When I was high school I had a friend who asked me to fill in for her at work one night when she was sick. She sold Tupperware at home-hosted parties. She was a fully-fledged grown up and I was sixteen so the whole idea that I could step into her role scared me breathless.

My southern California-bred mother used to be very calm during earthquakes. The house would rock and the dishes would rattle and she taught me — I was about five years old — to say, “Okay, earthquake, stop now. Just stop moving,” and as ridiculous as it sounds, it gave me the happy illusion that I had control over the uncontrollable.

In leadership development circles, the word accountability has so smoothly melted into the vernacular that we almost don't notice it anymore. Let's notice it for a minute. Accountability is a characteristic that is highly prized when we think of it as the capacity to tell the story of a situation with the story teller at the center.