As we’ve covered many of the essential aspects of accountability, it’s important to end with a little sweetening for your journey forward. Use what you have learned in this course to help you develop self-accountability and responsibility. The higher your personal level of accountability, the better you’ll accomplish your work, the more trust you’ll earn, the higher your reputation will increase, and ultimately, the farther up the ladder of success you’ll climb.
Learn to know when something is or isn’t working. Keeping a score sheet of sorts for daily review will allow you to know what needed to get done and what actually happened. From this, you’re able to make the necessary adjustments for the next steps.
Always be aware of your perceptions and your own thinking. Many times, this will be the source for your course corrections and your discovery of new ways of doing things for the greater good. Taking the time to connect to the issues at hand will open you to the creation of new paths.
Demonstrate your trust by being transparent in your thinking. Do what you say you’ll do and show everyone that you are consistent and can be relied upon. Finally, you should set your expectations high. Expect a lot from your people and encourage them to expect a lot from you as well. Once this foundation of trust and respect has been set, it’s just a matter of holding others and yourself to it. It’s called being held accountable after all! You can’t change the past—but you can choose how you learn from the past to change your future. When you hold yourself accountable, you build a future of trust, integrity, respect, and success.
