When things aren’t going well there is a tendency for staff to personalize their anxiety and frustration and create “villains” and “victims.” This is an extremely important distinction and it’s not simply dictated by the personalities of the people involved. The illustration shows the difference between an organizational culture characterized by accountability, versus one characterized by a victim mentality. As you can see, an accountable attitude is the opposite of a victim mindset. In an accountable culture, employees are comfortable acknowledging reality, warts and all. They don’t just wait for someone else to solve their problem, or hope that things will improve on their own. Nor do they spend time crafting excuses or pointing fingers at others. They take responsibility for finding solutions and improvements for the problems over which they have clear authority. When employees feel empowered to make decisions and supported when they report issues and try to solve a problem, you get an accountability culture. - Do some of your staff suffer from a victim mindset?
- How can you move them toward embracing accountability? Watch a video, “Fostering Accountability,” from our Applied Wisdom course, looking at how your organization’s structures and processes can add up to an accountability culture.