Key point: Leadership effectiveness and trust are two sides of a mirror. Establishing trust requires conscious attention and practice. In order to establish trust, we have to work on both our character and competence simultaneously. Are you trusted as a leader? Team member? How do you know? How would you be rated on the competence and character scale?
Upon recently leaving the company I was CEO at for almost eight years, I wrote a farewell note to all team members and thanked them for trusting me at the helm. Trust was their gift to me. They were always there to encourage me in success and pick me up when I failed. It is a privilege to be in a leadership position and one can’t be optimally effective without having the trust of the entire team. To develop additional insight on the trust challenge read the following Harvard Business Review blog by Linda Hill and Kent Lineback, authors of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader.
Their HBR blog focuses on two significant components of trust; competence and character.
“For people to trust you as a boss, they must believe in your competence to know what to do as a boss. At one time or another, we’ve all had bosses whom people said, “he doesn’t know the business” or “she doesn’t understand what we do.” No one would trust you to do brain surgery because you’re incompetent in that context…
Character is equally important. It refers to your intentions, what you’re trying to do, your goals and values as a boss. If, for example, people think you’re only out for yourself, driven by blind ambition, and don’t care about them, the group, or the work, they will distrust your character, no matter how much you know.”
Character move:
- Be aware and present regarding your competence and character “score” as it relates to trust.
- To reinforce competence fully engage the expertise around you. People don’t expect you to know everything, but understanding how and why you make decisions and the extent to which you make that clear to all parts of the organization is a vital trust element.
- Work on and continue to develop your character. This is what The Character Triangle is all about. However, we’re not perfect. People know we will make mistakes. They will help us be true to our values if we truly care about them in the most genuine way. Remember that you live in a fish bowl and every act, big or small, connects to define our character.
Trust in the Triangle,
Lorne