
Expect Progress Without Perfection
Don't just say, "If things go sideways, I'm here." Say, "When things don't go as expected, let's put a meeting on the calendar to talk through what you're seeing, learning, and what we'll try next."
That conversation might happen in weeks, months, or years. But you're setting the expectation that setbacks will happen and should be met with knowledge sharing and iteration, and that they own both the failure and the next attempt.
Key questions to ask:
What's surprising you?
What are you learning?
What will you try differently next time?
Who else might be interested in what you're learning?
Provide Support Without Surveillance
Provide wise support that stretches and fuels them rather than smothering or withholding. Ensure they have resources to succeed, but don't overinvest. Sometimes they need another team member; sometimes just another perspective.
What you offer should blend stop-gaps to support them while they rebuild independence with longer-term resources to support the new model.
Key questions to ask:
What skills and perspectives do you need to make this happen?
Who on the team could develop them?
What else would empower you to take this and run with it?
Don't be hard on yourself. These four shifts require sizable mindset changes and intense mental regulation. You'll fight against impulses built over years of experience The Grounded Leadership Mindset worksheet will help you get in the headspace for these conversations. And working with an executive coach can provide the support and accountability needed to navigate this evolution successfully, helping you stay present and respond intentionally rather than reverting to old patterns.
Eventually, as you trust more and they take more ownership, you'll have less frequent but more robust check-ins, quicker alignment, more rapid iterations, and richer learning. Research shows that high-trust companies outperform their counterparts in both business performance and employee engagement and productivity, demonstrating the clear business case for trust-based leadership. The work won't get easier (in fact, it may be more complex) but it will be far more rewarding.
From Compliance to Unflinching Ownership
You've decided to trust your team radically and started weaning everyone off heavy-handed control. Now your team must step up and take unflinching ownership of:
The opportunity
The learning
The outcome
The impact
Here's the reality: your team has likely learned that they own little beyond "the task." But tasks are means to an end. What you care about, and what they need to care about, is the end, not the means.
When you're clear on the why and the proposed what, you also need to be crystal clear on the who. Help them understand the new "owner" role you're inviting them into:
Unpacking the Five Ownership Behaviors
Communicate courageously: Ask clarifying questions early and often. Be specific and thorough when sharing perspectives. No one gets a pass based on personal brand, status, or political capital, including you.
Partner deeply: Bring the fullness of their expertise to the challenge, especially when they have a divergent perspective. Operate with low ego, high passion, and genuine investment in collective success.
Iterate continuously: Get ready to be wrong. A lot. You're asking everyone to take ownership, and you're expecting rapid experiments to fail, learn, and grow.
Engage with complexity: Jump at the chance to share where they went wrong, where things broke, where they need help. Share breakthroughs and leap-frog moments. Coach and be coached.
Embrace purposeful grit: This new way of working will be hard and may require temporary support boosts. Commit to taking it incrementally and pushing for consistent progress.
Some team members may not be ready for unflinching ownership. Let's be honest: compliance requires little effort, even if it demands lots of time and anxiety. This new world of ownership demands mental and emotional engagement and wholehearted commitment.
The clearer you are about the opportunity to show up differently, the more easily people can opt out. And that's okay. Excellence emerges from ownership and engagement through ambiguity and failure.
A Story: The Parts Bin
During its climb to becoming a tech dragon, one company built two key ownership behaviors into its culture and workflow: continuous iteration and complexity engagement.
Employees were encouraged to "tinker" and explore solutions to interesting problems, even if those problems weren't directly aligned to revenue targets or OKRs (they didn't have OKRs yet).
Of course, tinkering led to lots of failure and lessons learned: prototypes that didn't fit their market, concepts that didn't pay off. But they were determined to benefit from this experimentation culture, so they created "the parts bin."
The parts bin has a place in both their cultural zeitgeist and their workflow. When teams developed an idea that didn't have immediate use, they'd declare, "Let's put this in the parts bin." Some teams created literal bins in their filing systems where others could "rummage" for tools, insights, prior attempts, or anything that might inspire their work.
The parts bin ensured no work went to waste and failure always led to value creation. It became a motivating concept for teams. They didn't shame themselves over "wasted time" when they knew their idea had a home and might take on a second or third life down the road.
This company's story isn't all perfect. What they couldn't figure out was courageous communication and purposeful grit. Without hard conversations and the resolve to keep going through setbacks and criticism, true accountability falters and command-and-control sneaks back in.
The important takeaway: accountability requires every component to work. But when you make the shift to radical trust and unflinching ownership, you'll get what true accountability offers: an engaged, innovative, motivated organization that delivers results that matter today while continuously investing in the future.
What's your biggest challenge in moving from control to trust? What would help you take the first step toward radical trust in your organization?