Category Archives: Blog

Build Trust For Effective Leadership

There are many ingredients necessary to be a successful leader. Although the qualities of intelligence, drive, and the ability to communicate a vision and excel in business are necessary, one value often overlooked or underrated is building trust. It is simple but complicated and, unfortunately, very easy to botch.

Simply put, if your team doesn’t trust you and your peers don’t trust you, you’re destined for mediocrity in ascending the career ladder. If you are unable to generate genuine confidence in what you perceive as your conviction, it may be because your colleagues have trust issues with you.

Perhaps you’ve made promises you couldn’t keep. You may have overestimated the ability of your division to meet its schedule for deliverables. Maybe you talk the talk but never walk the walk. You may think that your charisma and charm can overcome your inability to be authentic and honest, but you would be wrong.

In The Decision to Trust: How Leaders Create High-Trust Organizations, author Robert F. Hurley concludes, “Without trust, people are more anxious and less happy; leaders without trust have slower and more cautious followers; organizations without trust struggle to be productive; governments without trust lose essential civic cooperation; and societies without trust deteriorate.”

Employees want a leader they can trust — not only in good times, but also in bad. If you work hard to earn their trust, you’ll be amazed at what you get back in return.

In their book The 10 Laws of Trust, authors Joel Peterson and David Kaplan explain, “So why trust? Because it works, most of the time. Not only do people accomplish more in a collaborative spirit when seeking win-win outcomes than when setting up the paraphernalia of paranoia, but they’re simply much happier when dealing in a world of harmony and cooperation.”

When any person is considering granting anyone their trust, they need to see evidence of the competence, authority and track record of the individual involved. When we contemplate giving our trust to another, we have to believe we’ve accurately assessed the character of the person. Trust is rarely given blindly.

When your employees are sizing you up, trying to decide whether to trust you with their ideas, loyalty and best efforts, they will be judging your behavior, actions and authenticity. The easiest way to win them over is to actually be the person they want to lead them forward to success.

Your team needs to see you in action with legitimate and consistent efforts to improve yourself, your division, your team and the organization as a whole. You need to be dependable, capable, competent and logical. You also need to be empathetic with your associates, as well as show understanding and honestly display your own humility.

The truth of the matter is if your group doesn’t trust you, there is no way you’re going to get their greatest effort. If your idea of leadership involves reigning by intimidation, threats and retribution, you are going to get nowhere fast. Even if your team initially submits to this style of management, it can’t be sustained. Employees will desert you left and right at the first opportunity.

In his book The Trust Edge: How Top Leaders Gain Faster Results, Deeper Relationships, and a Stronger Bottom Line, David Horsager describes the difference: “The lower the trust, the more time everything takes, the more everything costs, and the lower the loyalty of everyone involved. By contrast, greater trust brings superior innovation, creativity, freedom, morale, and productivity.”

If you’re committed to increasing the trust your team feels for you, you have to know that trust is earned. You need to commit to being consistent in your thoughts, actions, behaviors and decisions. You must practice effective communication. Pay attention to what other people say and do. When you’re speaking with a colleague and endeavoring to create a trustful bond, make eye contact and practice active listening. Don’t let yourself be distracted by your phone, your computer or anything else. Be present. It’s difficult to trust someone who won’t look you in the eye or can’t even remember the name of your newly arrived baby.

Learn to show empathy. If your employees get the feeling you don’t care about their issues, setbacks, successes or challenges, why would they even consider trusting you? However, if you show genuine concern, provide solutions and celebrate their achievements, you create an honest, strong connection with them.

It is important that you dependably lead by example. When your colleagues actually experience you refusing to play the blame game, taking responsibility for your actions, and being trustworthy and transparent in your dealings, you will reap the benefits of a morally energized group. Jump-start the process by taking steps to trust your team first. It’s so much easier to gain respect and trust when you give it first.

In a piece for Research Management Review (“The Importance of Trust in Leadership”), David L. Mineo states, “In conclusion, the trust that leaders place in those they lead allows both the leader and her/his followers to excel. It is not a momentary event but a series of investments over time that truly allows success.”

