Effective Leadership: Just Do It

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Alexsys Thompson

Just Do It

The Anticipation

You sit on the edge of your seat, foot tapping, hands clenched, eyes shifting around the room, just waiting. Everyone else seems relaxed and content to sit in this room and keep talking, but you- you’re ready to go.

You feel you may actually explode, and just as a bead of sweat starts to fall from your brow, you put everything you have into composing yourself. Instead of bouncing off the walls like you’re in a pinball machine and physically forcing everyone to do the same (you are their leader after all), you take a deep breath, wait for an opening, and ask

 “When can we start?”

“Just Do It” as a Mantra

You took that deep breath because you are aware of one of your primary strength themes, Activator.

According to Gallup:

“People strong in the Activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.”

This explains the anxious body language and the intense desire you constantly have to move meetings along. You are a person of action!

The value you add as a leader to your team is simple- you get things going. If there’s a project that needs to get done, or a proposal that’s having a hard time getting off the ground, your team, and probably other teams, will come to you to set things in motion.

If one of your team members, perhaps someone strong in the themes of Deliberative or Analytical, is having a hard time getting the fire started, you’re there to help them turn their pondering into doing. You understand that performance is driven by action, and action creates results.

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The Dark Side of Expedience

As a strengths-based leader, the importance of understanding the potential consequences of the Activator strength are crucial. Your impulsiveness could get you into trouble in several ways; in regards to projects or team goals, your haste to get something started may blind you to the hazards and obstacles set in the path you’ve rashly chosen to take.

When it comes to your team members, you may be dismissing or overlooking their strengths, and therefore their commitment, or buy-in, to the project.

For example, someone strong in Intellection may have taken the time to sit and think about the proposed action plan and come up with a few insightful and potentially crucial ideas; however, before they were able to communicate these ideas, the process is already underway.

Because you can make decisions so quickly, you may make a poor choice or an untimely one. It’s vital that you be a strong communicator to avoid the popular perception that you are in fact impulsive and make decisions with little thought.

If you are aware of the darker aspects of your strength, you’ll be able to keep them in check, communicate your ideas, and be perceived as more of a go-getter than a rash decision maker.

Activating your Strength

Having an Activator on the team, especially as a leader, can be instrumental in achieving real results and success. As with all strengths, it is best when leveraged and anchored with complementary strengths.

So, Activators, look for people on your team who can see the potential consequences (good or bad) of a particular decision, such as Strategic, people who can make sure there is a clear destination aligned to the team and company goals, such as Focus, and someone to make sure the project is completed, such as Achiever.

As an Activator, you’re eager to get to the finish line as quickly as possible, see the results, and then learn the lesson. You believe growth is best attained through taking the next step without fear or hesitation. Use this strength to take the next step in being the best leader you can; put your strengths into action with your team’s.

Start the process of knowing who on your team has what strengths and how you’re going to leverage them in your projects. The best way for your team, and you, to grow is to start creating a strengths-based culture at work.

And the best part? You can start NOW!

If you’re an activator, how have you found this strength to be of value? Has it ever gotten in your way? Have you ever worked for an Activator? What were the pros and cons? Could a strengths-based culture have improved how that person, you, and/or your team functioned?

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Alexsys "Lexy" Thompson HCS, SWP
Alexsys “Lexy” Thompson is Managing Partner at Fokal Fusion
She helps building Strong Leaders through Strong People Strategy
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Servant Leadership: Authenticity and the Spiritual Journey

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Doug Ramsey

Authenticity

Leading with a Noble Purpose and pursuing a life of service to others only becomes authentic, dynamic and revitalizing when your spiritual practice evolves to the higher stages.

Until then it is mainly a “prepersonal” exercise firmly anchored to your egocentric self.

Being Selfless or Selfish

Leading without a spiritual purpose boils down to a simple ego-boosting technique that may make you feel better, but it will not lead to authenticity and into the ranks of the BIG L Leader.  Doing good and being your highest self is not the same thing.  Doing good can have at its essence an inflated ego drive – at a prepersonal level.

Authenticity and right motives may be repressed by the cocoons of denial and self-deception always assuring you of what a good person you are.  When in reality, Authentic Servant Leadership requires brutal self-honesty (as to your true intentions) and that you truly acknowledge with kindness and compassion your own vulnerabilities.

You have no choice here!

