By Patricia Wheeler
Is transparency just a well-meaning, rather soft idea, or does it have strategic value?
The dictionary defines transparency as “able to be seen through with clarity.” In the organizational world it means “free of deceit,” which translates into being “readable.” You don’t finish a conversation with a transparent leader wondering what they really meant, and what the implications are for you. You are clear about the underlying intent as well as the content of the message.
How does transparency differ from authenticity? Authentic leaders have a good match between intention and behavior…“say” and “do” are in sync. But you can be authentic without being transparent. Transparency refers to the deliberate behavior that is directed toward being readable.
Why is it so important? Because done well, transparency builds trust. And it eliminates the time-wasting behavior of trying to figure out what someone really thinks and wants.
I once coached a wonderful, authentic vice president who received feedback on her 360 that she intimidated her direct reports. She was shocked by this, because she thought she was communicating encouragement (she was clearly thinking encouraging thoughts), but her thoughts and intention were not transparent to her people. Part of her coaching agenda was to tell them that she wanted to get better at acknowledging them…and making sure that she checked back in with them to ensure that she was doing so. Team morale, and performance, improved.
Let’s be clear…transparency is no excuse for rude, hurtful or unprofessional behavior. And there sometimes can be too much of a good thing. People don’t need to know the details of your divorce or childhood traumas. The key is to make sure that you use god common sense and transmit information that adds value to the workplace.
Why is transparent leadership especially important now?
Our world is growing more complex by the day. We are barraged with information and we must intersect with an increasing number of stakeholders in different locations and cultures. More often than not, leaders operate through influence rather than direct control. Driving collaboration, internal accountability, and self-direction requires a different skill set than in traditional command and control settings.
A culture of transparency breeds a more agile and engaging organization. Companies who don’t promote and model this sort of culture are missing a huge strategic advantage. And what is this advantage? In two words, employee engagement.
Of the 25 top levers of engagement that the Corporate Research Council identified, several directly relate to leader transparency. These include managers demonstrating honesty, clearly articulating organizational goals, accepting responsibility for failures as well as successes, and clearly caring about employee well-being. And why should we care about engagement? Simply put, highly engaged employees have been shown to be 20% more productive. And people want to work for managers they can read and trust.
So, If people trust you, they will listen better to you.
More trust leads to less organizational “static.”
As static and resistance decrease, speed and precision are enhanced.
Well-executed transparency can set the stage for innovation and cross-silo collaboration.
If transparency is so effective, why don’t more people practice it?
Many leaders believe that showing any vulnerability will make them look weak and ineffective, resulting in a loss of respect. In our coaching engagements, we use the “FeedForward” process, which is a great example of modeling transparency. We ask leaders tell their stakeholders what they’re trying to get better at and enlist their help in this effort. In my experience coaching many leaders, I have never seen an instance where revealing how you’re trying to get better led to less respect. In fact, the usual result is increased trust.
Transparent communication is particularly important during times of great stress and change. We’re always looking for anchors of trust and we want to make sense of the world, especially during times of disruptive change. If you are not readable, people will “make it up”…which usually results in their imagining that things are worse than they are. So an important part of modeling transparency is to tell people what it is you don’t know, as well as what you do know. This may require some courage.
From a coach’s perspective, here are some suggestions to enhance transparency:
- Know yourself. Get feedback on whether you tend to share too much or too little information? Find out how readable you are to others.
- Clarify your values. You are working with other humans, and we are all driven by our core values and emotions. So let people know what is really important to you.
- Take regular reflection breaks…make sure you are consciously and continuously making good choices about how and what you do and don’t share…and why.
- Be aware of cultural differences in what constitutes a good level and pace of transparency. Cultural differences vary by geography and within organizations.
- Build your muscle: practice transparent communication with your coach or confidantes to develop and hone your skills.
Practicing transparent leadership can help you get even more honest with yourself (and others) about what engages you and what turns you off, what you stand for and why it’s important to you. Being clear about your values and drivers can put you “in the driver’s seat” for having an even more successful (and by the way, happier) career…and life.
