The Three Trusts of Leadership

            In an economic, political and social climate as challenging as the current one, it’s hard to keep our bearings as leaders and all too easy to succumb to a string of “ideas of the month” put forth by well-meaning but short-term thinking colleagues.  Notwithstanding that some of these might be excellent and worth doing, how do we avoid being trapped in such tactics and stay true to our values, keep good people and continue to achieve optimal results?  By remembering one guiding principle that has been in play in the dynamics of great leadership from the beginning of human life on this planet.  What is this principle?  Trust.  Our workforce, from the person with the least responsibility to the one with the most, must trust us.
            There are three essential aspects of trust we must embody in our daily actions.
            First, the commitment and talent of our people will flower for someone whose basic decency they trust, someone who believes in being fair, open, honest, caring of the individual and the greater good of the group.  Let’s call this Trust of Heart. 
            Second, our folks will give their all to someone whose sense of vision of the organization they truly believe in.  By vision, we mean not only specific achievable (not pie-in-the-sky) targets profits, volume, return on investment, market share, productivity, growth and customer loyalty.  On a broader scale, Vision asks, “Who do we want to become as a workplace community?  What kind of people are we?  What should our relationship be to our customers, community and county?”  This particular trust embraces a clear sense of the kind of personalities and talents we’re looking for in every position, from department heads on down, because those personalities will be the raw materials from which we form who we are to each other and the outside world.  Let’s call this Trust of Vision.
            Third, and lastly, diverse talents and personalities need to have faith in their leader’s real-world competency to turn his heart and vision into congruent and timely action.  It isn’t enough to be a wonderful, caring person who has a beautiful vision of how to create a high-performance community that fully honors the humanity of the individuals that comprise it.  Leadership is not a noun; it's an action verb.  It must deliver and do so consistently with steady, balanced hands that fashion short-term solutions serving long-term goals and timeless values.  Let’s call this Trust of Stewardship.
            It’s also not enough to just be a person of action.  Actions must embody the kind of heart and vision that make people eager to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for us.  In other words, each of these three is necessary but not sufficient unto itself.  The three are joined at the center and unfold with equal vigor in great leadership.
            Now, if you spend some time thinking about these Three Trusts of Leadership, you’ll begin to realize that whatever previous model you’ve looked at—whether from Tom Peters, W. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, Warren Bennis, John Kotter, Robert Greenleaf, James O’Toole, Daniel Goleman, Robert Quinn, Michael Hammer, John Maxewell, Jack Welch, Andrew Grove or any number of other business thinkers—they all fit here. 
            Each of the Three Trusts has its own field of competencies, some of them overlapping, to be sure.  Let’s get right to the essence. 
            For people to trust your Heart, your gifts and skills must be strong in what is now called Emotional Intelligence.

·        Know yourself, be yourself, allow yourself to be known broadly.  People
           will give you more if feel they know you.

·        Speak your truth and speak it consistently.

·        Connect deeply with others. 

·        Let the truth of your point of view do most of your persuading.

            ·        Err on the side of over-communicating. 

·        Listen to your people, see them, inspire, grow and guide them with
           unfailing empathy.

·        Be humble and give away credit for accomplishment.

·        Be willing to openly and sincerely apologize as soon as you realize you’ve
           erred.

·        Be willing to ask for help, recognizing you can’t do it all yourself.

            For people to trust your Vision, your talents and competencies must be strong in…

·        The spirit of inquiry…conducting yourself as an eternal student.

·        Big picture thinking.

·        Synthesizing the best ideas in the air at any given moment without
           concern over getting the credit.

·        Strategy development.

·        Entrepreneurial imagination.

·        Listening and connecting empathetically.

·        Consistently inviting participation and co-authorship.

·        Consistently comunicating with clarity.

 It’s worth saying a bit more about the necessary communication skills to win trust in your vision. You must be confident enough to allow people to see in detail how your mind works, where your ideas come from, how you developed as a human being and how that development serves you in formulating a view of the future and how to get there. 

            For people to trust your Stewardship, you must…

·        Consistently go the final yard to the goal line and get the job done, often
           right at the sides of your front line.

·        Possess a strong intuitive capacity for making tough decisions with
           appropriate input in a timely manner. 

·        Focus your passion for living your Heart and Vision. 

·        Have an advanced talent for hiring great people, coaching them and
           delegating responsibilities equal to their maturity and skills. 

·        Be firm in your insistence on excellence but never mean-spirited.

            ·        Have conviction but at the same time be capable of flexibility and   

           adaptation.

·        Stay the course in the face of temporary set-backs…not lurch from pillar to post based on short-term developments.

            Stewardship skills comprise what Dr. W. Edwards Deming called “constancy of purpose”.  I think this is one of the most beautiful phrases in our language.  It can be applied to every realm of life, personal and professional.  Put simply, great leaders know what they are about and keep at it.  They have a passion for culture, process and results.  They hire people who share that passion and create an environment in which collaboration is as ever-present as oxygen.
           Congruency is a key factor in all of this.  If you say you really care about people but are mean-spirited and down-putting, you will sacrifice all Three Trusts.  If you say you want your people to have rich personal and family lives but establish or tolerate eighty hour work weeks, you will sacrifice all Three Trusts.  Through direct experience, people will come to see you as a hypocrite.  The same would be true if you espouse openness and participation but dominate meetings with your own ideas…or if you talk up innovation but lack the courage to take a chance on a bold new idea…or if you espouse commitment to a comprehensive strategy but then lurch reactively away from it every time things don’t turn out as you hoped.  For our politicians I will add that when you use lofty language about "what the American people want" and yet consistently act as if you're largely interested only in what a few of the American people want (the one's with the campaign contributions), people will see you for the hypocrite you are.
          The Three Trusts challenge you to keep asking these fundamental questions that will ultimately determine your degree of success as a leader.

