Integrity is a 100% Job

I was asked recently how I would describe "Integrity" and my answer was it is your ability to trust yourself, it is the very foundation on which to build trust with others.

In this context, consistent behaviour is not good enough. There is no such thing as 99% integrity - it has to be a 100% commitment.

You can be consistent and deliver most of the time and you can get in the area with your clients, suppliers, prospects and staff. But only 100% constancy builds trust and gets you over the front door!

Whatever level you choose to operate - values, principles or results; to be trusted you have to be constant in your efforts. We do a lot of work with stategic level teams and in the early stages of the team coming together the chief concern expressed by many is that they will not be trusted by their new colleagues. Trusted to do the right thing, trusted to make the right decisions, trusted to communicate the right messages. The ones that overcome this concern the quickest are the ones that exude integrity. The ones that are supremely confident in their ability to do what they say they will do. They eliminate any hint of doubt that others may have - effortlessly.

So, next time you are seeking the trust of your colleagues, clients or suppliers, ask yourself, "Do I trust myself to deliver what I say I will?" "Is my word my bond?" "Am I reliable?" "Am I my toughest customer to please?" If you can answer "Yes" to all of these questions, without qualification, you will be building the sort of trust-based relationships that differentiate the very best leaders!

The Maverick as a Leader

by Judth Germain

The agility of successful companies hinges on their capability to harness the competencies of their top performers. The 20th Century style of management (employed by poor performing companies) which insists on a control and command style of management (strict conformity from its employees), has lost credibilty.

Times have changed.

Highly skilled and talented employees are at a premium and they are becoming increasingly harder to work with. They want the highest salaries and the maximum flexibility. They want to work the hours they define and in the way that they want. They want recognition for their expertise and respect for their talents from their peers and the people that manage them. When they are not challenged and stretched appropriately their resultant boredom tends to find a destructive outlet for their talents

The struggle for companies working from a 20th Century mindset is that this type of employee is a stark contrast to the rest of the workforce. I call this group Troublesome Talent™ and I find it is typically as much as one fifth of the talent pool. Not only do they believe that the rules do not apply to them, they often cause a myriad of problems for the company. Criticised for their arrogance (or is it high self confidence?), their rudeness (or is it just blunt honesty) their influence (destructive at times) they usually take a defensive stance or an entrenched position. This can lead to high employee turnover, increased claims of bullying and depressed team cohesion and performance. How expensive is it if a company chooses not to manage their maverick?

What makes a maverick? I define a maverick as being wilfully independent. Wilful independence - when used with the right intention - is what propels companies to success. Consider the success of the following maverick leaders, Richard Branson, Ricardo Semler, Jack Welch, Bill Gates, JFK and Martin Luther King. If you agree that it was their willingness to challenge the status quo, to stand up for what they believe in, to inspire and motivate others and to demonstrate true leadership that made them stand out from the crowd, then ask how you can create an environment for Mavericks to express the same skill.

The 21st Century solution

The 21st Century solution is to recognise that a culture of command and control doesn’t work effectively anymore. Once companies have made that determination, they begin to consider how to engage their employees in a more productive way. Is it better to do this by treating employees as individuals rather than a collective (the workforce), recognising how individual employees are motivated? How important is it to be seen not just to be providing lipservice to this approach? This individualistic approach requires the manager to consider not only how a team is motivated and influenced but the needs of each individual team member. This can mean that the manager with a maverick on his team will need to treat him quite differently from everyone else. That must be balanced between treating him in a way that is tailored for him and consistent when considered against how other employees are managed.

How do you manage your maverick?

The key to managing a maverick is not to manage them! Leadership is the only way to succeed in harnessing the maverick talent. I believe that leadership is trusted influence. The ability to inspire and extend trust and to influence others positively is the true mark of a leader. Guide your maverick to be a better leader regardless of the position that they have within the company.

Give them your time. Mavericks want to have access to you whenever they need to check their understanding on something. They will only want to access your time when they need to – they can however take up a lot of your time, if you do not lead them properly. Be patient! It’s better to spend the time now rather than later. Ignore the maverick at your peril!

Recognise their expertise. All mavericks thrive on others recognising their expertise and their uniqueness. Mavericks however do not want to be constantly told that they are talented. They will not trust constant reinforcement of how good they are. Do look out for the moments when they do something particularly outstanding even for them – and then let them know that you were impressed.

Give them wiggle room. Try not to overly constrain them with unnecessary rules – draw up guidelines instead.

Give them a compelling reason to change. Let them know that their behaviour is unacceptable, at times when they have gone too far. Get this right and you will have their respect for ever. Remember, the way to do this is to influence them to change their behaviour – employing command and control tactics will make things worse.

Let them create, even if that means they do this at odd times during the day. If they respect and believe in you, they will work tirelessly to ensure that your vision is implemented and is successful. They will do this is a way that can be unexpected at times.

Believe in them. Trust is a great motivator. If a maverick senses that you don’t trust them they are likely to turn their talents elsewhere. Teach the maverick how to gain your trust.

Isn’t leadership about trusted influence? If your most maverick employee becomes a more effective influencer what impact will that have on your business? How well is the most effective company in your market dealing with these issues?

In the Spotlight - Martin Edwards - Trusted Leader

Martin Edwards is author of the ‘Trusted Leadership’ ethos as detailed in www.trustedleader.org. Formerly Save the Children’s youngest ever Regional Manager, he has raised over £20million for various UK charities. He is now Chief Executive of Julia’s House, a UK children’s hospice.


SP - What is a Trusted Leader?

