I often hear leaders say a version of the same thing early in a session. They tell me that they are completely open to feedback and that they encourage people to be honest with them.
It is usually said with complete confidence.
What makes it interesting is that within a few minutes of conversation it often becomes clear that very few people around them would feel comfortable doing exactly that.
The dynamic tends to reveal itself quite quickly. Their communication style is high force. They speak quickly, confidently and very directly. The pace of the conversation moves with them. They are often the sort of leaders who pride themselves on being decisive and candid, the ones who believe that saying things directly is the same as creating accountability.
None of that is a problem in itself. Clarity and decisiveness are extremely valuable leadership traits. The difficulty is that many people quietly assume that directness creates the conditions for accountability.
In practice, it can do the opposite.
When someone communicates with high force before they have built enough relationship around it, the signal people receive is not that challenge is welcome. The signal is that this may not be the safest place to offer it. Colleagues become more careful with their words, direct reports begin to filter what they say and upward feedback gradually disappears.
From the outside, this can look like a lack of accountability within the team. Leaders may conclude that people are unwilling to speak up or that difficult conversations are being avoided.
More often the issue is not the absence of accountability but the absence of the conversations that make accountability possible.
This is the thinking behind Cowley and Purse’s Five Conversations. The conversations themselves matter, but the order matters just as much. Building trust, setting expectations and delivering positive feedback beforehand create the conditions that allow challenge and corrective feedback to land well. When people skip those earlier conversations and move straight to challenge, what is meant to be delivered as clarity can easily feel like force to everyone else.
At that point, honesty does not disappear. People still talk about the problem, just not with the person who most needs to hear it. Conversations happen in corridors, over coffee, or later with colleagues who feel safer to speak to.
From the outside that can look like a lack of accountability.
In reality, accountability is still there. People can see the issue and they are quite capable of talking about it. They simply choose safer places and safer audiences.
Accountability, in other words, is rarely missing.
It is simply avoided.