Copyright 2007, Leading News
Patricia Wheeler is an executive coach and consultant who helps smart people become better leaders. As Managing Partner in the Levin Group LLC, she has spent 15 years consulting to organizations and coaching senior leaders and their teams. You may contact Patricia by E-mail at Patricia@TheLevinGroup.com or by telephone at 404 377-9408.
Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts
Saturday, November 10, 2007
MANAGEMENT : The Power of Expressing Regret
By Marshall Goldsmith
Expressing regret, or apologizing, is a cleansing ritual, like confession in church. You say, “I’m sorry”—and you feel better. That’s the theory at least. But like many things that are fine in theory, it’s hard for many of us to do.
Perhaps we think apologizing means we have lost a contest…and successful people have a practically irrational need to win at everything.
Perhaps we find it painful to admit we were wrong. We rarely have to apologize for being right!
Perhaps we find it humiliating to seek forgiveness, which suggests subservience.
Perhaps we feel that apologizing forces us to cede power or control. (Actually, the opposite is true.)
Whatever the reasons, refusing to apologize causes as much ill will in the workplace…and at home…as any other interpersonal flaw. Just think how bitter you have felt when a friend failed to apologize for hurting you or letting you down. And remember how long that bitterness festered.
If you look back at the tattered relationships in your life, I suspect many of them began to fray at the seams at the moment when one of you couldn’t summon the emotional intelligence to say, “I’m sorry.”
People who can’t apologize at work may as well be wearing a t-shirt that says, “I don’t care about you.” The irony is that all the fears that lead us to resist apologizing—the fear of losing, admitting we’re wrong, ceding control—are actually erased by an apology. When you say, “I’m sorry,” you turn people into your allies, even your partners.
You see this principle at work in the first step I help every successful person take in order to become more successful. I teach them to apologize—face to face—to every coworker who has agreed to help them get better.
Apologizing is one of te most powerful and resonant gestures in the human arsenal—almost as powerful as a declaration of love. It’s “I love you,” flipped on its head. If love means, “I care about you and I’m happy about it,” then an apology means, “I hurt you and I’m sorry about it.” Either way, it irrevocably changes the relationship between two people, compelling them to move forward into something new and, perhaps, wonderful together.
The best thing about apologizing is that it forces everyone to let go of the past. In effect, you are saying, “I can’t change the past. All I can say is I’m sorry for what I did wrong. I’m sorry it hurt you. There’s no excuse for it and I will try to do better in the future. I would like your ideas on how I can improve.”
This kind of statement is hard for even the most cold-hearted among us to resist. And when you use it on coworkers, it can dramatically change how they feel about you and themselves.
My client Beth was the highest-ranking woman at a Fortune 100 company. Although her bosses and direct reports loved her, she was loathed by some of her peers. She had a particularly toxic relationship with a hard-boiled executive named Harvey. Beth was a smart young hotshot brought in by the CEO to make changes. Harvey saw her as arrogant and disrespectful of the company’s history and traditions. Their turf wars brought out the worst side of her personality: a mean, vindictive streak. We agreed that this was the behavior she would change.
Beth bristled at first to the thought that she must apologize to Harvey. The idea was so distasteful to her that I scripted her apology to circumvent any hesitations that might destroy its effect. To Beth’s credit, she followed the script.
She said, “Harvey, I appreciate the positive feedback I’ve received. There are also some things at which I want to be better. I’ve been disrespectful to you, the company, and the traditions in the company. Please accept my apology. There is no excuse for this behavior and…”
Harvey cut her off before she finished, responding, “Beth, it’s not just you, it’s me too. I have not been a gentleman in the way I’ve treated you. I know this is hard for you to say to me, and these are not just your problems. This is my problem too. We can get better together.”
That’s the magic in this process. When you declare your dependence on others, they usually agree to help. And during the course of helping you be a better person, they inevitably try to become better people themselves. This is how individuals change, how teams improve, how divisions grow, and how companies become industry leaders.
