I think that a culture of trust and of accountability go hand in hand. Accountability helps to establish trust and to re-enforce trust. I’m not sure you can separate one from the other.

Accountability by itself doesn’t create stress: it’s unreasonable accountability that does. The accountability I’m talking about is that a person does what they say they are going to do and that there are reasonable expectations. Failure is okay and even allowed, since it is a learning experience. I would argue that failure is even encouraged, because then risk is promoted, with reasonable accountability.

Accountability that leads to stress is when no failure is allowed. Then you have unreasonable expectations and that is when trust breaks down, because then the game becomes all about managing expectations and not about getting results. The employee commits to less than they think they can do because they don’t want to fail and then in response the employer or manager requires that they try to do more than they can handle, leading to failure and a vicious cycle begins where trust breaks down.

I do agree that often times accountability doesn’t extend to the top level. How many managers are out there that are afraid of what their employees have to say about them, so they avoid all feedback from those they manage? That’s a tragedy.

I do believe that a culture of accountability should permeate through all levels of an organization. Too many times those at the top level aren’t accountable for their mistakes and the individuals at the bottom get the boot.