“Be the most ethical, the most responsible, the most authentic you can be with every breath you take, because you are cutting a path into tomorrow that others will follow.”  Ken Wilber

Detaching From Self

This developmental process is ongoing throughout life and it presents itself at both our strongest and weakest times.  If your understanding of “self” is deep and broad enough, you will have the opportunity to detach from ego and with work, experience your higher self.

Then your Servant Leadership style will move towards authenticity and it will resonate in all you do.

This is the true meaning of service and responsibility blended within the presence of a true seeker seeing from multiple perspectives and choosing right actions in being in the world.  Alas, you are awakening; you are beginning to know who you are and what matters to you.

“If you put yourself in God’s position, you will see that you wouldn’t be able to create the future in and through a selfish, self-centered person who deeply experiences incarnation as a burden.  There simply wouldn’t be any room for you in such an individual’s heart, mind, and soul.  This is why our enlightenment – our development beyond ego – has become nothing less than an evolutionary imperative.”  Andrew Cohen

Making a Difference

If you have or are about to take up the practice, you have chosen to use yourself in modeling your beliefs, values, and gifts each day.  You are now truly being in the world, however beautiful or ugly each day presents itself.

This is where you will stand with no excuses, apologies or wavering.  You are here.  You are not lost.

The manifest and absolute realities of life will show themselves.  You are beginning to understand what you are here to do and have accepted the reality that your story (indeed all our stories) will end.  As a Big L Leader, you will take a spiritual stance in your leadership beliefs and actions.

This path leads you to discover how you will make a difference by contributing what only you can give.  Is there any nobler path other than the one that leads to your inner self?

“What is this precious love and laughter budding in our hearts?  It is the glorious sound of a soul waking up!”  ~ Hafiz

A New Frontier

As many of us have discovered, these moments of spiritual depth and insight may strike us suddenly and leave us a bit unsure about our previous worldview.

They illuminate for us a new frontier of profound growth and development.

That what we seek – our true self – is right in front of us.  Are we ready to tap into this awesome potential?  Deep experiences of this scale are essential for next stage progression in consciousness and awareness. Helping us evolve spiritually and integrally.

But we need the courage and commitment to step up and out on to this new frontier in order to feel the solid ground that will hold and lead us to our new-found “self” and the dangers, opportunities, responsibilities and obligations that await our arrival.

  • How will you find your true self and immerse yourself in the authentic leadership experience that offers you the noble purpose way forward in your life and work?
  • How do you continue to grow and deepen continuously, even when you are not in touch directly with these deeper developmental insights?

To paraphrase Rumi:

“These spiritual window-shoppers, who idly ask, ‘How much is that?’

Oh, I’m just looking.  They handle a hundred items and put them down, shadows with no capital…

Even if you don’t know what you want, buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow…

As a leader, can you hear the spirit calling? If you cannot, what can you do to tune your ears, heart, and soul toward your calling? If so, what are your next steps in influencing others to greater heights? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Doug Ramsey
Doug Ramsey is Managing Director at Designed Management, LLC
He serves with Company Building, Growth, Leadership Development, and Coaching
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Changing Corporate Culture To Enable Women’s Success

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Joan Kofodimos

Woman Competing

If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve been hearing the recent debate about barriers to women’s career success.

Debating Two Paths

This debate is personified by Anne-Marie Slaughter in one corner, arguing that organizations force women to choose between life balance and career success, and Sheryl Sandberg in the other corner, countering that women bear a share of the responsibility for this problem.

In Sandberg’s new book, Lean In, she says women need to assume they can have it all, and then get out there (or rather, lean in there) and press for what they need.

If you are a leader who wants to foster the career advancement of women, you must realize this is more than a women’s issue or a work-life balance issue.

Underlying the pressure towards work-life imbalance is a world view shaping common assumptions about what it means to be successful at work.

I call this world view the “mastery orientation.”

Taking Sides

This type of outlook privileges male leaders and leaders who embrace work-personal life imbalance. Also, it has unrecognized costs not just for life balance of the people working there, but also for organizational performance.

Only when you recognize how this world view hinders performance can you summon up the political will needed to change it.

The Mastery Orientation

Below are some of the mastery orientation’s assumptions. See if you recognize them. Perhaps they are so obvious that they’re invisible, like the “water the fish swim in.”

Work success is more valuable than personal life success.

