‘It’s Faster If I Do It Myself’… and Other Reasons Why Your Culture Lacks Accountability

Last week, I spent a morning with the senior leadership team at a Michelin-recognized hotel known for precision, craftsmanship, and a standard of hospitality that simply doesn’t allow for “good enough.”

Thirty department heads, a world-class property, and one shared goal: strengthen a culture of accountability, quality, and excellence.

Over two and a half hours, we didn’t talk about “Accountability 101,” checklists, or compliance frameworks. What we talked about were the real drivers of accountability - the beliefs, behaviors, and leadership practices that shape a culture long after a training session ends.

Here’s what surfaced:

1. Excellence begins as a belief system, not a program.

Early in the session, I asked leaders to write down beliefs that were helping - or hurting - excellence in their departments. A theme surfaced almost immediately: “Every role shapes the guest experience.”

That belief is foundational.

Here’s why:

In our Deep Ocean Belief Behavior model, behaviors are just waves on the surface. You can correct a wave in the moment - remind someone to smile, to follow a step, to revisit a standard - but if the underlying belief doesn’t shift, the old behavior will roll right back in. 

Beliefs are the deeper ocean currents. They are stronger, more persistent, and ultimately determine what shows up on the surface.

Every phone call, every hallway conversation, every repair, every decision—each one becomes a moment where a guest or employee decides whether your organization is excellent, average, or forgettable.

Jan Carlzon captured this in Moments of Truth: “There are a thousand moments of truth every day.”

It’s not the big events that define a culture. It’s the tiny, human moments that reveal the beliefs beneath the behavior.

2. People are accountable when they feel safe and motivated.

What causes someone to step up instead of shut down: safety and motivation. This is backed up by research and by experience. Accountability conversations often fail in the first 30 seconds—the “hazardous half minute” described in Crucial Accountability.

If someone doesn’t feel respected or understood, their nervous system simply won’t allow them to hear the actual feedback.

This is why leaders should practice:

• Establishing mutual purpose

• Showing mutual respect

• Regulating before reasoning

• Building relationship before correction

When people feel psychologically safe and see a path toward growth, they’re much more willing to step into accountability instead of away from it.

3. Leadership models the yardstick for quality.

Steve Jobs famously said, “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

You can’t build a culture you aren’t willing to model. In the session, we talked openly about where accountability breaks down:

• When leaders quietly agree with staff complaints

• When supervisors soften standards to avoid difficult conversations

• When managers act as “union delegates” instead of organizational partners

Quality requires clarity - and it requires modeling: High Standards PLUS High Support

And support is not rescuing. Support looks like:

• Teaching

• Showing

• Coaching

• Staying with people long enough for excellence to take root

• “Blessing and releasing” when it’s clear the role or culture is not a good fit

4. Accountability is ownership, not oversight.

Oversight asks, “Did you do it?” Ownership asks, “What belief guided how you showed up?”

You can supervise tasks all day long and still have a culture with no accountability. True accountability sits deeper - in the beliefs, identity, and clarity that leaders help people develop.

Accountability deepens when people understand the “why,” not just the “what.”

Culture is built - and rebuilt - through small, intentional choices. This group made meaningful progress because they were willing to explore the real work underneath accountability: beliefs, safety, expectations, and ownership.

And when a leadership team leans into those conversations with honesty, accountability stops being a policing effort and becomes a shared commitment to excellence.