TL;DR
Responsibility refers to taking charge of tasks or goals, while accountability means accepting liability for outcomes and being prepared to explain them.
Responsibility means to take charge of something and work toward completing established goals or tasks. Maybe it's your health (to take your medications regularly), a work project (to curate a list of potential customers) or the PTA fundraiser (to coordinate a team of volunteers).
Accountability means to accept liability for those tasks, goals or projects, even those only overseen and not personally completed by you, and be prepared to explain the outcome. Good, bad or otherwise.
The differences are certainly subtle, so let's dive a little deeper.
In this story
This story was originally published in 1851 Franchise on December 15, 2020. Burnaze summarizes and links to the original reporting.
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