In my research several years ago, many male leaders who  reached high position, when asked why they spend so much time and energy at work, acknowledged that they enjoyed it. They focused on it, even to the detriment of their marriage, children, or health – because work success offers rewards, such as admiration and deference, which make personal life appear mundane by comparison.

Those who work long hours are “rock stars.”

Organizations reinforce the focus on work as productive and virtuous, rewarding those who work excessive hours and defining them as the most committed and capable.

“Winning, “being “right”, “smart”, “logical,” and “in control” leads to success.

The valuing of these traditionally male qualities disadvantages women (though many senior women leaders demonstrate them).  And, this style receives negative results at home.

A “strong” image is leaderly.

Competitive approaches to conflict, power-over approaches to influence, and “thinking alone” instead of “thinking together” are consistent with the image that many leaders feel they have to live up to. They believe that to ask for help, or to say “I don’t know,” is a sign of weakness.

Moving up through the hierarchy is a measure of one’s value.

Managers seek validation by working long hours and seeking higher position – regardless of whether this higher position fits with their talents or interests. Organizations reinforce this idealization of moving “up” by focusing career development on hierarchical progression.

The Alternative Path

Different ways of working are possible – ways which are more consistent with women’s leadership and work-personal life balance, and which also support broader commitment, empowerment, and performance for everyone.

What concrete interventions might you pursue in your organizations, to realize this possibility?

Teach managers collaborative skills.

If managers develop a collaborative mindset in areas such as performance management, decision-making, and influence, this perspective will bleed into their approach to control and delegation, their relative valuing of work vs. personal life rewards, and the macho culture of overwork.

Create structured opportunities for dialogues about role expectations.

People and their managers can use the collaborative skills in these dialogues, to negotiate for balanced commitments and clarify role expectations.

Re-frame career planning, and enable individuals to define their own paths to success.

This approach focuses on individuals’ talents, purpose, strengths and limits, and then defines roles that link individual purpose explicitly to organization goals. Growth is defined in terms of increase in capability, not movement on the “ladder.” This also enables individual ebbs and flows in work focus related to family and care-giving responsibilities.

Assign high potential women to visible work on initiatives of strategic importance.

In contrast to traditional mentoring approaches, strategic initiatives support women’s visibility in a way that’s tied to important outcomes – not to face time or the old boys’ network.

Bring employees together to identify opportunities to streamline work processes.

Collaborative re-design initiatives serve multiple purposes, giving employees a taste of empowerment and a broader context about organizational direction, eliminating unnecessary work, and reducing the stress of conflicting priorities. Women at middle and junior organizational levels, where they’re more equally represented, also gain visibility by actively participating in these processes.

Include emotional intelligence in leadership competency models.

Research supports the idea that dimensions of emotional intelligence such as self-awareness, ability to understand own and others’ emotions, ability to value others’ perspectives and build consensus contribute to leaders’ effectiveness. Also, active involvement in parenting, personal relationships, and participation in the community can promote the development of these capabilities.

Challenge behavioral norms and values consistent with mastery.

When you hear a colleague praising a “rock star” for pulling an all-nighter – stop him and ask him what message he thinks he is sending, and who that message excludes.

Reflect on your own role in supporting the current (or desired) culture.

What is the impact of your actions?  What behaviors are you rewarding, intentionally or not”?

The potential impact for an organization that chooses the alternative path is game-changing – getting the most out of all your female (and male) talent, becoming a magnet for new talent that won’t settle for less than having it all, creating the space for less-stressed employees to work more creatively and innovatively.

You, as a leader, are in a position to make it happen. Why not try?

So what can you do to take a close look at your leadership tendencies and really reflect on what you have been doing? How can you objectively evaluate if you are on the right path or not? Have you been toeing the old-school line? If so, would getting to a more collaborative path help your team? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Joan Kofodimos
Joan Kofodimos is a partner in Teleos Consulting
She Coaches Leaders to Develop their Strategic Perspective
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Hey Leader: You Are A Role Model

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Rich Bishop

Role ModelThe media had generally ignored the personal lives of athletes up until the 1990’s. This is when athletes began having a much larger role in the tabloids like they do today.

Now it seems like there’s a new athlete on the cover of the Enquirer every week.

Living in Reality

Some famous athletes took exception to this invasion of privacy because their record wasn’t exactly clean. Big surprise! They loved being in the spotlight for a couple of hours when they were playing their sport, but they didn’t want to live like a Hollywood celebrity. However, that was starting to become reality.

