“The necessity of leaders being accountable to those that they lead follows from the fact that all people are in the image of God and equal. Because all people are equal, no person can lord it over another. Which is the same as saying, anyone in a position of leadership is accountable to those that they lead.”

Most leaders would say “absolutely” to any discussion of the importance of accountability in leadership.

However, very often an essential aspect of accountability in leadership is overlooked.

It is easy to think “leaders should have a person that holds them accountable” or that they should “be in an accountability group.” These things have the leader accountable to other leaders.

I don’t dispute the importance of those things, but they are actually missing the most important element of accountability for a leader. And that dimension is the leader being accountable to those they lead. 

That is what keeps leadership from becoming a dictatorship. If the leader is not accountable to the people they are leading, then there is no true back-and-forth. Followers’ ideas and hopes are always only suggestions, with no real authority. This, by definition, creates two classes of people.

Instead, the biblical view is that while there is a place for differences in functional authority, these differences are counterbalanced by a true two-way street of accountability between the followers and leaders.

This doesn’t mean that every decision a leader makes needs to be approved by the followers. Rather, we see good examples of what this looks like especially in two areas.

First, democracy. The president is ultimately elected by the people, and has to be re-elected by the people. If he is not governing properly, they therefore have the ultimate power to remove him by not re-electing him. That is how the president is kept accountable to the people.

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