“Great companies have high cultures of accountability.” – Steve Ballmer

Best-selling author/consultant Patrick Lencioni writes, “In the context of teamwork, accountability refers specifically to the willingness of team members to call their peers on performance or behaviors that might hurt the team.  The essence of this dysfunction is the unwillingness of team members to tolerate the interpersonal discomfort that accompanies calling a peer on his or her behavior and the more general tendency to avoid difficult conversations.”

The Bottom Line: Leaders model the hard work of holding people accountable, accepting the interpersonal discomfort and difficult conversations that come with the territory.