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Arif ur Rehman
Professor, Pakistan
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Leadership and Trust: The Trustworthy Leader
A thought worth sharing with you all: Amy Lyman, author of ' The Trustworthy Leader writes:
Trustworthy leaders…understand the complexity of bringing together a group of human beings to pursue extraordinary accomplishments. They are masters at guiding, directing, encouraging, and challenging people to contribute their best, in part because they ask the same of themselves. Trustworthy leaders know that their relationships with others throughout the organization are key to their success—however success is measured.
To me, however, a leader by definition must be trustworthy!
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Andrew Blaine
Business Consultant, South Africa
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Trust and Leadership I do not agree that trustworthiness is, "by definition", a requirement of leadership. How many crooked politicians and business people have been charged and convicted of fraud, corruption and other crimes that, for their successful commission, rely on the breach of trust between them and their victims? Does that mean they are not leaders?
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Tom Wilson
HR Consultant, United States
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Leadership: Epistemology versus Ideology Leadership originates in epistemology, which is to say, in response to the moment. My complaint with this forum, generally, is the nearly universal impulse to reduce leadership to an ideology that fits some pet management structure.
This doesn't mean that there is not a strategic intent behind leadership, but that leadership occurs in the here/now and not in response to a collection of slogans or pre-determined pattern of behavior. They may be predictable, but they are existentially responsive as opposed to doctrinaire.
The Soviets abandoned the doctrinaire during the battle of Stalingrad in favor of the epistemological/existential, with immediate improvements in tactical and operational success.
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Emmanuel Duru, Nigeria
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The Trustworthy Leader I agree that a leader must be trusted, but sometimes he is not alone in the leadership team.
Even when he is singled out as individual person, the dilemma is: what's the extent of the required trustworthiness?
The trust must be within the context of a limited and defined pursuit. The Leader is mortal and fallible, he is bound to make mistakes but liable and accountable only to a calculated percentage of measured expectation.
To consider trustworthiness by "definition" as a requirement of leadership is not too lucid.
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Andrew Blaine
Business Consultant, South Africa
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Epistemology, Trust and Leadership In light of the comments already made on this subject, I contend that the facts indicate that trustworthiness is definitely not part of leadership on the following grounds:
1. If leadership is "in the now" and of limited duration the need for trust beyond the now is removed. So long as the leader inspires confidence among the followers, their leadership will persist. When the confidence goes, so does the leader?
2. As leadership is, apparently, of limited duration the trust aspect is irrelevant to its effectiveness.
I suppose now the relationship between Confidence and Trust will be under the microscope?
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Tom Wilson
HR Consultant, United States
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Trust and the Player @Andrew Blaine: Speaking only for myself, as a leader, the element of trust is thrust outwards and unto the players I am trying to influence. Whether they trust me or not isn't nearly as important to me as to whether they trust themselves and each other, especially in their capacity to direct their skills talents and cunning to the task at hand.
It has been my experience that, when the players in the game recognize that I trust them, they come to trust the enterprise I might propose, simply because it is within their ken to accomplish, or, if it isn't apparent, they are willing to take the leap of faith necessary to exceed their own expectations.
Trust is of the essence. If your ego has a high need for a total investment of trust directed towards you before the fact, the performance of your organization becomes limited by the limits of your ego. Mission, Men, Self versus Me, Myself and I.
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Borje Vickberg, Sweden
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Trust and Leadership To be a leader you need to have followers. Leadership is not a position, it is a relation.
A leader should be able to see the actual qualities of his or her followers. A leader should see the potential positive qualities of the followers. A leader should also see the negative aspects and risks of each follower.
Since it is a relation, there is an equally important vice versa aspect of this. The followers should behold the same towards the leader.
But beware, 'beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder' (Editor: ~the perception of beauty is subjective).
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Arif ur Rehman
Professor, Pakistan
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Why Trust is So Important in Leadership @Borje Vickberg: Beauty does indeed lie in the ‘eyes of the beholder’ and rightfully so.
Since management is nothing short of a trapeze artist’s performance without a net, what cannot be overlooked is the resilience and balance that stem from leader’s integrity and work ethics.
That ‘acceptance’ level of employees vis-à-vis the leader’s leading role keeps continually augmenting with his altitude of trust. Therefore trust, honesty and integrity are simply irreplaceable.
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Tom Wilson
HR Consultant, United States
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Trust, Leadership and Esprit de Corps @Arif ur Rehman: I agree. Peter Vaiil wrote Management is Performance Art. The title is the best part of the book. Trust is a two way street and Esprit de Corps is the single most violated principle of management in the American corporate community. Showing up for work is an act of upwards loyalty and loyalty is a metric of Esprit de Corps.
When management lays off people to satisfy a Wall Street analyst as a strategy to maximize executive compensation, that is an act of downward disloyalty and a violation of the principle of Esprit de Corps.
By definition, Esprit de Corps represents an opportunity loss that can only be recaptured by the worker by continued employment, wage equity and deferred rewards such as health care and pensions. These are issues executives ensure for themselves.
When it is done at the expense of their subordinates, they are violating Esprit de Corps and a violation of the social contract in a Free Enterprise milieu as opposed to the Bolshevik milieu.
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Borje Vickberg, Sweden
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Lack of Trust and Leadership @Arif ur Rehman: Wise words. Lack of trust, honesty and integrity can not be compensated by authoritarian behaviour or bullying. However, attempts to do so are not infrequent......
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Arif ur Rehman
Professor, Pakistan
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The Turnaround of Bullying Leaders @Borje Vickberg: The five fingers are all unequal – we will always come across ‘bullying behavior’ and the authoritarian approach; such ‘leaders’ may be found regularly.
What needs to be remembered, ...
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Tom Wilson
HR Consultant, United States
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Patience and Persistence in the Turn Around @Arif ur Rehman: It is important to remember that the lack of goodwill and constructive intent of an opponent are not a personal failing, but must, nevertheless, be accommodated.
Persistence and pat...
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Arif ur Rehman
Professor, Pakistan
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Patience & Persistence Along the Road @Tom Wilson: Entirely true, Tom! Patient persistence and perseverance – though often demanding a long timeline-- nonetheless, bring about the desired element of connectivity.
And, as rightly pointed ...
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Andrew Blaine
Business Consultant, South Africa
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Loyalty, Trust and Esprit de Corps and Leadership There seems to be three inter-related concepts that supply the thread through this discussion:
- Loyalty is the giving of oneself to a "cause" (in the widest possible connotation). It can be bought, ...
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Tom Wilson
HR Consultant, United States
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Trust is the Essence of Leadership @Andrew Blaine: Andrew, it is hard to be as far wrong as you manage to be in your last sentence. Esprit de Corps is, literally, the spirit of the body, that is, the membership of the organization. It ...
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Jaap de Jonge
Editor, Netherlands
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Cynicism and the Need to Restore Trust Good discussion and so relevant now... There is currently a lot of distrust (in leaders), cynicism and divisiveness in the world due to the rapid accumulation of the various crises we all know.
What ...
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