Accountability. For a word that is increasingly overused in our modern lexicon, it's still something we collectively underuse as a practice. And it's no wonder, considering we live in societies where accountability is unbalanced, abused and misunderstood.
For many of us, the word evokes fear of loss and punishment. Most of us grew up in punitive education systems, families or cultures where mistakes were seen as failures, and we still carry a hangover of shame. Many endured harm from people who never apologized, so healthy repair was never modelled. And on a global scale, we watch the genocidal behaviour of world leaders be defended, protected and applauded, leading them to higher positions of power while we couldn't so much as get away with missing a monthly debt payment or being a person of colour in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the US, simply being an immigrant in a country literally founded by immigrants is now a crime. You don't even have to do anything. Just existing with certain identities is a punishable offense. None of this is logical, and nor is it meant to be.
Morally, the average person is held to standards that many authority figures and celebrities are not. We watch them deflect blame onto others, scapegoat vulnerable people or groups, or ignore the issue entirely, believing that if they never mention it again, any harm caused will cease to exist. If we're really lucky, they may offer some vaguely apologetic platitude, swiftly followed by the same harmful behaviour. Their money and powerful connections protect them from consequences the rest of us would have to suffer.
This allergy to accountability in leadership is not new. It’s baked into our collective history. When we exist within systems forged during a time when land theft, slavery and human rights abuses were not only the norm but actively rewarded and encouraged within many western countries, it would have been counterintuitive to take responsibility for these acts. They were not even deemed as criminal until more recent years. And what makes the issue of repairing this harm more slippery is that it is now so insidious that it’s very hard to pin down. Generations have passed, laws have been changed, and there is so much discourse around it that it appears to be in the process of being adequately addressed. Yet, at least in England, colonial institutions such as the government, the monarchy, the Church of England and the British Museum have still not taken anywhere near the full level of accountability for the harm they partook in, were built upon and are still financially supported by. That would require a level of transformation that they simply do not want, because it would take away their power, status and financial privilege.
Our collective leaning towards shirking responsibility is now also compounded by new age wellness and spirituality concepts that have been misappropriated to bypass any problematic behaviour. Self care, self compassion and self forgiveness are necessary, but they're not a convenient excuse to escape accountability in the name of love and light. There is a very fine line between blaming ourselves for everything and renouncing blame altogether because it is all an illusion which we can choose to detach from, as many misappropriated teachings from transcendental spiritualities infer. And although taking a bath and lighting candles could help us prepare to make an apology, they do not actually act as a substitute for one. Nor does simply being nice in the hopes that it will prevent the need for accountability. Unfortunately, niceness itself has become a silencing and oppressive tool in supremacy culture and is often used as a shield in spiritual, liberal and progressive circles to tone police anyone who speaks inconvenient truths.
When people in the highest positions of power point blank refuse to take ownership for the harm they continue to cause, our everyday CEOs, church leaders, spiritual teachers and school principals are hardly going to be queuing up to take responsibility en masse. As a collective, we have not reached that stage yet, but we are going to have to if we are to actually see long lasting change in this world. We need to develop the fundamental ability to know when we have caused harm, to deeply listen, to own our part and to apologize, without it being performative. Where our words are followed by genuine change.
There is also a distinct difference between hurt and harm. We can’t always control whether someone will be hurt by our actions, as it’s also dependent on how they interpret our words or behaviour according to their own personal experiences, trauma or worldview. Harm is different in that there are collectively understood harmful behaviours - physical harm, abuse, neglect and cruelty, for example. Isms and phobias also fall under the ‘harm’ category, even when they’re deeply unconscious and unacknowledged. Passing comments that appear well-meaning actually serve to further perpetuate racial, sexist or homophobic tropes, and are far from harmless. But rather than shame ourselves when someone highlights this to us, we can choose to take it as an opportunity to deepen our relationship with them by apologizing and making an effort to work on any prejudices we may have. And we all have them.
An example of hurt, rather than harm, is when we may offer unsolicited advice to someone who could have had a lot of familial trauma around that. We were trying to help, and we weren’t to know their history, but we may have overstepped their boundaries by offering them advice they didn’t ask for, and we can own that. Whether we made an innocent comment that hurt someone, or whether we caused actual harm, an appropriate level of accountability would help to repair the situation, because the impact is as important as the intention. Accountability is not to be abused, however. It’s not meant to be a way to punish, shame or manipulate people, as so often happens nowadays on social media and in various activist groups. This only serves to sever ties within and between communities rather than build them.
