Accountability has become a buzzword – so overused and with so many different interpretations that it has lost much of its meaning. In the context of teamwork, however, accountability is the willingness of team members to call their peers on performance or behaviors that might hurt the team.
The usual source of dysfunction in this area is the unwillingness of team members to tolerate the interpersonal discomfort that accompanies calling out a peer on his or her behavior. This includes the more general tendency to avoid difficult conversations. Functional teams overcome these natural inclinations, opting instead to “enter the danger” with one another.
*2014 by Patrick Lencioni and John Wiley & Sons