When Accountability Becomes Agreement: Building Trust Through Community
I opened the email newsletter yesterday from Peter Block, read it and it started me thinking. Here’s one quote. "Accountability is understood as an outcome of trust and an understanding between peers, a form of covenant. Serious agreement without consequences. Accountability that works cannot be enforced or demanded." This insight from Peter Block cuts straight to the heart of what's broken in most organizations today.
We've been doing accountability wrong. For decades, business leaders have treated accountability like a weapon to wield rather than a relationship to build. We talk about "holding people accountable" as if accountability were something we could force on others through consequences and control. But Block reminds us that real accountability flows from a completely different source. It grows from trust between peers, from covenant, from serious agreement that needs no threats to sustain it.
This understanding reshapes everything about how we build organizations.
The Traditional Accountability Trap
Most business operating systems focus heavily on accountability. They provide charts, metrics, scorecards, and structured meetings designed to track performance and identify failures. These tools can be useful. But too often, they reinforce a fundamental misunderstanding of human motivation and organizational culture.
When we say we need to "hold someone accountable," we've already lost the game. That phrase reveals that accountability has broken down. If you're having that conversation, the person is already not accountable. Otherwise, why would you need to have it?
Traditional approaches treat accountability as top-down enforcement. Leaders set expectations, monitor compliance, and deliver consequences when people fall short. This creates a culture where accountability feels like blame, where people hide problems instead of solving them, and where the threat of punishment drives behavior rather than genuine commitment.
The Community-Enhanced Alternative
Supercharge offers a radically different path. Instead of treating accountability as something to enforce, it recognizes accountability as something that emerges naturally when certain conditions exist. These conditions include clarity, trust, peer connection, and shared commitment to collective success.
In a community-enhanced culture, accountability takes on new dimensions. Self-directed accountability becomes primary. People take ownership of their roles and outcomes because they see themselves as integral to the organization's success. The drive to meet commitments comes from personal integrity and commitment to the community, not fear of punishment. When challenges arise, individuals actively seek solutions rather than waiting for direction.
Peer-to-peer accountability replaces top-down control. Team members support each other in meeting commitments, offering help and resources freely. Feedback flows openly among peers, focused on improvement rather than criticism. Success and failure become collective outcomes, encouraging genuine mutual support instead of finger-pointing.
This shift doesn't happen by accident. It requires deliberate leadership.
Building the Foundation: Sources of Truth and Rituals
The path from enforced compliance to genuine accountability runs through two critical elements: sources of truth and rituals.
Sources of truth provide clarity. They define success in quantifiable, succinct ways that everyone can see and understand. These might include quarterly goals, key results, or specific to-do items. The critical requirement is that they must be clear, not "squishy." Ambiguous expectations undermine accountability before it can even begin.
But sources of truth alone aren't enough. Without rituals to review them consistently, they become just another abandoned initiative. Rituals create the operating rhythm that builds accountability into organizational life.
Whether in daily huddles, weekly meetings, quarterly reviews, or annual planning sessions, rituals ensure that people know they will review their progress with their peers. This consistency transforms individual effort into collective commitment. The ritual itself creates accountability because everyone knows they will be asked by their peers, not commanded by bosses, to report on their commitments.
Leadership's Role: Setting Expectations, Not Demanding Compliance
Leaders in this model have a specific, essential role. They set and reset the clarity of expectations. If leaders do this well, people will show up as accountable or not. Then leaders "own" the consequences, both positive and negative.
This requires a fundamental shift in leadership language and behavior. Leaders must learn to ask powerful questions instead of giving answers. They must create conditions for natural emergence rather than controlling outcomes. They must build spaces where truth-telling and vulnerability are safe.
Two simple guidelines help leaders foster accountability without falling into the enforcement trap. First, when someone surprises you or disappoints you with non-performance, don't ask "Why?" or "Why not?" Instead, ask who, what, when, where, and how questions. It's difficult to challenge the answer from a "Why" question, but these other questions invite problem-solving rather than defensiveness.
Second, don't accept "I'll try" or "I'll give it my best." Respond instead with, "Of course you will try, that's why I hired you. Now what will you do and when?" This redirects the conversation from vague intentions to specific commitments.
Accountability as Caring for the Group
Perhaps the most powerful reframing in Supercharge is this simple truth: accountability is simply caring for the group.
When we view accountability through this lens, everything changes. Accountability stops feeling like an attack and becomes an expression of connection. Being accountable means being reliable. It means your teammates can count on you to do what you say you'll do, as you said you would do it.
This transforms organizational culture from isolation to connectedness. Instead of individuals protecting themselves from blame, people actively support each other's success. Instead of hiding struggles, they surface issues early because they know their community will help solve them. Instead of competition, collaboration becomes natural.
Author bell hooks captured this beautifully: "How do we hold people accountable yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?" This is the essence of effective leadership and community building.
From Enforcement to Emergence
Peter Block's insight about accountability as covenant points toward a future most organizations haven't yet imagined. A future where accountability flows naturally from trust rather than being extracted through fear. Where peers support each other's commitments rather than bosses monitoring compliance. Where serious agreement needs no consequences because the agreement itself, rooted in authentic connection, is sufficient.
This isn't naive optimism. It's recognition that humans actually want to be accountable. We underestimate how eager people are to contribute meaningfully when the conditions support it. The tools and structures of business operating systems can serve this higher purpose, but only when leaders understand that lasting transformation requires building community, not just implementing systems.
Accountability that works cannot be enforced or demanded. It can only be cultivated through trust, clarity, and genuine commitment to collective success.
Ready to learn more about building accountability through community? Purchase Supercharge: A New Playbook for Leadership here.