ME - A Trusted Leader is the most effective leader of all because they get results consistently through being superb with people.

SP - Why, given the array of attributes discussed in the leadership literature, did you choose to focus on trust as the basis for great leadership?

ME - A lot has been written about how great leaders have single-mindedness, dynamism, drive or charisma: the matinee idol version of leadership. But if you want to be the most effective leader, don’t impress on your people that you can achieve anything; make them believe that they can achieve anything.

The best leaders I have ever met all inspire confidence through their emotional intelligence, brilliant interpersonal skills and a fundamental commitment to positive values. These qualities define them as human beings both in work and outside of it. They judge everyone not by the level of their rank but by the content of their character and the quality of their contribution. They are subtle, clever, decent people. They are flexible and adaptable, yet consistent and steadfast. They are trusted leaders and little has been written about how they build that trust in their everyday behaviour that makes the whole organisation highly effective.

SP - Is trust really integral to results?

ME - Somewhere in the team or the organisation that you lead, there is a young woman with a brilliant idea who’s had the confidence pounded out of her by a manager who doesn’t listen. There is a mercurial genius who is distrusted because he seems to like fighting the system but who would actually thrive on more responsibility. There is a talented thirty-something mother struggling with the demands of bringing up children who will leave if she isn’t sometimes treated more flexibly. There is a 55-year-old whose maturity deserves recognition with a role as a mentor. There is a middle manager who feels under too much time pressure to walk the floor because it’s not a ‘bottom line’ activity. And there is a backroom team that feels undervalued because no-one has told them that every ship needs a great engine room. People respond to brilliant trusted leadership. These people are out there, waiting for their leaders to catch up with them.

SP - What are the keys to developing trust?

ME - There are six keys to high performance through trust.

1. Treat your Human Resources as humans not just as resources. Stop and talk to them. Take an interest in their lives. Make clear to each person that they are valued. Find out about their work, their hopes, their concerns and their challenges. As top leadership coach Patricia Summitt says: ‘People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.’
2. Fulfil your commitments to the people you lead, even the everyday things that you agree to do, because trust is built on a pattern of lots of little events. If you set a habit of breaking your commitments in minor situations, people won’t trust you to help sort out major ones that you really need to know about before they become crises.
3. A true meritocracy should mean more than just ability being a passport to higher rank; it should mean that any contribution, regardless of its rank, is listened to openly and treated on its merits. This way anyone can have a fundamental impact on the team’s direction. Conversely, ineffective work cultures judge ideas mainly on the rank of their contributor.
4. Value different people and different ideas. Walk the floor to find out why things are going right or wrong at the sharp end of the organisation. Don’t be dismissive: listen with an open mind to differences of opinion. As historian Andrew Roberts said of Churchill, ‘Great leaders know how vital it is to listen to people who disagree with them.’ That way you won’t miss something that could be a terrific insight, and the process of listening and debating builds confidence and shows that ideas and initiative are welcome.
5. Stay true to your values and to the values that bind teams together. Uphold them with total conviction because they are the only thing that should never change about an organisation. They should include integrity, a commitment to continuous improvement, taking concerns directly and only to the person responsible for sorting them out, positively challenging undermining behaviour, and basing decisions on the customer.
6. No ego: as Nieztsche said: ‘He who would fight monsters must take care not to become one.’ However patiently you build trust and teamwork, they can be entirely undone by displays of ego. It’s not just about not boasting. It means acknowledging and learning from failure. And it also means one of the hardest rules of all to adhere to: managers should never complain about their lot to, or seek compliments from, the people they manage.
If you had to choose just one key to make a difference, what would it be?

Stay true to your values every day. It makes an enormous difference. Take the value of continuous improvement: you need to get all of your staff to contribute to continuous improvement all of the time - a simple thing to say but incredibly hard to do. It boils down to encouraging line managers to constantly seek and respond to ideas from the coal face. The biggest timewaster of all in any organisation is choosing the wrong activity and then doing it really well. So it is crucial for managers to be open, attentive and responsive because they are more likely to choose the right activities. All this ultimately comes from your values.

SP - How have you tried to implement the six keys to trust at Julia’s House, and with what results?

ME - First I produced a five-year strategy within twelve weeks of joining, something every leader should aim to do because it brings pace and focus to your work right from day one and it forces you to listen. This set the management objectives throughout the organisation.

We then trained all managers in how to manage people – something many employers fail to do, assuming that they know already. In fact many managers reach their level of responsibility because of good technical skills and it is wrong to assume that they will spontaneously emerge, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, into a brilliant people manager.

We greatly improved the flow of information from each department to one another. I walked the floor regularly so that everyone grew accustomed to talking to me and sharing concerns and ideas. I also communicated regularly in writing with every employee so that no-one could reasonably say ‘they never tell me what goes on around here.’

We agreed with all staff a shared set of values that set a gold standard for teamwork, communication, decision-making and problem-solving. Poor standards in these areas are the most common reasons why people get fed up with their employer. We then trained all line managers in how to manage these new, higher standards.

Finally we signalled that people were valued by enhancing Terms & Conditions.

We did all of this while driving through rapid expansion. The improvements in the way people were led and managed enabled us to grow as quickly as we did, getting more out of everyone and helping them to thrive. The result was that we quadrupled our services in two years whilst also retaining our most talented people.

SP - What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received on becoming an effective leader?

ME - When I succeeded an outgoing leader he told me: ‘For the first six months, blame me! After that, blame yourself!’ What he was saying was that too many leaders blame their problems on people who are long gone, but positive leadership takes responsibility for situations very quickly.