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This article has previously been published on Forbes.

Embodying Corporate Culture

It’s easy to cover the corporate break room and hallways with bold statements and inspiring pictures and then claim your corporate culture is not only alive and well, but thriving. That may go over well in an executive planning meeting when discussing inexpensive ways to rally the troops. But does it actually provide any motivation to the groups on the front lines of everyday business?

The short answer is no. If your company thinks something that simple equals “mission accomplished,” I encourage someone from executive management to walk the halls. Simply observe the rolling eyes and shaking heads of the general population while they try to eat their lunches, and the ineffectiveness will be readily apparent.

In the book Culture by Design, David Friedman explains, “It’s not simply posting the vision and mission. It’s about what you and your leadership team are teaching your people day after day after day. And if you don’t know what you’re teaching because you’ve never defined it clearly enough, you’re not likely to be able to do it very effectively, and certainly not very consistently.”

Learning to embody your company’s corporate culture — to live and breathe it with sincerity — takes a genuine commitment. If you don’t practice it every day in what you say and what you do, your employees notice.

Corporate culture must be supported by a strong foundation of staying true to your stated principles and the way you do business — not when it’s convenient, but most especially when it’s not convenient. It must guide your business decisions and show that from the C-suite down, your corporate culture is the guiding force behind your organizational ethics.

Authors Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein in their book The Corporate Culture Survival Guide describe it this way: “Culture is not a function, a result, a lever, an outcome, a tool. Culture is the multifaceted learned structure and practice of the people who lead and people who follow, people who work together and build a history that shapes the future.”

Your consistently reinforced core values should ultimately define your business. They should impact every aspect of hiring, the employee review process, the reward structure and even the disciplinary process.

If the application of your core values and corporate culture are confusing, dysfunctional and haphazard at best, you will find that the gaps between what you desire (the stated culture) and the actual behavior (the cultural reality) are deep and wide. Inconsistency is the enemy of efficiency.

However, when the corporate culture is organic and rooted in the goals of the organization, its approaches to customers, employees, investors and the community at large will be systemic. The shared beliefs, approaches and values create a sustainable model, especially when the desired qualities are consistently exhibited by upper management.

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, “Only when employees know what is expected of them, have what they need to do their job right, are a good fit for their role and feel their manager has their back will they feel invested enough to connect with proclamations of mission or values — no matter how inspiring these might sound in the head office.”

One of my colleagues, Val Williams, MCC, offers this advice to aid in maintaining corporate culture during times and situations that require employees to work from separate locations. “Identify the top three descriptors of your culture and ask your people to brainstorm with you on how to demonstrate those aspects of your culture to each other virtually.” Let them know it’s important to preserve this valuable driving force even during intervals of change.

It’s important to keep the core values you expect your employees to live — day in and day out — in sight. They need to have constant reminders of the principles the organization stands for to bolster their alignment with these ideals. Corporate newsletters and visual reminders, such as company swag awarded for living the values and demonstrating them at every opportunity, are as important as engaging, uplifting communications from the C-suite.

All the uplifting corporate culture bullet points and core values mean absolutely nothing if your employees aren’t empowered to embody them equally. If the management team is trusted to make executive decisions when the situation demands it, but the customer service agents and mailroom employees aren’t, then those platitudes aren’t anything but pieces of paper on the wall. Display the courage it takes to ensure you align what your organization cares about with the way your organization is run.

Jodi McLean, in her post “Corporate Culture Case Study: Do Your Employees Embody Your Corporate Ethos?,” speaks on empowering her employees to make emergency decisions that align with the company’s core values by providing them with the tools they need in advance. “It may not always be the right decision in hindsight, but our corporate culture embraces decisive actions made with aggression, and we are never penalized for the wrong decision made for the right reasons.”

Can your organization make the same claim? Take a leap of faith. If you’ve done everything possible to exemplify every aspect of your corporate culture with honest effort, believe that your employees are willing to step up and demonstrate those principles as well.

