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The higher you go on the organisational chart themore responsibility you have and the less accountability youmay have. Leadership expert Henry Evans suggests some self-generated accountabilitymight be in order


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EADINGWITH ACCOUNTABILITY


Henry Evans has been working with C-suite executives and organisations for many years, through his Dallas- based company Dynamic Results, and is author of Winning with Accountability, a practical step-by-step guide to help organisations improve performance by creating a strong culture of accountability. The book is required reading in many multinational corporations, and executive MBA courses. Winning with Accountability forms just a small part of


a wider programme he employs when working with CEOs, company presidents and other high-level execu- tives, on introducing the accountability model into their organisations. Indeed, in the move towards an accountable organisa-


tion, Evans emphasises the importance of the change com- ing from the top down, and has been known to turn away clients who do not understand the importance of this. “Top executives need to be demonstrating and exhibiting


these accountability behaviours themselves, before they request it of anyone else in their organisations,” he says. The accountability method employed by Evans is, he


explains, deceptively straightforward. “It has strong ele- ments of emotional intelligence, but it’s intellectually simple and behaviouraly complex. “When you’re in a leadership role especially at the C-


level your people are emulating what you do, so you yourself are affecting the culture of the organisation in every interaction, actively or passively,” he continues. “Our theory is that, the higher you go on the organi- sational chart, the more responsibility you have and the


less accountability you may have,” says Evans. “That’s because there are fewer and fewer people who are will- ing to hold you truly to account. What that means is if you want to be more effective at C-level you have to be more willing to self-generate accountability. And one of the best practices for self-generating accountability at that level is to proactively communicate your commit- ment to others, in a very unsolicited way. “In my experience, when I first step in to work with a


CEO or the people reporting to them– let’s say the upper two or three tiers on the organisational chart – they have this laundry list of things they should be doing, things that are critical to the company’s success, but that other people in the organisation don’t know about.” Because these are driven and accomplished people,


they have a very high confidence that they will execute around these things, says Evans. “While often they are executing around many of these things, without an exception so far in my career I’ve found them also to be human, and to have things around which they are not. “So one of the ways I think we’re able to help execu-


tives at that level perform at an even higher level is by getting them comfortable with the idea of letting other people know what they’re working on, and encouraging people to follow up with them on those things.” It is not uncommon in organisations for people to have


no idea what their leaders are doing much of the time, says Evans. “That’s a real liability people at the top sometimes have. They have great innovative ideas, they see the path and the journey that will get them to the


42 Irish Director Spring 2011


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