Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog

Becoming Vigilant, Trusting & Transparent

Board Vigilance

Changing a system that encourages information-hoarding is the board of directors’ responsibility.

Truly independent boards should provide a much-needed check on executives’ egos and truth-telling.  If they fail to assess transparency at the uppermost levels, they’re not functioning appropriately.

“Boards are the last line of defense against ruinous self-deception and the suppression of vital truths,” write authors Warren Bennis and James O’Toole in a recent Harvard Business Review article ("A Culture of Candor," June 2009). “If they’re not vigilant in the pursuit of honesty, the organizations they serve are unlikely to have a free internal or external flow of information.”

Trust

As a species, we are hardwired to trust others, especially those who appear similar to ourselves and who have similar interests.  But as recent financial scandals reveal, we sometimes trust too easily and trust the wrong people.

To trust wisely means starting with small acts that foster reciprocity. By communicating your willingness to trust, you give others the go-ahead to do the same.

Transparent Communications

Open and honest communications support the decision to trust.  Lack of communication and transparency creates suspicion.

To increase transparency:

·         Increase the frequency and candor of your communications.

·         Build a relationship beyond the constraints of your official role.

·         Use the word “we” more often than “I.”

·         Emphasize common values and goals.

·         Be clear whose goals and interests you are promoting.

·         Be sure your actions support your words.

·         Demonstrate a clear concern for others.

·         Under-promise and over-deliver.

·         Ask more questions.

·         Really listen to the answers.

Steps Toward Building Trust and Transparency

In a recent Harvard Business Review article ("A Culture of Candor," June 2009), Warren Bennis and James O’Toole offer seven steps for developing a culture of transparency:

 

1.     Tell the Truth

Each of us has the impulse to tell others what they want to hear.  Instead, keep it simple, and be honest. Candid leaders tell everyone the same thing, and they have no need to revise their stories.

2. Encourage People to Speak Truth to Power

It’s never easy for us to be honest with our bosses.  It takes courage to speak up.

But encouraging people to share their honest opinions is crucial if leaders want to build trust and open communication.  Of course, this sometimes means executives will hear unpleasant information.

3. Reward Contrarians

If you make it acceptable, are willing to listen to opposing points of view and promise to consider the merits of others’ arguments, you pave the way for a culture of transparency.

Find colleagues who tend to be oppositional, listen to them intently, and create conditions for thinking differently.

4. Practice Having Unpleasant Conversations

Few people excel at delivering negative feedback during performance appraisals. Offering negative feedback upward, to one’s boss, is even more challenging.

The best leaders learn how to deliver bad news kindly so people don’t get unnecessarily hurt.  It’s certainly not easy, unless practice opportunities are provided.

5. Diversify Information Sources

Communicate regularly with different groups of colleagues, workers, customers and even competitors to gain a nuanced and multifaceted understanding of others’ perceptions.

6. Admit Mistakes

Candor is contagious. When you admit your shortcomings or errors, it paves the way for others to do the same. Simple admissions can disarm critics and encourage others to be transparent, as well.

7. Build Organizational Support for Transparency

Protect whistle-blowers—but don’t stop there.  Other norms and sanctions should encourage truth-telling, including open-door policies, ethics training and internal blogs that give a voice to people lower down in the hierarchy.

Evaluating Business Leaders

We need a better way to evaluate our business leaders, assert James O’Toole and Warren Bennis in a recent Harvard Business Review article (“A Culture of Candor,” June 2009). It’s no longer prudent to judge American corporate leaders’ performance solely on the extent to which they create wealth for investors.

Moving forward, a new metric is proposed: the extent to which executives create organizations that are economically, ethically and socially sustainable.

Wise leaders recognize that increased transparency is the fundamental first step. Broadly defined, transparency should mean the degree to which information flows freely within an organization, among managers and employees, and outward to stakeholders.

Roughly half of all managers don’t trust their leaders.  Exact figures and study results vary, but no data compiled over the last 7 years have shown more than 50% trust for company leaders.

Human Resource Stress

A woman, anticipating an impending layoff, makes claims of sexual harassment against her supervisor and sends them off in an email to corporate headquarters.  An investigation later determines the claims are unsubstantiated.

A terminated IT employee embeds a virus into the company's computer system--timed to go off two weeks after his departure so it wouldn't look like he did it.

An employee--permitted to pack up his belongings after being terminated--flips a switch behind a panel that everyone else had forgotten about and shuts down the business' operations for about three days, while company leaders try to address what they thought was a "virus."

These are all actual examples of employee sabotage and retaliation that took place after terminations.  In the tense environment of layoffs, cost cutting and lost retirement, the pressure is on Human Resources (HR) to get wise to the risks and prevention strategies.

"Companies should recognize that people are very, very tied into their jobs and that, while this [letting someone go] might be an economic decision for the company, it has very, very real emotional consequences for the workers," says Merrily Archer, a labor and employment attorney in the Denver office of Fisher & Phillips.  "[Employers] have to expect that there is going to be a subset of their workforce or the people they're laying off who are not going to respond particularly well."

The dismal economy may be driving your HR manager to drink.

That's one finding in a recent survey of 372 human resources professionals by industry publication Workforce Management.

Global Economy = Virtual Team Leadership

Because today's economy is tipsy and global, many companies are having their employees work virtually.

Managing a global team brings another set of leadership challenges.  You have to be sensitive to nonverbals, language differences, business protocols and time zones.  That means scheduling regular calls at mutually convenient times for team members...which may not always be possible.

It is important to listen carefully to every team member on phone calls by focusing on how the person is speaking.  It's also important to listen to everything, particularly any silences.  Silence can mean consent, or it can mean the person you're not hearing from disagrees with the team's strategy or is disengaged.  As leader, you need to hear from everyone to make sure the team is moving forward together.  It is a good practice to send an email after each meeting documenting and confirming discussions, conclusions and next steps.

If you sense that a team member is lacking engagement--not responding, not participating, or missing deadlines--call him or her as soon as possible after the team meeting to find out what's going on.

"Mobile workers are far more organized, personally, than their office-bound counterparts," says Stuart Duff of the British consultancy Pearn Kandola who helped Cisco Systems and its clients better understand the psychological issues at play on virtual teams.  He says, "They have to be on top of their game the whole time."

It turns out extroverts/social capitalists--the office gabbers, the life of the break-room party--thrive in the land of virtual work.  Left on their own, these types of employees are the ones who work closely with clients, chum around with colleagues, and talk it up with bosses.  They stay connected no matter where they are.

Bottom Line: Team leaders have to be visible in their activities, especially in this environment, but visibility doesn't have to be face-to-face.  Those who can demonstrate how to do more with less money are the leaders of today and tomorrow.

Source: BUSINESSWEEK, July 27, 2009