Leadership and Honesty
- Excerpt from The Wisdom of the Flying Pig -
People will invest their effort and commitment in direct proportion to their belief in the leader.
Above all else, leaders must be believable. And while this should come as no surprise, believability begins with honesty.
For over twenty years, James Kouzes and Barry Posner have been asking people what they expect from their leaders. In their seminal work, The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner report, "In almost every survey, honesty has been selected more often than any other leadership characteristic; overall it emerges as the single most important ingredient in the leader-constituent relationship."
Of course, honesty requires that you tell the truth. But it goes much deeper. You must always do what you say you will do. Your actions must be absolutely consistent with your words. If you don’t walk the talk, you can’t be believed.
According to Watson Wyatt’s WorkUSA survey, the rate of three-year total returns to shareholders is almost three times higher at companies with high trust levels than at companies with low trust levels.
For people to willingly enroll in your quest, they must be confident of your honesty, but honesty alone is not enough. They must also have an abiding faith in your competence. If you expect extraordinary effort from your people and extraordinary results from your organization, there can be no question about your ability to get things done, to execute.
Your people must believe that you have the courage to confront reality and acknowledge problems rationally. Your people must be certain of your ability to focus the right people and the right resources on the right task. And you must demonstrate through your actions that you are willing to make the hard choices, and to do what needs to be done.
And through it all, your people must know in their hearts that you are as committed to improving their lives as you are to building your business.
More posts about: James Kouzes, Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge, Watson Wyatt,
