July 7, 2021
The question of whether leaders are made or born is one of the more common issues in the literature on leadership. So much has been written on this one topic, it seems like there should be no need for a new article. However, I come at the subject from a different perspective and reach a conclusion about leaders and leadership that may surprise you.
Are leaders made or born? When someone asked Ken Blanchard that question, he answered “yes.” That is a great answer because, indeed leaders are both born and made.
Everyone is born with some level of “leadership genes” in his or her DNA. Most people have a modest level of leadership potential based on this God-given latent talent.
Some individuals are born into a long line of effective or powerful leaders and have a kind of gift for rallying people to their cause even at a very early age. John F. Kennedy is an example of this type of person. If you study his life, you will see that it would have been difficult for him to not grow up into a powerful political leader. The same could have been said for Bobbie, and Ted. Many people believe Ted would have been president if it had not been for Chappaquiddick.
I like to consider the less famous people and ask a simple question. What percentage of the adult population would have the ability to become at least decent leaders provided they were paired up with a great mentor who took the time to teach them how to lead and provided them with opportunities to grow into the role? That question requires some serious thinking to answer.
There are three types of people who probably would never make decent leaders regardless of who coached them. People with very low mental capacity or Emotional Intelligence would not have the ability to make rational decisions, so they would not make good leaders as few people would willingly follow them.
Another group we need to exclude is people who are lazy and have absolutely no desire to lead. These people make poor leaders because they do not have the initiative and drive to get up every day and do the work.
A third category would be those people who are not willing to accept mentoring.
I contend that most of the people who do not fit into the categories above have the potential of becoming decent leaders, if they were properly mentored. My guess is that this leaves 60-70% of the population with the potential. You might quibble about another category and take the estimate down to 50% or so, but I believe that is as low we should go.
The interesting thing is that there are so few really good leaders in the world. In fact, I believe the lack of good leaders is a critical shortage that is limiting our world today. Yet, if my estimates above are in the ball park, there is no dearth of candidates, so what is the problem? The problem is a shortage of great mentors!
Most leaders are so consumed just trying to optimize their own leadership performance that they give little thought to the development of other leaders. In my book that makes them not such great leaders after all. My favorite quotation is one of my own: “The highest calling for any leader is to grow other leaders.” If more leaders understood this, we could greatly accelerate the growth of a new generation of leaders.
I am dedicating the remainder of my professional life to the cause of getting more leaders to step up to their mentor responsibilities. I will be starting another series of articles on the topic of mentoring. The series will be called “Mastering Mentoring.”
John Maxwell calls the impact of mentoring, the multiplier effect. If each great leader took responsibility for generating at least 10 great leaders for the next generation, our world would be a much better place. If you are a leader, consider if you are leveraging your talents in this way. If not, it is never too late to start.
The preceding information was adapted from the book Leading with Trust is like Sailing Downwind, by Robert Whipple. It is available on www.leadergrow.com.
Robert Whipple is also the author of The TRUST Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals and, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online. Bob consults and speaks on these and other leadership topics. He is CEO of Leadergrow Inc. a company dedicated to growing leaders.
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Posted by trustambassador
May 5, 2021
The advantages of working in a high trust environment are evident to everyone from the CEO to the shop floor, from suppliers to customers, and even the competition.
Building and maintaining trust within any organization pays off with many benefits. Unfortunately, not many organizations have been able to create an environment of high trust. The few that do have high trust enjoy an incredible sustainable advantage.
To understand why, we can contrast high trust environments with lower trust areas along many dimensions.
Solving Problems
In organizations of high trust, problems are dealt with easily and efficiently. In low trust organizations, problems become huge obstacles as leaders work to unscramble the mess to find out who said what or who caused the problem to spiral out of control. Often feelings are hurt or long-term damage in relationships occurs. While problems exist in any environment, they take many times longer to resolve if there is low trust. That is wasted time.
Focused Energy
People in organizations with high trust do not need to be defensive. They focus energy on accomplishing the Vision and Mission of the organization. Their energy is directed toward the customer and against the competition.
In low trust organizations, people waste energy due to infighting and politics. Their focus is on internal squabbles and destructive turf battles.
