Accountability - Choosing Autonomy

by Don Harkey

We've talked about how traditional management sets expectations and holds people accountable to those expectations. Then Dr. Levesque talked about how accountability is often tied to a reward, but how people aren't well motivated by rewards. A friend of mine who is teaches management classes at a University recently told me that his students think there 2 ways to get someone to do something... pay them for it or threaten them. What does all of this mean?

It is true (and fairly noncontroversial) that people are best motivated internally. If you feel that doing something is really a part of who you are, you are very motivated to do it. Is that being selfish? Maybe, but that's OK. Even when we help out others, we get a very good feeling of internal satisfaction, which helps us to be highly motivated to help out even more people.

As Dr. Levesque also stated, a key component to being motivated to do something is autonomy. If a person can choose whether or not to act and how to act, the person will have a greater sense of internal satisfaction, even if the task itself is unpleasant. This means that if we are ordered to do something our motivation decreases. This also means that if we are given a reward (or punishment) for doing something (or not doing something), our potential for being internally motivated is decreased.

This is where the word "accountability" causes so much confusion. In management circles, the word is often used as something applied by management to workers. A manager will hold an employee accountable for their performance. As my friend above says, the manager who thinks this way will either reward or threaten the employee as a method for holding them accountable.

An alternative way to think about "accountability" is to think of it as an internal process. An employee holds himself accountable just as a manager holds herself accountable. This is the core message of author Andy Andrews. A successful person "chooses" to be responsible for their own life. They hold themselves accountable to their own actions. This type of accountability looks at internal rewards and leads to greater motivation.

So that leads to the 20 million dollar question... How do you get people to hold themselves accountable? How do you get someone to choose to do something rather than order them to do it? What role does the "thank you mug", as one reader submitted, play in this process?

Stay tuned!