How Can Leaders Build Trust?

As I was reading my daily fix of http://www.investors.com/ because I am the next Warren Buffett (hardly!), I came across an article in the Leaders & Success section: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=551922 written by Steve Watkins.

 

For those that don't know, the Leaders & Success section of the Investors' website has a lot of interesting stories about people that were considered exceptional leaders in their field and in life as well as what made them extremely successful. 

 

The article outlines eight different ways in which leaders and organizations as a whole can build trust to get ahead in the marketplace. Being the loquacious individual that I am, I will not touch on all of them and spare you my propensity to babble. However, there are a couple suggestions that I felt were worth highlighting.

 

“Open Up Internally”

I agree that leaders need to be transparent with their followers. Having them involved in setting strategy and gaining an understanding on how goals and budgets are set is important. I think what is missing from this article is to what level you get them involved. If you involve too many people you run the risk of analysis paralysis and end up never getting anything done to achieve your goals.

 

“Get Others On Board”

I like the fact that it talks about how a lack of trust will in essence force individuals to protect themselves as opposed to protecting the organization. This is completely true; however, I think what Mr. Watkins failed to concretely capture is how to achieve this one. 

 

“Be Transparent”

As with the other suggestion "Open Up Internally", I completely agree that a true leader (be it a person or organization) should be transparent. However, there are limits. To me morality, ethics, and character should draw that line in terms of how much transparency you provide. The only issue here is that a lot of so-called leaders fail in all three.

 

Are there other major ways leaders can gain trust that are not represented here? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Losing Trust in Leadership? Part 1 of 3

I recently stumbled across a 2009 CNBC news story that talked about trust in leadership. Specifically, it talked about how 40% of senior managers worldwide don't trust corporate leadership to navigate them out of the economic crisis and 46% of these same senior managers were unsure of their leaders ability to carry out a plan. These alarming statistics got me to thinking about trust in leadership in general and why it is so hard for some people (a.k.a. followers) to trust their leadership or leaders.

As I thought about it, I narrowed it down to three simple reasons which is the focus of this 3-part blog series.

Reason #1: Leaders Don’t “Walk the Walk”

How many times have you seen it, a so-called “leader” that over and over again inspires its followers through their personal passion, positivity, eloquent choices of words, phrases and language to describe what their vision is and how they intend to get to the promised land? It definitely can be exhilarating and make their followers stand up and cheer.

Unfortunately if a repeated lack of unyielding commitment and action doesn’t follow those awe inspiring words, that exhilaration is quickly lost and it becomes increasingly difficult to trust that leader going forward. A trusted leader simply cannot rely on their vision statement, personal passion, and inspiring words. Trust is not quantifiable; however, the actions of creating, preserving, and regaining trust require concrete processes.

In the end, a vision statement and all of those inspiring words are simply leaders trying to communicate to its legion of followers what they are trying to do.

To quote the almighty Yoda: “Do or Do Not. There is No Try."

Thoughts?

Next Week: Leaders Spin Too Much