Bad blood between people creates a litany of issues that distract supervision from the pursuit of excellence. Instead, they play referee all day.
Efficient Communication
When trust is high, the communication process is efficient as leaders freely share valuable insights about business conditions and strategy.
In low trust organizations, rumors and gossip zap around the organization like laser beams in a hall of mirrors. Before long, leaders are blinded with problems coming from every direction.
Trying to control the zapping information takes energy away from the mission and strategy.
High trust organizations rely on solid, believable communication, while the atmosphere in low trust groups is usually one of damage control and minimizing employee unrest. Since people’s reality is what they believe rather than what is objectively happening, the need for damage control in low trust groups is often a huge burden.
Retaining Customers
Workers in high trust organizations have a passion for their work that is obvious to customers.
When trust is lacking, workers often display apathy toward the company that is transparent to customers. This condition undermines top line growth as customers turn to more upbeat groups for their services.
All it takes is the roll of eyes or some shoddy body language to send valuable customers looking for alternative places to do their business.
A “Real” Environment
People who work in high trust environments describe the atmosphere as being “real.” They are not playing games with one another in a futile attempt to outdo or embarrass the other person. Rather, they are aligned under a common goal that permeates all activities.
When something is real, people know it and respond positively. When trust is high, people might not always like each other, but they have great respect for each other. That means, they work to support and reinforce the good deeds done by fellow workers rather than try to find sarcastic or belittling remarks to make about them.
The reduction of infighting creates hours of extra time spent achieving business goals.
Saving Time and Reducing Costs
High trust organizations get things done more quickly because there are fewer distractions. There is no need to double check everything because people generally do things right.
In areas of low trust, there is a constant need to spin things to be acceptable and then to explain what the spin means. This takes time, which drives costs up.
Perfection not Required
A culture of high trust relieves leaders from the need to be perfect. Where trust is high, people will understand the intent of a communication even if the words were phrased poorly.
In low trust groups, the leader must be perfect because people are poised to spring on every misstep to prove the leader is not trustworthy. Without trust, speaking to groups of people is like walking on egg shells.
More Development and Growth
In low trust organizations, people stagnate because there is little emphasis placed on growth. All of the energy is spent jousting between individuals and groups.
High trust groups emphasize development, so there is a constant focus on personal and organizational growth.
Better Reinforcement
When trust is high, positive reinforcement works because it is sincere and well executed.
In low trust organizations, reinforcement is often considered phony, manipulative, or duplicitous which lowers morale.
Without trust, attempts to improve motivation through reinforcement programs often backfire.
A Positive Atmosphere
The atmosphere in high trust organizations is refreshing and light. People enjoy coming to work because they have fun and enjoy their coworkers. They are also more than twice as productive as their counterparts in lower trust areas.
In groups with low trust, the atmosphere is oppressive. People describe their work as a hopeless string of sapping activities foisted upon them by the clueless morons who run the place.
These are just ten contrasts describing the difference between high trust and low trust organizations. There are many more distinctions, some of them very subtle. No list of contrasts could be complete.
If you have an organization where trust is low, you are operating under such a huge disadvantage to your counterpart with high trust you cannot hope to survive.
Most top leaders understand all of the above. The conundrum is, they sincerely want to build an environment of high trust, but they consistently do things that take them in the wrong direction.
Many leaders end up hiring expensive consultants to help create a better environment within their organization. This rarely works because the leader does not realize the problem cannot be fixed by an outsider.
To fix the problem of low trust the leader needs to say, “The atmosphere around here stinks, and it must be my fault because I am the one in charge. How can I change my own behavior in order to turn the tide toward an environment of higher trust”?
With that attitude, there is a real possibility an outside coach or consultant can help the organization. Unfortunately, most leaders have a blind spot on their own contribution to low trust, so in those groups there is little hope of a lasting change.
The preceding information was adapted from the book “Leading with Trust is like Sailing Downwind,” by Robert Whipple. It is available on http://www.leadergrow.com.
Robert Whipple is also the author of The TRUST Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Trust in Transition: Navigating Organizational Change. Bob consults and speaks on these and other leadership topics. He is CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a company dedicated to growing leaders.
