Clarity over Comfort: How to Replace Plausible Accountability with Real growth

Accountability is one of those corporate buzzwords that gets thrown around as if saying it enough times will magically make it happen. Alternatively, people avoid talking about it because of the discomfort it can conjure. In practice, true accountability is often sidestepped—sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident. One of the core, ongoing, evergreen challenges of leadership is the act of creating accountability, maintaining it with feedback all while using it to build growth instead of breaking down psychological safety.

Our colleague Dr. Taylor Mauriello tied this all in a nice neat bow the other day when she said: “you could say that leadership is the practice of creating accountability without breaking down psychological safety.” 

But, there’s a trap...

Plausible accountability sounds like accountability but lacks the substance.

Leaders, consciously or unconsciously, engage in plausible accountability because real accountability feels too burdensome or too socially risky. It requires setting clear commitments, facing potential failures, and navigating difficult conversations when things don’t go as planned. Without strong norms around psychological safety, the instinctive response is to create wiggle room—keeping things vague enough that no one is truly on the hook.

Plausible accountability sounds like this “we need to make sure we have good communication or we aren’t going to be able to work through this very well.”

Real accountability sounds more like this: “I’ll need to understand x, by y time so I can make and informed decision, can you commit to that? How and when are we going to communicate if things aren’t going well for you or something changes for me?

For a 1:1 it might sounds like this: “I need you to communicate better”

But what it could sound like is this:

“Whenever you interrupt someone I need you to stop yourself, ask them to proceed, apologize when they are done and acknowledge their contribution by integrating it, asking questions to understand it or appreciating the new thinking it offered. Try to be as consistent as you can be over the next week and you can tell me what has changed in your conversations at our next 1:1”

Real accountability helps people grow.

The problem? Plausible accountability erodes trust, diminishes performance, and fosters a culture where people start hedging rather than committing.

Plausible accountability kills productivity, performance, team learning and innovation. Projects lag, decisions get kicked down the road or seem to never get made and things stay the same - there's no evolution. 

You may recognize the feeling more easily: stagnation, being wary of when or how you should follow-up with someone and a sense that nothing seems to ever feel completed..

What Plausible Accountability Looks Like in Teams

Plausible accountability manifests in different ways across teams and organizations. It often shows up at three levels:

1. Task Avoidance – People agree to own something but don’t define the specifics. A task might get “acknowledged,” but there’s no clarity on what done actually looks like.

When a team member says, “I’ll take care of that,” but there’s no deadline, no specific output, and no real follow-up.

Leaders sometimes have a hard time matching the level of conversation or accountability at the task level - too much you’re micro-managing, not enough you’ve left people hanging. You can find the middle ground by to create accountability and communication channels that match the skill level of the team member instead

2. Next Steps Evasion – People agree on the process but don’t establish firm checks along the way so they can confirm or adapt the way they decide to move through a project. Why evasion? Because it can be hard to predict an entire process ahead of time. So they avoid the key element that saves them later on. The consequences of a lack of accountability - that built in check and balance or confirmation or a prescribed process (even as simple as hand washing for nurses) creates a void where learning is lost and improvement is elusive.

Imagine if a team decides to review a project’s status in meetings but never actually ties discussions back to clear deliverables or adjustments. This creates a general sense that something is happening, but without clear progress markers.

3. Soft Commitments on Outcomes – Leaders and teams define success in ways that are conveniently flexible. When goals are too high, failure gets excused as “over-aspirational.” When goals are too vague, success becomes whatever people decide it was after the fact.

It can look as simple as setting an ambitious revenue goal without having an operational plan or clarified ownership, making it easy to justify missing the mark.

The result of all this? A culture where people talk a lot about accountability, but when push comes to shove, no one is quite sure who was responsible for what—or what was even agreed to in the first place.

The opposite of Soft commitments aren’t “or else” ultimatums - it’s clarity and shared understanding.

Why Leaders Struggle with Real Accountability

Plausible accountability happens for a few key reasons:

• Accountability Feels Too Heavy – Taking real ownership means risking failure and criticism. Leaders sometimes avoid accountability because they don’t want to be seen as failing, especially in high-stakes environments.

• Social Risk feels too High – Holding others accountable means having difficult conversations. If a leader lacks psychological safety within their team, they may hesitate to call out gaps, leading to polite, non-confrontational avoidance instead. Sometimes this can have a name like saving face or mid-western nice but the challenge remains the same - when social order has priority over growth leaders need to help their team focus on growth instead of accountability for accountability sake. 

• Ambiguity Provides an Escape Hatch – Vague commitments allow people to explain away missed expectations. Without clear agreements, it’s easy to say, “Well, things changed,” or “We were aiming for progress, not perfection.” plausible deniability is something people are familiar with. And this is what they are looking for - the “escape hatch” . Accountability means you are going to have to do what you say you’re going to do or be out of integrity.

• Over-Aspirational Goals – Sometimes leaders unintentionally create the conditions for plausible accountability by setting goals that are unrealistic or disconnected from actual capacity. Teams then learn to commit only in a way that allows them to later justify why something didn’t happen.

What Leaders Can Do About It

The antidote to plausible accountability isn’t more pressure; it’s more clarity. Leaders need to build accountability into their teams in a way that is real, mutual, and adaptive to reality.

1. Use “How Much by When” Commitments

Accountability should be based on clear, measurable agreements. A simple but powerful shift is moving from vague commitments to “How much by when?”

• Instead of “Let’s make progress on this” → “We will complete the first draft by Friday at 3 PM.”

• Instead of “We’ll look into it” → “We will have three possible solutions ready for discussion by next week’s meeting.”

This method ensures that commitments are explicit, mutual, and time-bound—minimizing the wiggle room that allows for plausible accountability.

2. Make Sure Agreements Are Acknowledged and Realistic

Plausible accountability thrives when people nod along in meetings but never actually internalize what was agreed to. Leaders should ensure commitments are:

• Explicitly acknowledged: Ask team members to repeat back agreements in their own words.

• Realistic: Encourage commitments that account for actual workload, dependencies, and potential disruptions. Over-aspirational targets set teams up to fail.

3. Balance Real-Time Reality with Commitment Discipline

Accountability doesn’t mean rigidity. Leaders should create space for real-time adjustments while maintaining commitment discipline.

• If something truly changes, renegotiate commitments proactively rather than waiting until a deadline has passed.

• Encourage teams to flag risks early and propose adjustments before things spiral into non-delivery.

This approach prevents the common cycle of people overcommitting, failing, and then rationalizing the failure afterward.

4. Normalize Post-Mortems Without Blame

Teams need to get comfortable reviewing accountability gaps without fear. A post-mortem should be a learning process, not a finger-pointing session. Ask:

• What did we commit to? What actually happened? What factors got in the way?What will we change moving forward?

When leaders model this level of reflection—without defensiveness—they create a culture where accountability becomes about improvement rather than punishment.

5. Build Psychological Safety to Support Real Accountability

Plausible accountability thrives in environments where people fear being blamed for failure. Leaders who want real accountability need to cultivate psychological safety by:

• Encouraging open dialogue about risks and obstacles.

• Making it safe to acknowledge setbacks early.

• Reinforcing that accountability is about shared success, not individual fault-finding.

When people feel safe, they’re more willing to make real commitments and hold each other to them.

The Bottom Line: Clarity Over Convenience

Plausible accountability is a tempting escape from the discomfort of real commitment, but it erodes trust, performance, and ultimately, leadership credibility.

Leaders who want to create cultures of true accountability must resist the urge to keep things vague. Instead, they should commit to clear agreements, realistic commitments, proactive adjustments, and psychologically safe conversations.