Answerable: The New Competence of the Leader
Posted: May 24, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays, leadership | Tags: business, culture, dialogue, purpose, systems, values, wisdom Leave a commentAs Peter Drucker, bridge the gap between Responsive and Responsible with Answerable, including for spirituality.
ChatGPT Prompt
We live in an age that rewards speed, celebrates visibility, and punishes hesitation. The temptation for leaders, therefore, is to become ever more responsive—to jump at signals, react to feedback, and outpace the moment.
But speed alone is not effectiveness. In fact, responsiveness without responsibility becomes recklessness.
Conversely, many leaders—especially in established institutions—cling to responsibility as an excuse for inaction. They know what is right. They have values, frameworks, and governance. Yet they fail to act because they fear making a mistake, disrupting the system, or offending the wrong people.
The result is a split: some leaders act without thinking; others act without listening.
Both fail.
The Lost Competence
The answer is not to choose one side of the dichotomy. The answer is to transcend the dichotomy.
The effective executive today must cultivate a different virtue—one that holds responsiveness and responsibility in tension, and unites them into a higher competence. I call this being answerable.
To be answerable is to recognize that leadership is a conversation. A conversation between the demands of the present and the demands of the future. Between what is expedient and what is right. Between the urgency of the customer and the integrity of the mission.
To be answerable is not simply to react. It is to respond with judgment.
To be answerable is not simply to stand on principle. It is to act with presence.
The Practice of Listening
The essence of answerability is listening—but not the passive kind. It is the listening that discerns what is needed, what is missing, and what must not be forgotten.
Listening to the market. Listening to your people. Listening to the consequences of your own decisions. Listening, even, to your conscience.
Leaders fail when they stop listening—or when they treat listening as a delay tactic rather than a strategic discipline.
The Courage to Respond
But listening is not enough. You must respond—and not just when convenient. The answerable leader is willing to make timely decisions, even under uncertainty, but always from a place of moral clarity.
Responsiveness becomes dangerous when it is separated from reflection.
Responsibility becomes cowardice when it avoids risk.
Answerability requires courage. The courage to act—not because the data is perfect, but because the purpose is clear.
The Spiritual Dimension
Though I write primarily for managers and executives, I cannot ignore the spiritual implications of this idea.
The Scriptures are full of answerable figures—men and women who did not merely obey commands, but responded to a call. When the voice said, “Whom shall I send?” the prophet answered, “Here I am.” That is the voice of leadership.
Answerability is not submission; it is commitment. It is not reacting out of fear, but responding in love. It is not avoiding mistakes, but embracing responsibility for the sake of others.
Final Word
The great question every leader must answer today is not “How fast can you move?”
Nor is it “How well can you comply?”
The real question is:
When the world calls, will you answer—not just quickly, but wisely?
That is the mark of the effective executive.
That is the virtue of the answerable leader.
Radical Centrism 