Leave a Comment » | Leadership Barometer | Tagged: Barometer, leadership, Trust | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador
November 24, 2020
Having just completed a series of 100 articles on Body Language, it is time for me to start a new series of fresh content on my favorite subject: TRUST. I will write on all aspects of trust as I have come to know it.
About 30 years ago, I came to the conclusion that trust is the “golden key” to great leadership. We know it when we experience trust, but it is a bit elusive when we try to define it with precision. I intend to take the mystery out of the topic and discuss numerous aspects of trust and how they relate to leadership.
I will be covering:
1. The nature of trust in many dimensions
2. How leaders can obtain more trust consistently
3. How they can maintain and build higher trust over time
4. How they can leverage trust to improve performance in all dimensions of business
5. How they can repair damaged trust
6. How they can teach other leaders how to create a culture of higher trust
While the bulk of content in this series will be slanted toward business settings, the points and techniques will be equally valid for social groups, families, church congregations, university settings, hospital staffs, legal offices, and any other setting where human beings interact.
Layout of articles
I will do more than simply describe the content; I will give specific examples from my personal experience and suggest exercises you can do to increase your skills at building higher trust. As always, I invite dialog through comments to this blog or on my website. For each article, I will include a Bonus Video that goes along with the content of that particular article. These videos are all very brief (less than 3 minutes).
An exercise for you
As a first exercise in this series, try to recall a time when you experienced a feeling of high trust. Recall the details of what was going on and how you experienced great security in that moment. Now go back and recall a time when there was a serious trust violation in your life. Recall the empty feeling of being let down. Were you able to rebuild the trust, or was it the end of that relationship? Later in this series I will deal with ways to repair damaged trust.
How trust works
In an organization, I think of trust as the lubricant that allows everything to work as it was intended. Without trust, we get friction and heat between people. In this series, we will focus on these aspects of trust and what specific thought patterns and behaviors that result in building higher trust over time.
Benefits for you
It does not matter what your position is; you can benefit from reading this series because it will help your life run much better. If you are a leader (and I contend that we are all leaders at some point: think about leading yourself) this series will be extremely valuable in that it will reveal many aspects of trust that you may not have been aware of that will enrich the quality of your life.
Bonus Video
Link to video of “Leadership and Trust”
Bob Whipple, MBA, CPLP, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust. He is the author of four books: 1.The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals (2003), 2. Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online (2006), 3. Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind (2009), and 4. Trust in Transition: Navigating Organizational Change (2014). In addition, he has authored over 1000 articles and videos on various topics in leadership and trust. Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations
Leave a Comment » | Candor creates trust, Communications, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, Trust, Trust and respect | Tagged: Building Trust, golden key, leadership, Trust | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador
November 18, 2020
Section 2.5 in the CPTD Certification program for ATD is Knowledge Management. Section B reads, “Skill in designing and implementing knowledge management strategy.”
For any organization to be successful in the long run, there needs to be an effective strategy to retain the knowledge that makes up the intangible assets of the company. The ebb and flow of people into and out of the organization make it imperative that the process knowledge of how things get done be organized and accessible.
Standard Operating Procedures
Gone are the days when a set of SOPs for the organization were maintained in current shape by an administrative group. Those books became extinct several decades ago. In most organizations, the content knowledge of procedures exists in some cloud-based system where people can access the knowledge and keep it current.
Security has always been a major concern when archiving organizational knowledge. The best approach is to have layers of information, from readily available to the public to highly classified trade secrets. Each layer needs to have a special control relative to who can access and suitable passwords (normally two levels) to keep private information from getting out and hackers from getting in.
Management and Leadership Knowledge
I spend my time working with the leaders of companies in all different industries helping them sharpen their leadership skills. I have a listing of about 100 topic areas where I train supervisors, managers, and leaders. I let them select the areas of most benefit to them and then design custom training specifically tailored for their situation.
Three Areas of Greatest Need
Over the years, I have found three areas where there is the most frequent need for training:
1. Building, maintaining, and repairing Trust
2. Holding people accountable in a principle-centered way
3. Reducing conflict between people in the organization.
Training Patterns
Normally, I split up the training into half day events. A typical application will have me work with a group of managers from 3-6 sessions to cover the materials of highest interest to them.
