Sam Silverstein

Every team I have ever worked with has the same three leaders sitting in it, just wearing different names.

Leader #1 understands accountability.

They take personal responsibility for the people they lead. When something goes wrong, they don’t immediately look for someone to blame. They ask,"What could I have done differently?" They know accountability starts with them.

Leader #2 *thinks* they understand accountability.

This is probably the most common group. They talk about accountability. They expect people to keep commitments. They get frustrated when their team doesn’t follow through. But there’s a problem: they expect accountability from everyone else before they consistently model it themselves. They say things like:

“I didn’t have time.”
“They should have followed up.”
“I thought someone else was handling it.”

Those may sound like reasons. But often, they’re excuses. And when the leader makes excuses, the team learns to make them too.

Leader #3 doesn’t care.

Their philosophy is simple: My way or the highway. People are interchangeable, commitments are optional when circumstances change, results matter more than relationships.

Here’s what all three categories reveal: Leadership isn’t primarily about holding your team accountable. It’s about being accountable to your team first.

When leaders eliminate their own excuses, keep their commitments, and take ownership of their impact, the standard changes. The conversations change. And eventually, the culture changes.

I challenge you to pick one commitment you’ve been inconsistent about keeping to someone you lead. Then keep it.

No excuses. No explanations. No exceptions.

And if you’re thinking, “I don’t really make excuses…” that may be exactly why you should take the Excuse Blind Spot Quiz.

Most excuses don’t sound like excuses. They sound like perfectly reasonable explanations.

Find out where yours may be hiding at ExcuseBlindSpot.com.

You can’t eliminate an excuse you don’t recognize.

Awareness comes first. Ownership comes next.

I came across an executive analysis on CustomerThink exploring why so many leaders feel completely exhausted by corporate buzzwords, complex frameworks, and theoretical management models.

A lot of executives fall into this trap. When projects stall, or ex*****on drifts, they look for a new management blueprint. They hire consultants. They roll out another multi-step initiative.

They think more theory will fix ex*****on.

It never does.

People do not follow complicated theories. They follow leaders who model clear standards, speak plainly, and keep their promises.

When you peel back the layers, rolling out a new framework is often an excuse to avoid having difficult, honest conversations. It feels productive to discuss strategy in a boardroom, but true accountability happens in the daily work.

When leaders stop hiding behind corporate jargon and start modeling their standards every single day, operational confusion disappears.

Are you using complex management theories to avoid uncomfortable conversations, or are you modeling the simple standards your team needs?

https://customerthink.com/the-anti-fluff-leadership-blueprint-for-exhausted-execs/

There is a leadership truth that most people understand but very few act on.

Your culture is not defined by your best behavior. It is defined by the worst behavior you are willing to tolerate.

Every conversation you avoid becomes part of the culture. Every complaint you dismiss becomes part of the culture. Every behavior you ignore becomes part of the culture. Your people experience what you allow, not what you advertise.

Our research found that in poor cultures, 63.5% of employees deal with excuse-makers regularly. Only 25.4% see leaders taking responsibility for mistakes. And 50.8% see a disconnect between what leadership says and what leadership does.

Those numbers don't happen because of one bad actor. They happen because leadership watched the bad actor and did nothing. Again and again and again. Until doing nothing became the culture.

The person you keep avoiding the conversation about is not your biggest problem. The avoidance is. Because every day that passes without addressing it, you are teaching your entire team what you actually stand for.

Your people can accept hard conversations. They can accept tough feedback. What they cannot accept is watching you stay silent while someone destroys the culture around them.

What behavior are you tolerating right now that your team wishes you would address?

We find it easier to make an excuse for coming up short than admitting the truth. The truth, many times, reveals a perceived weakness we may have. Only when we face our weaknesses can we grow and move past them.

Also, the fact that we may not know how to do something doesn’t mean we cannot learn how to do it.

Leaders should use this information as a reminder to proactively reach out and discover the needs of the people they lead. Knowing that someone you lead may not volunteer that they do not know how to do something means you should proactively find out and provide the necessary training.

Ultimately, over time, your goal should be to create an environment where people feel comfortable admitting their weaknesses and seek the training and development that will allow them to be their best. This saves time, and is the sign of a powerful, and sustainable, positive workplace culture.

Accountable leaders are always supporting their people.

Here is a number that should bother every leader. Over 90% of managers say they are frustrated with traditional performance reviews. More than 75% of HR leaders admit annual reviews don't accurately reflect employee contributions.

The people designing the system and the people running the system both agree it doesn't work. And yet most organizations keep doing it anyway.

Why? Because it is easier to run a broken system than to build a real relationship.

Performance reviews were designed to measure people. But measuring people is not the same thing as being committed to them.

Our research found that in poor cultures, only 35.9% of employees feel their manager supports their growth. Only 29.7% say they receive regular recognition for their contributions. And only 34.4% feel their voice is heard when they speak up.

You cannot fix those numbers with a better review template. Those numbers are about the relationship between the leader and the person they lead. No form, no rating scale, and no annual meeting will substitute for a leader who is genuinely invested in their people every day.

The best leaders I have worked with don't need a system to tell them how their people are doing. They already know. Because they are present. They are paying attention. They are committed.

Is your review process measuring your people, or is it replacing the conversations you should be having with them all year?

60+ Employee Feedback Statistics in 2026 Explore 2026 employee feedback statistics. See how feedback drives engagement, performance, and retention in workplaces, and where organizations fall short.

I have spent decades inside organizations watching leadership succeed and watching it collapse, and the difference almost never comes down to talent.

Leaders fall into three groups.

Group one is genuinely accountable.

Group two believes they are accountable. They are not, and it is costing them their team’s trust in ways they cannot see.

Group three simply does not care, and you have probably worked for one.

Here is what surprised me most after years of watching this play out: the leaders in group two are often smarter and harder working than the ones in group one. Intelligence is not what separates them.

One belief does.

I have watched that single belief take a struggling leader and turn their entire team around in a matter of days. I have also watched its absence quietly destroy a culture that took years to build.

Most leaders never find out which group they are actually in until it is too late.

Which one are you? I break down all three, and the one shift that changes everything, here.

There Are Only Three Kinds of Leaders. Which One Are You? | Sam Silverstein I have spent decades inside organizations watching leadership succeed and watching it collapse, and I can tell you the difference almost never comes down to talent. It comes down to something far simpler, and far harder: whether the leader owns what happens on their watch.