Cultivating Trust: Creating a Culture of Honesty and Openness
Effective Leaders Earn the Trust of their Constituency and the Organization
In a survey, Researchers Kouzes and Posner identified integrity as the most desired trait in leaders. Within this general trait of integrity, honesty is the most frequently selected and sought-after characteristic, outdistancing competence and leadership skills. Honesty reflects more than what leaders say; it also reflects what they do and who they are.
Bennis and Nanus write that generating and sustaining trust is the central ingredient to leadership. They add that credibility is the single most significant determinant of whether a leader will be followed over time. Is this quality worth discussing? You bet!
Leadership literature universally agrees that trust is critical to success—both individually and corporately. Trust holds relationships together and encourages people to work cohesively and to willingly follow a leader. Effective leaders are genuine, credible, dependable, predictable, and benevolent. Robert Rosen speaks on certain leadership actions that build trust:
Being honest about oneself and the organization, and trusting others with that knowledge; sharing information about the condition of the organization;
Being personally vulnerable and allowing others to have a part in one’s life and work; having a core belief that the leader is no better than anyone else; never losing sight of one’s imperfections;
Practicing one’s convictions and values; being open with what one personally believes and holding to it;
Creating an open, trusting culture through caring about people, identifying with and listening to them.
In addition to trustworthy behavior, a critical leadership task is to regularly foster trust—creating a climate where trust dominates the corporate culture. One key contributor to creating an atmosphere of trust is trusting others. Kouzes and Posner summarize well what the literature of leadership has discovered:
“Trust…is the central issue in relationships…an essential element of organizational effectiveness as well. Individuals who are unable to trust others often fail to become leaders. They can’t bear to be dependent on the words and work of others and, consequently, end up doing all the work themselves. Trust develops when we make ourselves vulnerable to others. By trusting another person, we express a level of dependence upon that person. Low trusting people tend to view the world around them as filled with competitors … yet trusting people are regarded by others as trustworthy. The leader’s behavior is more critical than that of any other individual in determining the expansion of trust in a group. The foundation of a trusting relationship is believing that the other person has integrity.”
Interesting research, right? What do we do with this?
Let’s self-evaluate for a moment how we as leaders are currently building a culture of trust. As with many arenas in life, it begins with the example of the leadership team. How have your actions communicated your trust in your team lately? What is your comfort level with vulnerability—or partial vulnerability? How have you demonstrated your care for the team? If you want to build a culture of trust—which has short-term and long-term benefits—it begins with you.