I have found that the half-life of information shared in a training session is about one week. That means that after one week, roughly half of the training benefits will be forgotten in the hubbub of daily activity.
Method to S-T-R-E-T-C-H out the Content
What I do to improve the knowledge retention by my clients is to follow up the half day (in person or virtual) training sessions with 30 days of very short (3 minutes each) and very professional videos of the content served up in a unique format.
Bonus Video
To give you the idea of what these videos look like, here is a link to one on the relationship between trust and the need for leaders to be perfect.
By having the content metered out in these short bursts over a period of a month following the initial training, I get significantly higher retention of the tools I am teaching. In each video, I provide the main point of the learning, then I describe why it is important to remember, finally I give an exercise for the person to do that day in order to use the content immediately.
By refreshing the content over a longer period of time, and by having the leaders actually do something with the content each day, they get significantly more out of the training and the knowledge is retained.
Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust. He is the author of: The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind, and Trust in Transition: Navigating Organizational Change. Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations.
Leave a Comment » | Candor creates trust, Communications, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, Organization, Trust, Trust and breach of trust | Tagged: accountability, conflict reduction, content, knowledge, leadership, sops, trade secrets, Trust, virtual | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador
November 11, 2020
There are hundreds of assessments for leaders. The content and quality of these assessments vary greatly. You can spend a lot of time and money taking surveys to tell you the quality of your leadership.
There are a few leading indicators that can be used to give a pretty good picture of the overall quality of your leadership. These are not good for diagnosing problems or specifying corrective action, but they can tell you where you stand quickly. Here is one of my favorite measures.
Demonstrate Integrity
Lou Holtz, the famous football coach had a remarkably simple philosophy of doing business. It consisted of three simple little rules: 1) Do Right, 2) Do the best you can, and 3) Treat other people like you would like to be treated.
The basic Do Right Rule means acting with integrity. If doing what is right is such a basic and easy thing, why am I even bothering to write about it?
It’s simple; most leaders have a hard time figuring out what the right thing is. That is a stunning indictment to make, but I really believe it is true on occasion. Reason: in the melee of everyday challenges, it is so easy to make a judgment that seems right under the circumstances, but when extrapolated to its logical conclusion it is really not ethical, or moral, or it is just plain dumb.
Rationalization
For a leader, it is easy to rationalize the particular situation and convince yourself that something marginal is really OK to do “all things considered.” There must be a safeguard for this common problem. There is, and I will reveal it later in this article.
The Problem Escalation
I believe that most of the huge organizational scandals of the past started out as subtle value judgments by leaders in their organizations. There was a decision point where they could have taken path A or path B. While path B was “squeaky clean” in terms of the ethics involved, path A was also perfectly logical and acceptable based on the rules in place at the time and was also somewhat more profitable than Path B.
The problem is that if path A was acceptable today, then A+ would be fine the next day, and A++ the next. Other people would get involved, and the practice would get more embedded into the culture.
Eventually, after a few years, it was clear that rules were being bent all over the place in order for the organization to look good to investors. There was no convenient way to roll back the ethical clock, nor was there any impetus. They seemed to be “getting away with it.”
Ultimately the practice, whether it was Enron’s disappearing assets or Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme, became too big to hide and things blew up.
My contention is that these people were not intending to do bad things originally, they just got caught up in what Alan Greenspan called irrational exuberance and had no way to quit the abuse. Of course, by that time they really were evil people doing evil things, but I believe it did not start out with those intentions.
At the start I believe these leaders were truly blind to the origin of corruption that brought down their empires and bankrupt thousands of individuals in the process.
The Antidote
How can leaders protect themselves from getting caught up in a web of deception if they were originally blind to the problem? It’s simple; they needed to create a culture of transparency and trust whereby being whistle blower was considered good because it protected the organization from going down the wrong path.
Imagine if the culture in an organization was such that when someone (anyone) in the company was concerned about the ethics of current practice and he or she brought that concern to light, there would have been a reward rather than punishment.
