Vision Is the Dream. Accountability Is the Delivery.

There’s a conversation I had earlier this year that has stayed with me longer than I expected. It didn’t come all at once. It wasn’t one of those exchanges that erupts and settles quickly. Instead, it started with a simple aside in an initial meeting, an afterthought really in discussion of my work. And then, months later, the same statement surfaced again—this time with a sharper edge. Something that had been tossed into the air as a passing comment was suddenly being replayed as if it revealed a flaw.

The question was straightforward enough: What do you see as your most important responsibility? And without giving it too much thought, I answered with the word that instinctively rises to the top for me: accountability.

At the time, it felt like an honest reflection of how I approach the work. I didn’t linger on it. I didn’t defend it. I didn’t build a speech around it. I simply said it because it is, and always has been, how I think about leadership. But when that moment resurfaced months later, what had originally been a quiet statement was retold almost as a confession. The response came back to me as a kind of correction, a declaration that a leader’s primary responsibility is not accountability at all, but vision. As if the two ideas couldn’t exist in the same sentence. As if choosing one meant rejecting the other.

That reframing stuck with me—not only because I felt wounded or misunderstood but also since it opened up a deeper question about how we talk about leadership and what we expect from the people who hold leadership roles. The longer I sat with it, the more I realized that accountability and vision aren’t rivals. They’re partners. They rely on each other, and they shape each other, and when one is missing, the other starts to lose its meaning.

For me, accountability has never been about punishment or control. It’s not about catching people doing the wrong thing or tightening the screws until perfection appears. Accountability, in my mind, is about stewardship. It’s about being responsible for something that matters—not in an abstract sense, but in a very real, very lived way. When people trust you with their work, their time, their talent, and their hopes, they deserve someone who won’t shrug when things get difficult. They deserve someone who knows the weight of the responsibility and still says, “I’ll carry this.”

Stewardship is accountability with heart.

But I also understand why someone might insist that vision comes first. Vision is the horizon. It’s the sense of possibility that draws people forward. It’s the story of where we’re going, the reason the work feels worth doing. Vision is energizing. It’s creative. And in a world where people are tired and burned out and overwhelmed, vision feels like oxygen. I get the appeal. I agree with the appeal.

The more I reflected on those two conversations—the soft one that began everything and the sharp one that tried to reinterpret it—I realized something important. The critique wasn’t really about my belief. It was about the order in which I said the words. The suggestion was that accountability sounds cold if you lead with it. That it’s too heavy, too serious, too managerial, and that vision, being brighter and more inspiring, should always take the lead.

But here’s the truth: some of us are wired to begin with responsibility not because we lack imagination, but because we feel the gravity of the work. We don’t dismiss vision; we just want to make sure we can actually deliver it.

And that’s what I wish I could have said in that moment. Not defensively, not with bravado, but simply as a reflection of how I see the world. Vision on its own is lovely, but without accountability, it’s a beautifully framed idea that never leaves the wall. Accountability without vision, on the other hand, becomes a checklist. It turns leadership into maintenance rather than momentum.

The real work is in the blend. The vision gives meaning to the accountability, and the accountability gives credibility to the vision. One is the dream; the other is the discipline. One points the way forward; the other makes sure we actually get there.

This became clearer to me when I revisited a simple leadership philosophy we developed a while back—one that still rings true. It goes like this: hire extraordinary people, trust them to innovate and inspire, hold them accountable to clear and ambitious expectations, and celebrate the achievements that follow. When I look at that sentence now, months after those awkward conversations, what I see is a complete cycle. There’s vision in the aspiration for extraordinary people and bold ideas. There’s empowerment in the trust. There’s accountability in the clarity of expectations. And there’s joy in the celebration.

The whole arc is there. Not one or the other, but the relationship between them.

What I’ve realized is that leadership conversations often get flattened into false choices. Vision versus accountability. Inspiration versus discipline. Creativity versus structure. But real leadership rarely happens in the extremes. It lives in the tension, in the push and pull, in the negotiation between hope and responsibility.

And because the original conversation came in a season when everything felt a little charged, it became easy for that tension to be misinterpreted. Looking back, I don’t think the issue was disagreement at all. I think it was that my instinctive answer—accountability—was being evaluated in isolation, disconnected from the larger picture of how I lead and what I value.

So I want to say this openly, in case anyone else out there wrestles with the same balance: if you lead with accountability, there’s nothing wrong with you. It doesn’t mean you lack vision. It doesn’t mean you don’t inspire. It doesn’t mean you’re stuck in the weeds or overly serious or unable to dream. It may simply mean that you recognize the responsibility that comes with influence. It may mean you care deeply about the people you serve. It may mean that you don’t take the privilege of leadership lightly.

And if you lead with vision, there’s nothing wrong with you either. Vision is powerful. It lifts people. It unites people. It helps them see themselves as part of something meaningful. But even the most inspiring vision is only as strong as the accountability that supports it.

In the end, the question isn’t which one comes first. The question is whether we can hold the two together long enough to build something worthwhile.

That’s the part I’m still learning. That’s the part I’m still practicing. And that’s the part I wanted to think through out loud today—not because I want to rehash an old conversation or defend a moment long gone, but because the tension between vision and accountability isn’t going away. It’s part of leadership. It’s part of growth. It’s part of what we owe to one another.

And maybe the best leaders are the ones who understand that vision tells the story of where we’re going, but accountability ensures we arrive there together.