by David Brock

When I was growing up, my father had a way of communicating with me and my siblings without his having to say too many words. We knew that there were things that he wanted us to learn, and he would reinforce that learning process in many different ways. One of the major things that my father wanted us to learn was responsibility. We could never just go off and play when we finished a job; we had to come back to him and ask if there was anything else that we could do. We could count on our work being inspected closely. One Saturday morning my job was to sweep out the garage, and so I did; but when my father inspected, he pointed out to me the dirt still between the wall studs that were exposed and dirt between the worktable and the wall. I had to go back and finish the job. Another way he reinforced responsibility was by putting a sign up in my bedroom that read, “Responsibility: Completing a task so that it will endure testing.”

Just as my father taught us responsibility, so we must teach responsibility to those whom we manage. One of the key ingredients to teaching responsibility is accountability. “Enduring testing” is an important part of responsibility, and that is the part that we as managers must put into action. If you are like me, you have a tendency to delegate and then trust that the jobs get done without your having to follow up. I have learned, though, that there must be a time of testing or accountability if the job is going to be done consistently and correctly.

God models accountability for us throughout the Bible. By the third chapter of Genesis, God is holding man accountable for his sin in the garden. Throughout the Old Testament, God holds the children of Israel accountable for their sin and adulterous relationships with other gods. God holds David accountable for his sin with Bathsheba and sends Nathan to confront David. In the New Testament the disciples and His followers would come back to Christ and report how their ministry was going with successes and failures. Many times we equate this accountability only with wrongdoing like many of the illustrations just given; but in 1 Corinthians 3 and 2 Corinthians 5, we see that we are held accountable to God for the things done in our body, whether they be bad or good. God holds us Christians accountable for what we do on this earth.

The question then arises, “How do I as a manager keep people accountable without making them feel like I doubt their abilities and that I do not trust them?” The first step is to teach our people that accountability is God-ordained and that there are different reasons for accountability, such as making sure a job is done right, giving a department “deniability” when something goes wrong, and ensuring that jobs done by multiple people are done consistently and correctly. Accountability goes beyond just trust. The second step is to set up realistic expectations of the workers. They need to know the standard to which they are going to be held accountable. This is one of the great benefits of accountability because it clarifies and opens communication on how a job needs to be done. The third step is to develop accountability systems. This can be done in many different ways such as the following sampling of practical ways that we can hold people accountable:

▪ An established fifteen-minute weekly or daily meeting with a secretary to go over what has been done and what needs to be done.
▪ A checklist of what doors need to be locked every night arranged in the order of the most effective way to lock up a facility.
▪ A checklist for cleaning restrooms and other facilities.
▪ An events timeline with all the things that need to be considered in planning an event, from budgets to food to volunteers.
▪ A prioritized master projects list.
▪ A file folder with all of the current projects being worked on (great for a graphics person).
▪ If you use something like Outlook, assign tasks not through e-mail but through the “task” section. (You can assign a task to someone, and it will tell you when they cross it off their list.)

The fourth step to accountability is actually taking the time to hold people accountable. We must follow up on expectations. If a checklist is supposed to be filled out, check the checklist on a regular basis. If a timeline is expected for an event, ask for a copy of the filled out timeline. Accountability takes time and consistency on the part of the manager. This probably means that the manager needs to establish some type of accountability for himself to make sure he does what needs to be done.

Accountability is a necessity of managing if we are going to be effective for our Lord. Accountability creates a better work environment and helps our workers grow; accountability verifies that work is accomplished and establishes a benchmark; accountability makes us more efficient and saves us money; but most importantly, accountability develops character and glorifies our God.