To accomplish this, leaders need to reinforce candor, in every phase of operations. It has to be a recognized policy that seeing something amiss brings with it an obligation to speak up, but that is OK because speaking up will bring rewards.
When leaders at all levels reward the whistle blower, it sets up a culture of high trust because it drives out fear. One of my favorite quotes is, “The absence of fear is the incubator of trust.”
The concept or rewarding candor creates opportunities for leaders to see things that would otherwise be hidden and take corrective action before the tsunami gets started.
It also allows leaders to be fallible human beings and make mistakes without having them become a reason for them to spend the rest of their life in jail.
So here is a good test of your leadership ability. How transparent is your organization? Do you truly reward employees when they bring up things that do not seem right to them, or are they put down and punished?
Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a company dedicated to growing leaders. He speaks and conducts seminars on building trust in organizations.
Leave a Comment » | Candor creates trust, Communications, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, Organization, Table stakes, Transparency, Trust, Trust and breach of trust, Trust and fear | Tagged: abuse, Alan Greenspan, Assessment, Bernie Madoff, blind, circumstances, corruption, culture, deception, Do right, Dumb, Enron, escalation, Ethics, fear, indicator, indictment, integrity, intentions, irrational exuberance, judgment, leadership, Lou Holtz, marginal, moral, not ethical, obligation, punish, rationalize, Reinforce Candor, reward, scandal, tsunami | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador
October 27, 2020
There are hundreds of assessments for leaders. The content and quality of these assessments vary greatly. You can spend a lot of time and money taking surveys to tell you the quality of your leadership.
There are a few leading indicators that can be used to give a pretty good picture of the overall quality of your leadership. These are not good for diagnosing problems or specifying corrective action, but they can tell you where you stand quickly. Here is one of my favorite measures.
Admit Mistakes
All leaders make mistakes. Few leaders relish the opportunity to publicly admit them. I think that is wrong thinking.
For many types of mistakes, a public “mia culpa” is a huge deposit in the trust account. Sure, there are types of mistakes that should not be flaunted before the general population.
For example, if a mistake is similar to one that a leader has made several times in the past, it is not a good idea to stand up in front of a group and say, “well folks, I did it again.”
Likewise, if a mistake is such a bonehead move it brings into question the sanity of a leader, it is not a good idea to admit it. But barring those kinds of issues, if an honest mistake was made, getting up and admitting it, apologizing, and asking for forgiveness is cathartic.
I once had the opportunity to call people together and admit a mistake I had made in a budget meeting the previous day. People were not happy to hear the news that I inadvertently gave away $10K, but I did have a steady stream of people come to my office later to tell me my apology was accepted and that my little speech hit a home run on the shop floor.
Reason: people do not expect leaders to apologize because it is almost never done. You catch people off guard when you do it, and it has a major impact on trust.
Apologizing upward is another tricky area that can have a profound impact. The same caveats for apologizing downward apply here; if a mistake was plain stupid or it is the same one you have made before, best not admit it to the boss unless some serious damage would result. But if you have made an honest mistake, admitting this to the boss can be a big trust builder. This is especially true if the boss would never know unless you told him.
I recall a situation in my career where I had inadvertently divulged some company information while on a business trip in Japan. Nobody in my company would ever know I had slipped in my deportment, but it bothered me. I took some special action to mitigate the mistake and went hat in hand to my boss.
I said, “Dick, I need to talk to you. I made a mistake when I was in Japan last week. You would never know this unless I told you, but here is what happened…” I then described how I let a magazine be copied where I had written some notes in the margin. I described how I retrieved the copy and was given assurances that other copies had not been made.
My boss said “Well, Bob, you’re right, that is not the smartest thing you ever did, the smartest thing you ever did was to tell me about it.”
That short meeting with my boss increased his trust in me substantially, and I received several promotions over the next few years that I can trace to his confidence in me.
Granted, his confidence was influenced by numerous good things I had done, but by admitting something that I did not need to do, the relationship was strengthened rather than weakened. This is powerful stuff, but it must be used in the right way at the right time for the right reason.
