I often get asked by leaders: “How do I make my team more accountable?”  But the real question that's *actually* being asked here is: “How do I get my team to be more self-sufficient?” A team that can take care of itself is one that is accountable to itself. Self-sufficiency = Accountability. As a result, to create greater accountability, you want to set up systems and reinforce behaviors that encourage self-sufficiency – rather than dependency on you as a leader. Discouraging dependency as a leader means: 🚫 Avoid being the expert: If someone has a question, make sure you’re sharing the rest of your team the answer and how you got to that answer. Otherwise you become a bottleneck for your team. 🚫 Avoid solving the problem yourself: If someone is stuck or running behind, resist the temptation to jump in and fix it yourself. Otherwise your team will continue to rely on you and won’t learn to solve the problem themselves. Encouraging self-sufficiency in your team means: ✅ Invest the time in teaching: Spend the time to help your team upskill and understand a problem more intimately. Guide them through how you’re thinking about a complex problem, and ask questions to help them come into it on their own. ✅ Give “context clues”: When someone is seeking guidance, and asking for example, “How urgent is this?” Instead of just answering, “Not urgent” you can say, “This is not mission critical and be pushed to next month because…” You’re clueing them into the context to help them get a sense of how to orient going forward. This takes time. More time than just doing the thing yourself. If you’re hesitant to take that time, I get it… However, remember this: Time spent upfront is the only way to avoid time spent later when you’re overwhelmed by being the sole point-of-failure on the team. You break the cycle of dependency when you encourage self-sufficiency. And that is the only way true accountability in a team happens.