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This article has previously been published on Forbes.

Versatile Leadership: How To Get Out Of A Workplace Rut

What makes a good leader great? Although there are about as many answers as there are leaders, one of the key elements has to be versatility. If you don’t have the ability to approach different problems in different ways, you’re at a distinct disadvantage in today’s business environment.

If all you have under your belt is a one-dimensional methodology to tackle any challenge, you lack the multifaceted tactics necessary to be the type of manager who can inspire colleagues in this era of multicultural, multigenerational businesses in multiple time zones. It’s increasingly important to learn how to most effectively approach a problem, an employee or a business strategy.

In his Harvard Business Review article “The Best Leaders Are Versatile Ones” (registration required), Robert B. Kaiser writes, “It is not an overstatement to say that versatility is the most important component of leading effectively today. Versatile leaders have more engaged employees and higher performing teams.”

Because we now work in a global community, it’s necessary to effectively interact with people of diverse backgrounds and skill levels. This requires a more well-rounded approach to problems and solutions. A good place to start is by conducting a personal inventory of your current abilities and talents.

No matter what methodology you use to accomplish this (there are multiple personal inventory systems and tests on the market), the important things to discover are:

• What is lacking in your management toolbox?

• What executive tools do you possess and wield with expertise?

You can make this process as simple as a list on paper. If you want a very clear and truthful picture, include the opinions of those people you know and respect. Ask them to give you an accurate description of behaviors and actions in various business scenarios. You should begin to see a pattern of where you need to develop to become a more versatile leader.

You may have had success in the past by being authoritative and have gotten into the habit of using this style to the exclusion of others that may be better suited to the situation or employee. Relying on a single tactic won’t serve you well in the long run. Bob Kaplan and Rob Kaiser explain this tendency in their book The Versatile Leader: “A chief reason why leaders overuse their strengths is that they underestimate them. Often their gauge is off: they think they’re only going 55 miles per hour when in fact they’re breaking the speed limit.”

To become more adaptable to challenges that arise, you’ll have to put in some effort and self-reflection. If you’ve had the opportunity to work in multiple companies, various departments and at different levels in the corporate structure, you most likely have a leg up on your peers. Working in diverse backgrounds teaches you to use the approach that fits each specific need.

For example, acting overly assertive in a situation with an employee who values cooperation and consensus will rarely result in a positive interaction with that person. Conversely, going out of your way to be conciliatory in a serious project deadline default with a confrontational associate won’t accomplish anything. In her book Becoming a More Versatile Learner, Maxine A. Dalton explains, “You learn the most if, when facing challenges, you employ a variety of behaviors, or learning tactics. Some managers, although perfectly willing to take on challenging experiences, use only comfortable, tried-and-true tactics, thus severely limiting their ability to learn from these experiences.”

If your ultimate goal is to reduce interpersonal tensions and lessen strained communications, you need to stop relying on your default style. Being flexible can be a real problem for managers unwilling or unable to move out of their comfort zones.

I worked with a group of middle managers in a production facility. They all seemed fairly confident of their abilities to use different management styles under different circumstances, but once we began performing exercises in how each of them behaved in a specific situation, many of them realized (with surprise) that they were simply using the same hammer, even in circumstances that required a screwdriver!

To get out of your linear rut as a manager requires effort on your part. I think the first thing you need to realize is that the skills, perceptions and perspectives of others almost always differ from your own. You have to understand different ways of learning and thinking. Being open and aware during this process will not only make it less painful but will also shorten the learning curve.

Make a commitment to your continuing education. It doesn’t have to involve reading a stack of dry business improvement manuals. Take some educational courses, travel to somewhere you’ve never been, try a new hobby and meet new people with new perspectives.

Pledge to make your personal development and the flexibility to stretch yourself not only professionally but personally a priority. The benefits of becoming more versatile will make you aware of how much more there is for you to learn. In business as well as life, progress is everything. Learn to evolve.

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This article has previously been published on Forbes.