After making a mistake most leaders try to hide it, downplay the importance, blame others, or use some other method to try to weasel out of it. Often these actions serve to lower trust. Consider taking the opportunity to apologize publicly. Often it is a great way to build trust. Use this technique carefully and infrequently, and it can be a positive influence on the quality of your leadership.
Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a company dedicated to growing leaders. He speaks and conducts seminars on building trust in organizations.
Leave a Comment » | Candor creates trust, Communications, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, Organization, Transparency, Trust, Trust and breach of trust, Trust and respect | Tagged: admit mistakes, apology, Assessment, blame others, bonehead, budget, caveat, copy, forgiveness, honest, Japan, leadership, off guard, Promotion, relationship, repeated mistake, sanity, Trust | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador
October 18, 2020
There are hundreds of assessments for leaders. The content and quality of these assessments vary greatly. You can spend a lot of time and money taking surveys to tell you the quality of your leadership. There are a few leading indicators that can be used to give a pretty good picture of the overall quality of your leadership. These are not good for diagnosing problems or specifying corrective action, but they can tell you where you stand quickly. Here is one of my favorite measures.
Firm but Fair
The book “Triple Crown Leadership” was coauthored by my friends Bob Vanourek and his son, Gregg. In the book, they stress that great leaders have the ability to flex between “steel” and “velvet.”
They are firm and unyielding on matters of principle or values, but they also display a softer more human side when dealing with some people issues.
Great leaders have this ability to flex, and they also know when to do it. If an issue has to do with certain characteristics (like integrity, safety, ethics, honesty) it is a mistake to bend the rules, even just a little. But, if the issue has to do with showing people you care and want to be fair to people, then on those issues you can flex to show you value these things too.
It is a mistake to take a hard line on every decision and always go “by the book.” Some leaders feel it is essential to maintain control by having a firm hand on the tiller. They often lose the respect of people because they show no human side.
It is also a mistake to be too soft and basically ignore important principles or rules. This posture will also cause a loss of respect.
To get the right balance, great leaders let people know they will be steel on some things and velvet on other things. This causes higher respect and also leads to higher trust within the organization.
One important caution on this philosophy is that you need to establish a predictable pattern for when to flex. If you do something for one person and not another, then you will be tagged as playing favorites, which always lowers trust. If it is unclear to people why you are being hard on one issue and soft on another, then you are going to confuse people, which also lowers trust.
I always found it helpful to explain to people why I am taking a hard line on some visible issue. For example, I might say, “We cannot allow this slitter to run with this safety interlock compromised. Even though we really need the production right now, we will never jeopardize the safety of our workers.”
Once you have established a track record for making the right choices, it is not as important to explain your rationale for each one. The way to tell is to watch the body language of people. If they look confused when you make a decision, then always explain your rationale.
If there is ever any push back on a hard or soft decision, listen to the input carefully before proceeding. Keep in mind that your perspective is not the entire story. There may be other worthy opinions.
Show by your consistent actions over time that you stand for certain things, but always be willing to listen to and consider contrary opinions. Then when you make a final decision, let people know why you went that direction. If you do that, you will grow trust consistently.
Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a company dedicated to growing leaders. He speaks and conducts seminars on building trust in organizations.
Leave a Comment » | Candor creates trust, Communications, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, Teamwork, Transparency, Trust, Trust and motivation, Trust and respect | Tagged: Assessment, balance, bend the rules, by the book, confuse, consistent, contrary, Ethics, favorites, flex, hard line, honesty, integrity, leadership, opinions, predictable, principle, safety, steel, Triple Crown Leadership, Values, Vanourek, velvet | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador
October 9, 2020
There are hundreds of assessments for leaders. The content and quality of these assessments vary greatly.
You can spend a lot of time and money taking surveys to tell you the quality of your leadership.
There are a few leading indicators that can be used to give a pretty good picture of the overall quality of your leadership. These are not good for diagnosing problems or specifying corrective action, but they can tell you where you stand quickly. Here is one of my favorite measures.
Connects Well with People
A good way to evaluate the quality of a leader is to watch the way he or she connects with people both upward and downward. Great leaders are known for being real rather than phony.