This controversy hit a fever-pitch when Charles Barkley was in a commercial where he claimed this:

“I’m not a role model. Just because I can dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”

If you know of Barkley from his broadcasts with the NBA, you know that he lives in a dream world. This statement is just absurd.

Whose Perspective?

What was the problem with Barkley’s statement? He felt that kids should admire an athlete’s ability, but not idolize them. Unfortunately for him, we don’t control whether or not we are role models. We don’t get to say, “Hey, love me for a few hours while I’m at my best, but ignore me for the rest of the time.”

It is actually the person who is watching you that makes that choice for you.

They are the ones that choose whether or not you are a role model. Anyone in the public spotlight like that will be seen by somebody as a role model. Pop star Demi Lovato realized this when she said, “I never thought that I’d be a role model. Everyone kind of just made me a role model, and I hated that.”

Here’s Looking at You

People have this innate fascination with public figures that makes us want to be more like them. This is no only true for children, but it is also true for the people that you work with. Someone doesn’t have to be on television to have all eyes on them. Simply being a leader makes you someone’s role model.

The big question for us to ask is this:

“Am I living like a positive role model?”

If you’re going to be in the spotlight, you may as well choose to live a life that is worthy of idolizing.

How Do Others See You?

If we’re going to figure out the type of role model that we want to be, we need to start with assessing how we are currently seen. Just like a large retail company, you have to count the inventory that you keep in the warehouse. Picture a large warehouse with racks stacked high with boxes. There are forklifts moving the boxes around and action is buzzing around you.

Bottom Shelf

On the bottom shelf is where your Values are kept.

These are the heaviest of the boxes, so they’re kept down low. They are also the easiest for others to see. What values do you hold dearly? Are they the values that you want others to have as well?

Second Shelf

On the racks right above your Values are your Thoughts.

They are the internal narrative to your everyday life. Are your thoughts lining up with your values? Are you secretly sabotaging yourself by having your Thoughts and Values out of sync? For example, if you value your potential, are your thoughts telling you that you aren’t good enough to reach it? If these Thoughts outweigh your Values, they will drop and replace their spot on the bottom shelf.

Third Shelf

Feelings are on the third shelf in your warehouse.

Your Feelings should be rooted in your Values and Thoughts… not your environment. What happens to us when our feelings aren’t aligned with our values and thoughts? That’s when we start to have after-the-event feelings like regret. Root your Feelings in your Values and Thoughts as a leader, and you won’t betray yourself.

How Do You Want To Be Seen?

After you’ve completed your inventory count, does it look the way that you want it to? You have the ability to make changes and have your warehouse look the way you want it to. You can move some of the boxes around and even replace a few.

Whether you want to be or not, you are a role model as a leader. There is no wiggling out of this one, Mr. Barkley.

The  important question is this:

“Am I being the role model I need to be?”

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Note: The preceding is adapted from the book Child-Like Leadership

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Rich Bishop
Rich Bishop is President of Bishop Coaching & Consulting Group
He takes a hands-on approach to your Development through Coaching & Training
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What’s Your Personal Leadership Anchor?

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Rob Wolfe

Leadership Anchors

Leadership anchors are your “rules of engagement” that govern your leadership style.

This thought comes from Liz Cornish, author of Hit the Ground Running: A Woman’s Guide to Success for the First 100 Days on the Job.

Defining Your Anchor

For some, anchors are a personal vision, a set of personal values and guiding principles that govern daily interaction, says Cornish. For others, it is an explicit set of behaviors. She also suggests that defining and communicating your own leadership anchor(s) inspires confidence and allows your stakeholders to envision what their world is going to be like under your leadership.

I suggest that you self-reflect on your leadership experience, brainstorm the values and principles that guide your own leadership style, and narrow it down to a single anchor which defines and guides you as a leader.

I believe that having a single leadership anchor is more effective because it forces you to define yourself with one simple statement and, such as with any brand, it serves as a capsule or tagline for your personal leadership brand.

Establishing Your Anchor

The central principle that I established for myself several years ago and which continues to serve as my non-negotiable leadership anchor is:

“If you go on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll go on getting what you’ve always got.” ~Warren Bennis

In order to achieve continual growth as a leader and personally, my anchor reminds me that I must regularly re-invent myself, and I must take risks. I realize that the only way to advance is by acting, not by contemplating.