·        What inspires trust in my Heart?

·        What inspires trust in my Vision?

·        What inspires trust in my Stewardship?

There is no better example of leadership embodying the Three Trusts in American political life over the last sixty  years than when President John F. Kennedy publicly took full responsibility for the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.  Kennedy learned his lessons well, a fact that was lost on the Russian premier, Khrushchev.  Not long afterwards, when the Russians were caught trying to secretly set up missile bases in Cuba, they encountered a JFK who was much sharper and clearer, mobilized all the brilliant people at his disposal and brilliantly threaded the needle of excruciatingly difficult  decision.  The Russians backed down and a potential nuclear war was averted.

            Trust-centered Leadership applies to any setting and any endeavor, from how you lead your family to how nations are led.  It reminds us that we must constantly work to be worthy of our followers, for without them, we are alone with our dreams.
            Great leadership is a complex and continuous dance.  But these Three Trusts can serve as the basic steps on which elegant moves can be based to create beauty in the face of dissonant times. 

C 2011 Bob Kamm

The Leader as Healer

                                         “Whatever house I enter, I shall come to heal.” 

                                                               --Hippocrates

             A great leader is many things—a strategist, visionary and builder, a teacher, preacher and coach, a nurturer, communicator, comic and storyteller.  Not least among his/her many talents, but often least attended, is that of healer. 

            The healer’s gifts are critical to building any organization for the simple reason that each of us is wounded in some way…and we bring that woundedness with us wherever we go.  That includes our workplace.  These dynamics show up in the politics of ego, turf battles, favoritism, abuse (subtle and not so), under-developed talents and the withholding of truths that could lift the organization to a higher level of performance.
            So how does the leader heal?  In the most basic sense, by adopting Hippocrates’ mantra quoted above.  He or she conceives of each individual and situation as a house to enter, a house where some healing is necessary and possible.  The first action of the healer is to bring his/her heart and mind fully to bear…in other words, he/she pays complete attention to those before him or her in a spirit of inquiry that asks quite consciously…

§  Who is this person at her core? 

§  What is she here to do in this life?

§  How is he doing, right now, this moment in time? 

§  What does his body language say to me? 

§  What does his voice communicate that the words are not expressing? 

§  What conditions make it more likely she’ll do her best work, day after day?

§  What needs and dreams can I help him with?

§  What can I share of myself that will encourage and illuminate his path?

§  What is beyond my responsibility and control?

             By showing up as a student in the classroom of each individual, we naturally show up as a healer in his/her house... because to heal, first, is to know the current condition and then to apply the kind of balm that will contribute to the knitting of the wound.  What balm? 

§  The balm of listening and really hearing.

§  The balm of caring.

§  The balm of appreciation.

§  The balm of light-hearted humor.

§  The balm of storytelling.

§  The balm of compassionate truth-giving.

§  The balm of welcoming the person into your own world.

§  The balm of patience and benefit-of-the-doubt.

§  The balm of reciprocal trust, which requires prudent risk-taking.

§  The balm of appropriate boundaries…knowing when to step forward, when to step back, when to stand still.

             I am constantly asked, “How can I motivate my people better?”  My first response is a question: “How well do you really know them?”  Most of the time, frankly, the answer is, “Not all that well.”  Some of my clients call me “the lunch king” because I’m always suggesting the leader take people to lunch and have a free-flowing chat that puts them at ease so they are more likely to reveal their true selves.  Important insights and ideas have emerged from such lunches, and deeper bonds that facilitate the flow of work.  Trust is the ultimate lubricant of a healthy workplace…and trust is built on knowing others at depth and allowing them to know us at depth. 

            A common objection is, “If I get too close to my people, I won’t be able to discipline them.”  I invite you to see this as limited thinking.  Gaze over its horizon.  We are less likely to have to discipline people when we really “get” them and they “get” us.  But when it is necessary, and is delivered with compassionate directness and clarity, it is more likely to be efficient and effective because of the deeper bond.  Those who fear being “too close” to their people are closing off the possibility of elevating to the highest plane of leadership.  Often, these folks need to do some preliminary inner work of their own on boundary setting.  Once they have developed sufficient clarity and assertiveness in this realm, appropriate intimacy in workplace relationships flourishes.
            Besides, the question, “How do I motivate my people?” is not the most useful way to look at a workplace community.  A better inquiry might be phrased, “How do I create the optimal conditions for people to do their best work day in and day out?”  The answer is right here in front of us—by getting close, by building authentic relationships with a deep sense of reverence for the magic and uniqueness of each individual, by helping them in their life journey towards wholeness, by being a student in her classroom…and a healer in his house.
            Now, there is one more thing that bears stating…which is that in order for us to effectively attend to others, we must first attend to ourselves.  For leaders, moment to moment consciousness of our own inner states and their history is not optional…it comes with the job.  We need to be able to get out of our own ways.  We need to know when an issue is largely our own personal dynamic, to be handled away from the workplace, and when it is truly a workplace issue.  We need clarity about our own gifts, wounds, drivers and limitations. The more attuned we are to ourselves, the more accurately we’ll be able to read and lead others.  The ultimate expression of such leadership is a web of collaborative workplace relationships that yield consistent high service to the greater good.  So, being on a developmental path and doing the inner work is a critical activity that distinguishes the many good leaders from the few who are great.  Hippocrates once again gave us appropriate guidance, when he said:  “…heal thyself.”
C 2011 Bob Kamm