People describe the great ones as being “a nice guy” or “an approachable woman” or “like a friend.” The idea is the leader does not act aloof and talk down to people. There is no pedestal separating the leader from people in the organization.
There are numerous ways a leader can demonstrate the genuine connection with people. For example, John chambers, former CEO of Cisco Systems, worked from a 12X12 foot cubicle and answered his own phone. There was no executive washroom and no corporate plane.
Other leaders dress more like the workers in jeans and polo shirt rather than suit and tie.
Probably the most helpful way to be connected to people is to walk the deck often. There is a way you can tell if you are getting enough face time with people.
When you approach a group of workers on the shop floor, watch their body language.
If they stiffen up and change their posture, you know that your visit it too much of a special event. If the group continues with the same body language, but just welcomes you into the conversation, then you are doing enough walking of the deck.
They used to call this habit MBWA – short for “Management By Wandering Around.” It is, by far, the easiest way to stay connected with people. I tried to find at least an hour each day to do this, and I found it to be the most enjoyable hour of my day.
Being close to people has the added benefit of helping to build trust and improve teamwork. By sharing news or getting people’s opinions you show that you care about them. That works wonders for building higher engagement in the work,
Likewise, great leaders know how to stay connected with the people above them. In this case MBWA does not work too well because there is no real “shop floor” for upper management. Being accessible helps, so know the layout and drop by on occasion to check in. Do not be a pest – there is a fine line.
One suggestion is to experiment with the preferred modes of communication of your superiors. For example, I can recall the best way to keep in touch with one of my managers was through voice mail. Another supervisor would rarely reply to voice mail or e-mail, so I would make sure to stop by to see her physically.
One tip that was helpful to me was to arrive very early in the morning – before any of the upper leaders were present. Most executives arrive at work before the general population to prepare for the day and get some quiet work done before the masses arrive.
I would always be in my office working when my leader arrived. There were many occasions when something had to be done to help her very early in the morning. Since I was the only one around, I had the opportunity to do little favors to help her out. Over time that builds up a kind of bond. It is not being a suck up. It is just being available to help.
Beating the leaders in to work consistently demonstrates a kind of dedication. The manager has no way of knowing when you arrived. You could have gotten there just 5 minutes before her or already been hard at work for an hour. I always enjoyed having my car make the first set of tracks in the snow of the parking lot. Over time, that built up a helpful reputation for me that paid off.
Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a company dedicated to growing leaders. He speaks and conducts seminars on building trust in organizations.
Leave a Comment » | Candor creates trust, Communications, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, News, Organization, Teamwork, Trust, Trust and motivation, Trust and respect | Tagged: Assessment, body language, connects, deck, dedication, engagement, favors, leadership, leading indicator, MBWA, morning, pest, quality, snow, Teamwork, Trust, wandering | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador
August 27, 2020
The topics of Compliance and Ethical Behavior are part of the ATD CPTD Certification model.
This topic involves a knowledge of laws, regulations, and ethical issues related to the access and use of information. There are numerous statutes that help to safeguard sensitive information, whether that is copyrighted information, patented technology, or personally sensitive data.
The area of ethical corporate behavior is the topic of this article. I have been involved with ethics all my life and have taught different courses on the subject at local universities. I consider ethical behavior to be a subset of trust, and it is simply about doing business the right way.
We tend to rationalize situations when there are difficult choices. We use flawed logic to make something seem right when it really is not. To guard against ethical lapses, we need organizations to build cultures of trust and psychological safety.
The ability to speak up when you see something that does not seem right is at the core of ethical behavior. Unfortunately, in many organizations, the leaders find ways to punish rather than reward whistle blowers.
Leaders who have built up a high degree of trust based on the knowledge that it is a good thing to speak up when something does not seem right have the advantage of many eyes and ears to view each action. If a leader gets off the straight and narrow through some form of rationalization, the individuals will point that out. It is up to the leaders to reinforce this candor by making the whistle blower glad he brought up the problem.
In Rochester New York, we have a group that has been seeking to raise the level of ethics in our extended community by celebrating organizations that are doing great things with respect to ethics.
We call the effort “Elevate Rochester” because by openly celebrating highly ethical organizations we raise the level of awareness for ethics. Our vision is to eventually become the “Gold Standard” in terms of an ethical community.
