It worked for Christian Ulbrich. During COVID travel restrictions, the president and CEO of global real estate and investment management giant JLL recalls, his ability to connect with people was limited to videoconferencing. “That created a certain void in some parts of our business where people weren’t able to directly connect with leadership,” Ulbrich says from Frankfurt. 

So, as soon as travel resumed, Ulbrich called an in-person meeting with a group of company leaders. His first order of business: an apology. 

“I didn’t say it was down to COVID, because I should have found better ways to connect with them,” admits Ulbrich, who leads some 108,000 employees in more than 80 countries. “Holding myself accountable helped me then thereafter to hold other people accountable in what they are doing.”

Accountability is a sticking point for employees. In a long-term study of more than 40,000 people, about nine of out of 10 said they couldn’t align their work with or take accountability for key results. 

The root cause: poor leadership. Roughly 85% of those surveyed called leaders’ behavior the single biggest influence on accountability, but just 15% of leaders had clearly defined and broadly communicated the results they wanted to see.

For Ulbrich, leadership boils down to one word: trust. “I am very focused on hiring, or surrounding myself, with the best possible people I can identify,” he says. “And then I trust them to do their job.” 

Accountability flows from that trust. “If people feel that you are trusting them, that you are reliant on them, they usually don’t want to disappoint you,” Ulbrich says. With trust comes a feeling of responsibility. By contrast, micromanaging people could prompt them to do sloppy work because they figure the boss will check it anyway, Ulbrich reckons. 

Transparency is crucial too, starting with leadership and company goals and extending to individual responsibilities, he adds. “Only if we all deliver within our immediate area of responsibility, then we can get to the overall outcome.”

A culture of accountability can also help foster innovation. At JLL, team members feel encouraged to try new ways forward, Ulbrich says. “Nobody gets fired for using the wrong path. You just have to have a good explanation and a good thought process why you used that path instead of the traditional path.” 

If being accountable means taking responsibility, that’s especially important when things don’t go so well, Ulbrich maintains. “When you want to hold people accountable, you want them to live up to their responsibility in good and bad times.”

Leaders are no exception. “I’m willing to apologize when something went wrong, because I’m ultimately responsible,” Ulbrich says. Those words create transparency that filters through the organization, he has found.

Ulbrich has some parting advice for leaders. First: Be authentic—or your colleagues will immediately catch on. Second: Walk your talk. That doesn’t mean you can’t make controversial decisions. Just be ready to back them up.

After Ulbrich took charge of JLL in 2016, much of the transformation he led proved highly unpopular, he remembers. “But I was super consistent in explaining why we have to do it,” he says. “That created enough followship to make that transformation successful.”

He sounds pretty unapologetic about that.

Nick Rockel
nick.rockel@consultant.fortune.com

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TRUST EXERCISE

“For years, Apple has positioned itself as a champion of consumer privacy, setting itself apart from its tech industry peers Google and Facebook and their ad-based business models that rely on siphoning up as much user data as possible.

‘Privacy is a fundamental human right,’ Apple CEO Tim Cook said last year, repeating a mantra he has made a central part of Apple’s marketing strategy. 

But Apple’s privacy reputation is starting to show some major cracks—due to mounting revelations about its lucrative relationship with Google, which has been called ‘the pioneer of surveillance capitalism.’”

As a heavy user of Apple products, I can’t say I’m thrilled about the company’s doublespeak on privacy. Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, lays out the problem presented by Apple’s ever-expanding ties with Google. Because it lags its Big Tech rivals on generative AI, the iPhone maker is seeking a partner to get it up to speed. Choosing Google could leave it tarnished even more by the search giant’s unquenchable thirst for people’s data.

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