Refining Your Anchor

The following additional quotes are closely tied to my personal leadership anchor, and will always motivate me. They capture the key elements of my own leadership and growth philosophy, and guide the conduct of my interpersonal and professional life for the foreseeable future:

  • “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.” ~Robert Fritz
  • “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” ~Michelangelo
  • “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” ~T.S. Eliot

Note:  I chose to use a quote to define my own leadership anchor, and included some supporting quotes for self-motivation, but your own leadership anchor does not need to make use of any quotes. However, I feel that having a few meaningful quotes to support your anchor is a good idea. Regardless, it’s your anchor!

What is your personal leadership anchor—the guiding principle that defines you as a leader? Do you know? If not, what can you do to uncover, or discover, or create one? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Rob Wolfe
Rob Wolfe is Consultant at Towers Watson
He help with engagement, solution selling, relationship management & social media
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Matrix Leadership

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Dr. Bill Donahue

Matrix Leadership

Research from the Hay Group has long focused on leadership competencies – in both for profit and non-profit settings. Whether leading a church, a company, a private school, or hospital, you are likely to need matrix-type leadership skills.

That’s because all these settings have 2 things in common:

  1. Specific leadership responsibilities within an area of expertise (sales, men’s ministry, customer service)
  2. The need to bring that expertise across the organization in a cross-functional setting.

Working with a complex, 2000-member church I have seen the need for senior leaders to have these skills. Consulting with a $100 million business with 400 employees, and guiding a leadership team at an urban non-profit, I witnessed the same challenges and needs.

So here is the question:

How do we lead people in non-hierarchical structures to accomplish personal and organizational goals?

Four Competencies

The Hay research identifies 4 competencies specifically needed in matrix settings:

Empathy:

The ability to identify with the perspectives and insights of others who hold different views

Conflict Management:

The ability to resolve issues and relational breakdown in mutually beneficial ways, aligned with institutional outcomes

Influence:

The ability to lead people when you do not have direct-line authority or supervision

Self-awareness:

Having enough personal insight to recognize when and how to engage others, manage emotions and understand personal strengths and weaknesses

(For more information on this kind of research see http://www.haygroup.com/ww/press/details.aspx?ID=33283)

Sounds good. But there is only one problem. The researchers found these competencies greatly lacking in many leaders, especially men. The percentage of leaders in the survey who demonstrated each competency are listed below:

  • Empathy: 22%
  • Conflict Management: 31%
  • Influence: 20%
  • Self-awareness: 9%

With so few leaders who are self-aware of their own abilities and relational capacities (or lack thereof), and lacking in influence and empathy, it is no wonder that matrix management approaches are difficult.

Acquiring New Skills

So how do we help leaders acquire some of these skills and manage the complexities associate with complex structures?

They suggest developing leaders by:

  • Placing them in diverse groups with people who share a variety of perspectives and opinions
  • Allowing them to shadow experienced leaders to expose them to new leadership worlds and diverse leadership styles
  • Providing a variety of leadership experiences where emerging leaders can lead (or share leadership) in areas outside their immediate skill sets and expertise

This makes sense, thought the pressures of day-to-day leadership will mitigate against it. Taking someone off-line from their normal responsibilities will require senior leaders to flex a bit, recognize short-term productivity losses or delays, and allow these leaders to fail along the way.

This takes time in the short run but has huge long-term payouts, if we are patient and willing to learn.

That is the challenge for go-getter, type-A “what’s next?” leaders. Development takes time.

But you either take the time to build the skills, or you take the time to clean up the matrix mess you will have with incompetent leaders managing complex situations. I can guarantee you want to spend the time on development rather than perpetual high-maintenance clean up activity.

Four Warnings

Be wary of idealizing the matrix approach. It is no panacea. In addition to the skills needed to lead within AND across an organization, there are some things to watch for. Ruth Malloy, a managing director at the Hay Group in Boston offers these insights.

1)     Identify competency gaps and correct them.

Know your weaknesses in leadership, especially in the four areas above. How self-aware am I? When can I use influence and how? Doing this as a team is a vital exercise.

2)     Don’t “pull rank” to solve an issue.

It is a temptation as a supervisor to use your authority to fix the problem or get your way. This short-circuits the process, stunts leader development and destroys trust. Let the process work.

3)     Deal with emotionally-charged issues face-to-face, not through email.

