I click off the engine of my mom-mobile, and as I open my door, I see my 5-year-old son running out to help unload the groceries from the back. He grabs a bag and hoists it up out of the trunk, waddles all the way to the door, manages to open it and swing the bag inside before taking a big breath and dragging it up the 3 steps into our kitchen before setting it down with relief. He makes his way back down the steps, out the door, and to the trunk to select his next bag.

My 8-year-old daughter has joined the effort now and carries her own selection with ease from the trunk to the kitchen and heads back out for more. At the same time, my son struggles to lift this bag of bananas, mandarin oranges, and a few cartons of various berries when suddenly the bag splits under the weight and blueberries go tumbling out onto the driveway. He looks down, defeated, and lets out a deep sigh. “I was just trying to be helpful,” he says, looking despondently up at me. I muster an encouraging smile as I help pick up the wreckage. My daughter chimes in with an idea. “Benny, how about you get the bag out of the trunk, hand it to me, then I’ll hand it to Mom to put inside, and Dad can put it away.” A grin stretches across my face at my daughter’s initiative and we all settle into our assigned places to begin the assembly line. Sure enough, no more bags are broken, no more berries roll away, and the groceries are put away in no time.

The same thing happens in business. For example, you agree to create a training deck the Sales Director demands because you want to be helpful. You understand the presenting problem and then, under pressure to execute, you build yet another training deck. You deliver yet another training the same as has always been done. But inevitably the sales team still buckles under the weight of expectations; i.e. blueberries rolling across the driveway.

If we want to be useful, we must ask important questions like,

• “What will we be able to do differently after this training deck is delivered?” or
• “What have you tried in the past and how did it go?” or
• “How are you utilizing the strengths of your team members?” or
• “Are team members struggling to carry a weight that no longer makes sense for your market/product/company because that’s just the way it’s always been?”

It was helpful when my son was doing his best to bring in the groceries, although inefficient and frustrating for him. It was useful when my daughter recognized a better way that utilized our strengths to accomplish the task efficiently and with joy.

 As you consider your role as a consultant, where can you stop being helpful and start being useful?

By Amanda Cole

In Flawless Consulting, we define consulting as the ability to influence where you have no direct authority or control.

In a sense, the control, authority, or ownership of the project, problem, or task lies elsewhere. As an internal consultant, I am responsible for “helping” the client get there, but ownership of the result is all theirs.

What if that way of thinking is a little short-sighted?

To balance, we define flawless as being authentic, a model for the way you want things to be, and compassionate to the challenges of your client.

To fully live out this flawless mindset, then, you must do more than take responsibility for the completion of tasks. You must, along with the client, own the process, own the relationship and yes, even own the results.

I just wrapped up another session of Empowered at Work: Cultivating a Culture of Positive Accountability. In the session, we talked about the distinction between being responsible and being accountable. Often, we blur the two into one meaning. Leaders stress the importance of holding people accountable. But here’s the rub: you can’t hold someone accountable. Responsible, yes. Accountable, no.

Responsibility is given. Accountability is chosen.

Organizations try to mandate accountability, and at best, they are mandating compliance. Real, authentic accountability comes when you choose to own how you show up in the work.

“The most fundamental choice we have is to create a future of our own choosing. In some ways, the future is the cause of our current behavior. We have a vision or an image of where we wish to head and the kind of organization we wish to create, and we act in ways we believe are in pursuit of creating that future. The alternative is to act on a future of someone else’s creation.” – Peter Block, The Empowered Manager

With this future in mind, here are five ways to bring more accountability into your work.

1. Contract clearly from the start. Define the desired outcomes, roles, decision rights, boundaries, and measures of success with the client. Revisit the agreement when conditions change rather than relying on assumptions.
2. Own your impact, not just your intent. Pay attention to how your advice, behavior and delivery affect the client. Ask for feedback, acknowledge missteps without defensiveness, and adjust quickly.
3. Raise difficult issues early. Name risks, resistance and competing priorities with honesty and compassion. Avoiding a hard conversation may preserve comfort in the moment, but it rarely serves the work.
4. Make commitments visible and follow through. Be specific about who will do what and by when. Track decisions, communicate progress and renegotiate promptly when a commitment can no longer be met.
5. Keep ownership shared. Resist becoming the rescuer or taking over the client’s work. Build the client’s capacity, involve them in choices, and hold yourself accountable for the quality of the process, the relationship and the conditions that support results.

Accountability does not require you to control every decision or guarantee every outcome. It asks you to choose ownership of how you show up: how clearly you contract, how candidly you speak, how reliably you follow through, and how thoughtfully you partner with your client. When you make that choice, you move beyond completing tasks or securing compliance. You model the future you want to create and strengthen the trust, capability and shared commitment that make meaningful results possible.