I find the Harvard Business Review Blog to one of the very best. I have it as an app on my HTC Droid phone. I check on it almost every day. One of the best entries I have read surfaced yesterday. It was about leadership and trust and authored by Linda Hill, a Harvard Business School professor and Kent Lineback, a former practicing executive and now writer (and both are co-authors of Begin the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader -- HBR 2011).
I have thought much about trust and its relationship to both management and leadership. The most perplexing thing about trust is its difficulty to define. Consider it – how do you define trust? How do you describe it? How might you begin to measure it?
Hill and Lineback write about the importance of revealing your intentions if you want to be an effective leader. Doing so gains trust. Interestingly, they present this idea against the backdrop of a discussion about villains like Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins of Silence of the Lambs fame) – OK, you have to read it to really get the full gist.
But their concept is so true – great leaders do expose themselves and their visions and motives and beliefs. They do not operate by simply issuing orders. They let followers "see into their mind." One CEO I used to work with talked about "thinking out loud" with our executive team.
Hill and Lineback write:
“Thus, if you want to lead and influence others, you must reveal your intentions. People won't believe you will do the right thing unless they're convinced you genuinely want to do it. That requires more conscious effort than most bosses understand. We all more or less assume that others will see our positive motives or at least give us the benefit of the doubt. But it often doesn't work that way. As a leader and manager, you must often make tradeoffs among the competing interests of your own group, other groups, the organization as a whole, important outsiders, and the individuals who work for you. That obviously creates many opportunities for people to misinterpret your intentions. That's why it's often critical to take conscious and purposeful steps to reveal your motives and values and to open yourself so others can see inside you. Here are three important ways to reveal your intentions and convince others of their sincerity.”
Take a look at this blog when you have the chance. It is a great read.
(OK, I did get your attention with the Hannibal Lector picture, right?)