What everybody knows and nobody says: Leadership accountability as a two-way exchange

Leadership and organizational effectiveness require norms and conditions that help leaders stay accountable to their commitments, goals, and mission. Without them, the day-to-day demands and pressure of nonprofit work can pull even the most well-intentioned leaders off course. In the context of change management, this often means that a change vision isn’t backed by meaningful shifts in leadership behavior.

The purpose of this session is to look at leadership accountability as essentially an information exchange—and to explore the factors that get in the way of the transmission and receipt of that information. Together we’ll work through both positions in this exchange: what leaders can do to ensure that this information is reaching them, and what’s possible for staff who have insights or feedback that they haven’t found a way to share.

This conversation might be for you or your organization if…

You’ve communicated a clear vision for change and you’re not sure your own behavior has caught up with it

You’ve made commitments to your team about how things will be different, and the day-to-day has made those hard to hold

Everyone agreed to a set of goals and commitments, and there’s no real way for anyone to hold you to your part of them

You’ve watched leadership ask the organization to change while the pattern at the top stayed the same

You can see clearly what’s getting in the way of a change or initiative, and you don’t know how to raise it in a way that would actually land

You’ve decided something isn’t worth saying, and you’re not sure whether that’s still true or just something you concluded a long time ago