Managers: Accountability Depends on the Context You Create

Accountability often gets framed as something managers hold people to.
Deadlines. Metrics. Follow-ups.

But in practice, accountability is something managers make possible.

Accountability is not a personality trait or a control mechanism. It’s a system outcome.

In this episode, Leslie Ferry reframes accountability as shared agreement and commitment to outcomes — and explains why it rises or falls based on the context managers provide and the feedback they give along the way.

You’ll explore:

• Why accountability weakens even when effort and intent are high
• How unclear context creates drift, dependency, and frustration
• The difference between late feedback that feels heavy and early feedback that enables learning
• Why quietly “fixing” work erodes trust and accountability over time
• How small, timely course corrections help people succeed while the work is still in motion

This episode introduces a practical way to think about accountability and feedback as a continuous system, one that helps managers enable success, reduce surprises, and build commitment without control.

Key Takeaway
Accountability isn’t something you apply at the end.
It’s something you maintain in motion — through clarity, conversation, and contextual feedback.

Related Work
This episode reflects the philosophy behind Brize and Zandra — supporting reflection, pattern recognition, and intentional leadership in the flow of real work. https:/myzandra.ai

Transcript

Welcome back to the Career Edge, a podcast for professionals who want to strengthen the human skills that shape their careers, especially in a world where how we think, decide, and connect matter more than ever. I'm your host, Leslie Ferry, founder of Brize and the creator of Zandra.

If you manage people, I'm curious. Is accountability feeling heavier than it should?

A big reason might be because as managers, we're often taught that accountability is something that we hold people to. But in reality, accountability is something we make possible through the context we provide and the feedback we give along the way. Because accountability is the commitment and contextual feedback is how to keep that commitment achievable in the flow of work.

in small course corrections, not big conversations after the fact. When we hear the word accountability, we often think about deadlines, metrics, deliverables, status updates. But accountability isn't just about what gets done and when. It's a shared agreement and commitment to an outcome. What we're trying to accomplish, why it matters.

what good or high quality output looks like, and what needs to be true by when. That agreement with your team members is the destination. As a manager, your responsibility isn't just to assign work with due dates, it's to make the destination or outcome clear enough that someone can drive toward it with confidence. Here's the core idea.

When people don't understand the why, the quality bar, and how their work connects to what others need, accountability is weak, even if desire is high. Not because people don't care, but because they're working without a clear map. A simple way to picture this is as a navigation system. Accountability is the destination on the map, the outcome you've agreed to reach. Contextual feedback.

is the GPS, the guidance that helps people adjust their route as conditions change. And there's an important nuance here. There are usually many good routes. Accountability is not, it exactly how I would do it. Accountability is, we're going here. We need to arrive by then. This is the quality bar.

These other teams are depending on it. Feedback is how you help someone navigate toward that outcome and adjust early when the route starts to drift. This is where feedback often gets misunderstood. Many managers only give feedback when something goes wrong, a missed result, a mistake, some type of breakdown.

So feedback becomes a reaction. And when it shows up late, it feels heavy. Not because it's harsh, but because it arrives after someone has been operating for too long without course correction. That's when people ruminate. That's when they feel judged. That's when they think, why didn't I know this earlier? Contextual, ongoing feedback is different. It's proactive.

It comes in micro doses. It happens while the work is still in motion, when change or learning is actually possible.

And it does three things that make accountability real. It clarifies.

As a manager, you'll probably say, here's what matters most right now. It calibrates. You'll say something like, here's the quality bar and what good looks like in this situation. And it course corrects. You'll say something like, we're slightly off track. Here's how to adjust without losing momentum. That's not micromanagement. That's leadership that enables success.

And this is where many managers, they can get stuck. Not because they don't care, but because it's hard to see your own patterns while you're in the work. You're making dozens of small decisions a day. What to clarify, what you name, what you let slide, what you fix yourself.

those moments shape accountability more than any formal process.

but they're easy to miss unless you slow down and reflect on them. That's the gap Zandra is designed to support. Not by telling managers what to say, but by helping them notice patterns in how they create context, give feedback, and enable accountability over time. And this matters because most team members want it. Most people want to do strong work. They want to grow. They want to know what great looks like.

in time to act on it. What they don't want is feedback delivered only in one big moment, after too much time has passed, when it's unclear what to do with it. Small, timely, contextual feedback is much easier to receive because you feel that it's helpful and actionable.

Here's a pattern that breaks accountability fast. And it's incredibly common. When a manager sees work drifting off course, they quietly fix it.

You adjust the deck, rewrite the doc, smooth the message, fill the gaps yourself. That may solve the immediate problem.

but it removes the learning opportunity for your team member. It increases dependency on you and it erodes trust over time because your team member can feel that something isn't landing with you, but they don't know why and therefore they don't know what to change. So what does this look like when it's working? It looks like managers using regular conversations, especially one-on-ones.

not as status updates, but as alignment checkpoints. Moments to ask questions like, do we still agree on the destination? What feels unclear right now? What trade-offs are you seeing?

Where might the quality bar be fuzzy? What do need for me to stay on track? And then offering feedback in the smallest useful dose, not a performance verdict, but route guidance. That sounds something like, we're making good progress. We just need to X. Here's how this landed and why. Next time, try...

Here's the impact that had downstream. Or here's how this could be even stronger next time. That's contextual feedback that sustains commitment, so therefore accountability. One final point. As a manager, your job isn't just to drive output. It's to enable the success of your team members.

and contextual feedback is one of the most direct ways you can do that. You make expectations clear, you make progress visible, you reduce surprises, and you help people strengthen how they work while the work is still happening. Accountability becomes less about pressure and more about clarity, commitment, and follow through.

Thanks for listening. In the next episode, we'll stay in this manager lane and talk about trust, how managers build it through their everyday actions, and how trust becomes the foundation for accountability that actually holds. I'll see you next time on The Career Edge.