I have seen this so many times it makes me want to cringe. As I worked with leadership teams and groups it is amazing that even teams that meet regularly will use email to engage an emotional issue. It is a community-killer and team-breaker.

4)     Don’t take problems directly to the top (to the CEO or Senior Manager or Senior Pastor.)

Most of the time this backfires. Running to Big Brother to try to leverage his/her positional authority shows how desperate and ineffective you are at leading. Work the problem together and don’t play power games.

Taking Stock of Things

So today I am taking stock. I think I am good at empathy and strong in conflict management, but need to leverage my influence (I often underestimate it) and grow in self-awareness.

So I need to do some ruthless and honest work, asking those close to me this:

“How do you experience me, where do I make my best contribution, and how can I better understand what you need from me?”

Matrix management sounds cool and trendy. It is both. And it is effective, but only for those willing to do the work.

What are your competencies? How can you and your team grow? When will you take this research and discuss it as a team so you can move forward?

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Dr. Bill Donahue
Dr. Bill Donahue is President of LeaderSync Group, Inc
Bill is a professor at TIU and a Leadership Speaker and Consultant
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Four Warning Signs You’re Suffering from “Truth Decay”

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Randy Conley

Truth Decay

Hey Leader, can you identify the truth when you see or hear it? Can you tell when someone is lying to you? Do you think that telling “little white lies” are okay to do if you do it for good reasons?

And do you believe that the truth can set you free?

Truth Decay

Winston Churchill once pointed out that people occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.

The great American author and humorist, Mark Twain, opined that many people must regard truth as their most valuable possession since they were very economical in its use.

His advice was simply was this: ”Always do right.”

Truth decay is the gradual erosion of honesty and integrity in a relationship. And if not diagnosed and treated promptly, can result in a complete loss of trust.

4 Warning Signs of Truth Decay

Here are four warning signs of truth decay and suggestions for prevention and treatment.

1. Withholding Information

WARNING SIGNS: This causes suspicion in the leader, a lack of empowerment in the followers, and wasted time and energy as people try to manage the business without all the right information at their disposal. People without information are incapable of acting responsibly. People with information are compelled to act responsibly.

PREVENTION & TREATMENT: Share information about yourself and the organization openly and in the appropriate formats and forums, and set the expectations of how the information should be used.

Trust your folks to do the right thing.

2. Not “Walking the Talk”

WARNING SIGNS: When leaders say one thing yet do another, followers quickly learn that the leader can’t be trusted. Leaders can not underestimate the power of leading by example.

PREVENTION & TREATMENT: Get clear on what values are most important to you as a leader, communicate those to your team, and give them permission to hold you accountable to living those out.

3. Dropping Balls

WARNING SIGNS: Not following through on commitments is a leading contributor to truth decay.

PREVENTION & TREATMENT: Make sure you under-promise and over-deliver. Don’t commit to do something unless you know you can follow-through. It can be tempting for leaders to think they have to say “yes” to everything, but if you don’t follow through on your commitments, then people begin to doubt that you are a person of your word.

As the Scripture advises us “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” Mathew 5:37 (NIV)

4. Gossiping

WARNING SIGNS: When you engage in gossip or talk disparagingly about a colleague behind their back, you demonstrate a lack of care and respect for others. Your followers observe this behavior and begin to wonder to themselves “If my leader treats others this way, is he/she doing the same to me when I’m not around?”

PREVENTION & TREATMENT: Remember, one of your most precious assets as a leader and colleague is your reputation and good name.

Creating a Culture of Candor

Leadership guru Warren Bennis has noted this:

“So much lip service is paid to the issue of business ethics; but how do you in fact build an organization distinguished by tangible integrity, moral vision, and transparency? The key is a commitment on the part of the corporate leader to establish a culture of candor in which followers feel free to speak the truth to power, and leaders are bold enough to hear such truth and act on it.”

As leaders we are responsible for setting the example of ethical behavior for our team, and if we pay attention to the warning signs of truth decay and take actions to prevent its spread, we will build a culture of high trust, engagement, and productivity.

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Randy Conley
Randy Conley is the Trust Practice Leader for The Ken Blanchard Companies
He helps leaders and organizations build trust in the workplace
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web | Blog

Image Sources: tommyland

Filed under: Authentic Leadership, Servant Leadership, Team Building Leadership, Values-Based Leadership | Tagged: , , , , , | 5 Comments »

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