There is a well-ingrained and somewhat unconscious belief that when we take accountability, we will be ostracized from our communities and we will lose the respect and social standing we once enjoyed. Of course, it's not easy or comfortable. But in my experience, it is always those who genuinely own their mistakes and change their behaviours who inspire me and earn my deep respect. Rather than a weakness, it is a strength, and a rare one at that. We’re human - we’re going to hurt people, and we sure as hell expect an apology when someone else hurts us. And when we are able to build this muscle in return, we relax into our humanness and that of other people’s. We live in less fear of having to maintain our carefully curated perfection and we trust that we will ultimately be ok, because we have the tools to course-correct when needed. We liberate ourselves from the unconscious burdens that we may be carrying, and we cultivate deeper trust and intimacy with those around us, as well as with ourselves.
As leaders, it's important to model this to the best of our capacity.
When our power is built upon the powerlessness of others, it isn’t real power to begin with. It is never a true loss to own and change harmful behaviour if it leads to the empowerment and liberation of those who were oppressed or harmed by that behaviour. It is often terror and a deep mistrust of life itself - the very foundations upon which colonialism was built - that prevent people from facing and addressing the harms they have caused. It is a mistrust in the nature of abundance itself - how one supposedly earns it, how one receives it and how one maintains it, and comes from a deeply held belief that other people’s liberation, wealth or empowerment naturally comes at the cost of our own. There is nothing natural about this belief. It is entirely manufactured, and when we look at the natural world, there is plenty of evidence to prove that. There is more than enough for us all, if only we could cultivate the trust required to know each other beyond potential threats to our safety and livelihood. Resources aren’t finite when distributed fairly and sustainably. But when we siphon, hoard and steal more than our fair share, this belief keeps perpetuating itself and leaves us small, afraid and unwilling to address any harm we have caused in securing it.
In areas like healthcare, social care, the military and the government, diminished responsibility literally costs lives. On a smaller scale, the inability to take ownership for health and safety measures - no matter how big or small - can also cost human life, and at the very least, the quality of it. The fear of being sued the minute we take accountability has rendered us all terrified of being caught, ready to share the blame with anyone and everyone, even if it was ultimately our decision to give the go-ahead. And the higher-up we sit in these colonial and capitalist structures, the further we are from fully understanding our impact on those who are oppressed by them.
It’s easy to give an order when we’re not the one who is on the receiving end of it, whether it’s enforcing incredibly short lunch breaks, overlooking a formal complaint about racism, failing to install functioning door handles on staff toilets or distributing a cheaper yet more harmful product just to stick to tight budgets. Just to meet deadlines. Just to stay on track for our bonus. Just for an easy life. Those decisions and cut corners can have catastrophic effects on the lives of others; effects we may never even know. Yet when someone is inevitably harmed, the most common response from leadership is to shirk responsibility, to simply keep going as though nothing has happened, and - at a push - offer platitudes claiming it will be ‘looked into’, knowing full well that it won’t. Offering explicit apologies has become something most leaders have developed an allergy to, in a culture where the threat of legal action and financial loss looms over us all.
The higher up we are in the system, the less we are held accountable. Meanwhile, our employees, without whom nothing would get done, are often held accountable for everything, treated disrespectfully and micromanaged. This system is unjust, classist, colonial, inequitable and unsustainable. But for the leaders who are currently having to work within it, how can we bridge the gap between the old world and the new by redistributing and rebalancing accountability so that it's fairer for all?
For some, it would look like forming a council of people from different positions within the organisation to review company decisions. Decision making shouldn't just be made by those at the top; they aren’t the ones whose daily lives, pay and wellbeing are most impacted. Those directly affected by our decisions should be the ones holding us accountable as leaders.
I also encourage us to question what we as leaders are holding ourselves accountable to. Meeting targets and deadlines, or our basic humanity? Of making sure systemic inequalities and abuses are addressed, team members are paid fairly, treated respectfully and have a healthy work/life balance, or simply to make as much profit as possible?
This is a deep invitation for the leaders of our time, no matter where we are, no matter who and what we lead, to be able to own our mistakes with courage, conviction and trust in the people and the world around us to meet us there and to support our transformation.
The choice is ours. We have the power to go either way, and many will keep taking the route of diminished responsibility, deflecting blame and scapegoating others. But this will ultimately lead us nowhere but further down the route that we’re all currently witnessing. Where a genocide could continue for over a year while our governments continued to spin platitudes of peace, shaking hands behind the scenes for billions of dollars of blood money yet clambering over each other to take credit once a ceasefire deal was made. Where oligarchs and despots with supposedly conflicting moral ideologies somehow join forces when the opportunity to rule society arises.
In the world we actually wish to create and to live within, what are leaders practicing? What are we all practicing? As cliché as it sounds, we’re creating that very world as we speak. And taking accountability is an action we can start to practice right now. The freedom, authenticity and liberation that comes with that is absolutely worth its weight in gold.
For leaders who are on their decolonizing and shadow work journey, I offer consultancy sessions to provide gentle guidance through the process.
For those navigating their own journey with grief and would like a guide through the underworld of death, grief and loss, you may find my book Half Woman Half Grief beneficial.
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