We have a long way to go, but our program is strong and vital. It involves an annual contest to uncover highly ethical organizations (except 2020 due to COVID-19). The contest starts early in the year by a series of breakfast meetings to encourage organizations to apply for an award we call the “ETHIE.”
Groups then fill out a brief application form that asks for content and examples in the following four areas.
1. Ethical Leadership – we ask the organization to identify the importance of values, ethical standards and moral conduct in all stakeholder relations.
2. Organizational Excellence – to establish and maintain ethical standards and operational processes that are well deployed throughout the organization.
3. Ethical Challenges – this is a description of how the organization deals with ethical issues when they come up either internally or externally.
4. Corporate Citizenship – how the organization gives back to the community and supports the well-being of society.
For 2021, we will be adding a fifth section that deals with how well the organization practices inclusion and equity principles in their work.
Organizations fill out the application, and an independent panel of judges decides which organizations meet the criteria and pass on to the next level of activity, which involves a site visit to witness the degree of deployment of the above areas.
Finally, in the Fall, there is a celebration that mimics the Oscar Awards, thus celebrating the best ethical organizations in our region.
Participating organizations tell us that the organized process is the valuable part of the contest. Getting a glass statue for the trophy case is the icing on the cake, but the real benefit is bringing ethical behavior front and center within the organization on a daily basis.
Robert Whipple is also the author of The TRUST Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Leading with Trust is like Sailing Downwind, and Trust in Transition: Navigating Organizational Change. Bob consults and speaks on these and other leadership topics. He is CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a company dedicated to growing leaders.
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Posted by trustambassador
August 20, 2020
There are hundreds of assessments for leaders. The content and quality of these assessments vary greatly. You can spend a lot of time and money taking surveys to tell you the quality of your leadership.
There are a few leading indicators that can be used to give a pretty good picture of the overall quality of your leadership. These are not good for diagnosing problems or specifying corrective action, but they can tell you where you stand quickly. Here is one of my favorite measures.
Level of Trust
Good leaders create a legacy of trust within their organization. I have written elsewhere on the numerous hallmarks of an organization with trust as opposed to one that has no trust.
Is there a quick and dirty kind of litmus test for trust? Think about how you would know if an organization has high trust.
You can do extensive surveys on the climate or call in an expensive consultant to study every nook and cranny of the organization, but that is not necessary.
All you need to do is walk into a meeting that is going on and observe what you see for about 5 minutes. You can get a very accurate view of the level of trust in what Malcolm Gladwell calls a “thin slice” of a few minutes watching a group.
Look at how the people sit. Are they leaning back with arms crossed and rigid necks, or are they basically leaning either in or toward the other people next to them?
Observe the look on the faces of people in the meeting. Can you see pain and agony, like they do not want to be there but are forced to endure the agony till the boss adjourns?
Listen to how people address each other. Is there a biting sarcasm that seeks to gain personal advantage by making other people in the room look small, or do the people show genuine respect and even affection for each other?
See how individuals interact with the leader. Is it obvious that everyone is trying to help the leader or are they trying to trip him up or catch him in a mistake? Do the participants show a genuine respect for the leader?
Is there a willingness to speak up if there is something not sitting right – for anyone, or is there a cold atmosphere of fear where people know they will get clobbered if they contradict the leader? In other words, is there psychological safety in this group?
If there is work to be done are there eager volunteers or does everyone sit quiet like non bidders at an auction?
Is the spirit of the meeting one of doom and gloom or is the group feeling like masters of their own fate, even when times are rough?
Do the people focus on the vision of what they are trying to accomplish, or do they focus on each other in a negative way. The former is an indication of a high trust group while the latter is how low trust groups interact.
These are just a few signs you can observe in only a few minutes that will tell you the level of trust within the group. That trust level is an accurate reflection of the caliber of the leader.
I used to tell people that I could tell the climate of an organization within 30 seconds of watching a meeting. You can actually see it in the way people interact with each other.
Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a company dedicated to growing leaders. He speaks and conducts seminars on building trust in organizations.
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Posted by trustambassador