Holding someone accountable for a task they never understood as important is cruelty. Set expectations explicitly first. Empathy drives accountability: when people care about shared goals and each other, they take ownership naturally.
accountability without expectation is cruelty. If you're holding somebody accountable for something they didn't understand was important, you're being cruel and unkind. You want to make sure that accountability follows expectations. And so you got to do a great job of setting expectations before you hold people accountable. And what I found in working with hundreds of teams and thousands of team members is that all accountability can be traced back to the foundation of empathy. If people care about a goal and if people care about their teammates, they're going to take far more personal accountability to do a great job so they don't let people down.