Excerpted from What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, 2007
Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority in helping successful leaders achieve positive, measurable change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams. He has been named one of the top 50 leaders influencing the field of management over the last century (American Management Association), one of the five most respected executive coaches (Forbes) and among the top ten executive educators (Wall Street Journal). Marshall invites you to visit his library (MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com) for articles and resources you can use.
Expressing regret, or apologizing, is a cleansing ritual, like confession in church. You say, “I’m sorry”—and you feel better. That’s the theory at least. But like many things that are fine in theory, it’s hard for many of us to do.
Perhaps we think apologizing means we have lost a contest…and successful people have a practically irrational need to win at everything.
Perhaps we find it painful to admit we were wrong. We rarely have to apologize for being right!
Perhaps we find it humiliating to seek forgiveness, which suggests subservience.
Perhaps we feel that apologizing forces us to cede power or control. (Actually, the opposite is true.)
Whatever the reasons, refusing to apologize causes as much ill will in the workplace…and at home…as any other interpersonal flaw. Just think how bitter you have felt when a friend failed to apologize for hurting you or letting you down. And remember how long that bitterness festered.
If you look back at the tattered relationships in your life, I suspect many of them began to fray at the seams at the moment when one of you couldn’t summon the emotional intelligence to say, “I’m sorry.”
People who can’t apologize at work may as well be wearing a t-shirt that says, “I don’t care about you.” The irony is that all the fears that lead us to resist apologizing—the fear of losing, admitting we’re wrong, ceding control—are actually erased by an apology. When you say, “I’m sorry,” you turn people into your allies, even your partners.
You see this principle at work in the first step I help every successful person take in order to become more successful. I teach them to apologize—face to face—to every coworker who has agreed to help them get better.
Apologizing is one of te most powerful and resonant gestures in the human arsenal—almost as powerful as a declaration of love. It’s “I love you,” flipped on its head. If love means, “I care about you and I’m happy about it,” then an apology means, “I hurt you and I’m sorry about it.” Either way, it irrevocably changes the relationship between two people, compelling them to move forward into something new and, perhaps, wonderful together.
The best thing about apologizing is that it forces everyone to let go of the past. In effect, you are saying, “I can’t change the past. All I can say is I’m sorry for what I did wrong. I’m sorry it hurt you. There’s no excuse for it and I will try to do better in the future. I would like your ideas on how I can improve.”
This kind of statement is hard for even the most cold-hearted among us to resist. And when you use it on coworkers, it can dramatically change how they feel about you and themselves.
My client Beth was the highest-ranking woman at a Fortune 100 company. Although her bosses and direct reports loved her, she was loathed by some of her peers. She had a particularly toxic relationship with a hard-boiled executive named Harvey. Beth was a smart young hotshot brought in by the CEO to make changes. Harvey saw her as arrogant and disrespectful of the company’s history and traditions. Their turf wars brought out the worst side of her personality: a mean, vindictive streak. We agreed that this was the behavior she would change.
Beth bristled at first to the thought that she must apologize to Harvey. The idea was so distasteful to her that I scripted her apology to circumvent any hesitations that might destroy its effect. To Beth’s credit, she followed the script.
She said, “Harvey, I appreciate the positive feedback I’ve received. There are also some things at which I want to be better. I’ve been disrespectful to you, the company, and the traditions in the company. Please accept my apology. There is no excuse for this behavior and…”
Harvey cut her off before she finished, responding, “Beth, it’s not just you, it’s me too. I have not been a gentleman in the way I’ve treated you. I know this is hard for you to say to me, and these are not just your problems. This is my problem too. We can get better together.”
That’s the magic in this process. When you declare your dependence on others, they usually agree to help. And during the course of helping you be a better person, they inevitably try to become better people themselves. This is how individuals change, how teams improve, how divisions grow, and how companies become industry leaders.
Excerpted from What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, 2007
Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority in helping successful leaders achieve positive, measurable change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams. He has been named one of the top 50 leaders influencing the field of management over the last century (American Management Association), one of the five most respected executive coaches (Forbes) and among the top ten executive educators (Wall Street Journal). Marshall invites you to visit his library (MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com) for articles and resources you can use.
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