This week we are looking at honesty. Honesty is an essential trait for being a great leader and so I am going to give you three ways or reasons why honesty is absolutely essential in leadership and why you need to practice it if you want to be a great leader.
1.Be honest when defining reality.
2.Be honest about the future.
3.Be honest when you make mistakes.
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1. Be honest when defining reality.
The first area that you need to focus on honestly is in your defining of reality. One of the responsibilities of a leader is to define reality; to be able to help your team and your organization understand the place that you are in now, whether it might be your position as far as the goals that you are trying to achieve, whether it is your financial status or your ability to execute or to achieve some of the goals that you have set for yourself. Defining reality is part of your job and it is vitally important to be honest when talking to your team and organisation about your understanding of where you are at.
There is no point sugar coating your reality, if your reality or your present state is in a difficult position or you are up against some great obstacles. There is no point sugar coating the reality or pretending that it doesn’t exist or keeping people in the dark. All that happens if you do that is, your team will only be able to perform and to operate in terms of what you have shown them. So if you are not showing them the full picture and you are not being honest about the reality that they are facing, then what’s going to happen is, you will only get the results that resemble the reality that they have been given, which is not real.
If you face some obstacles, challenges or financial difficulties, then you need to be upfront about that, even if you are speaking of hope for the future. Even if you are trying to motivate your team to look towards achieving greater outcomes, you still need to be able to be honest about where they are starting from. If you know where you are starting from, then you can make a much better plan of how you are going to get to where you are aiming to go. So that is the first tip, being honest when you are defining reality.
2. Be Honest about the Future
The second tip is this; be honest about the future. So if you can see things coming down the path, perhaps there are changes that are coming or challenges that you are facing in the future and they may impact the way in which your team and your organization operate, then it is important that you be upfront about that. If you have to make job cuts, it is better that you talk it through honestly with those concerned rather than lying about it and saying, ” No we do not have to make any job cuts” and then turning around and cutting jobs.
You have got to be really honest. That does not mean that you have to be harsh, insensitive or unempathetic to individuals. It just means that when you are talking with people who need to know what’s coming down the pipeline, that you are honest enough to tell them where you are at and where you are headed. It is a little bit like defining reality but it is about things that are coming in the future that may not be a reality right now, but you sense that they may become a reality. So you have got to be honest about that. Have honest conversations because when you have honest conversations you can actually make honest plans to face those challenges in real ways and overcome those obstacles in practical ways that will get you through.
3. Be honest when you make mistakes.
The third thing is you need to be honest when you make mistakes. There is nothing worse than a leader who does not own his/her mistakes and wants to blame everybody else rather than taking responsibility for themselves. When you are the leader, everything rises and falls on your shoulders, on your ability, on your decisions and whether you are the person directly responsible for the outcomes or not, you still have to take responsibility for what happens. You have to be honest enough to own your mistakes or own your part of it. Do not throw your team under the bus. Do not pretend that you knew nothing about it. As a leader it is your job to know what is going on and it is your job to be honest when it does not go right.
When you are honest, what you will find is that your team will learn to trust you. Your team will trust you and learn to take risks. They will follow you into the unknown because they know you are trustworthy and they know that even if you get it wrong, you are going to be upfront about that.
The other thing about honesty is that it will get the best out of your team. When you are honest, they are going to give their whole selves to what they do, they are not going to hold back. They are not going to be suspicious of your direction, they are not going to be reticent to talk to you when they have made mistakes. So, by modelling honesty and that is what you are really doing, you are showing them what honesty looks like, and you will find your team is more honest with you.
When you have got an honest team you can actually function better as a leader. So remember, you need to model honesty. It means, show that you have an honest character. Be honest in the way that you manage your teams and maintain honesty. You cannot tolerate dishonesty in your team. If you have team members that are being dishonest, you need to address their dishonesty. Do not let it slide or pretend it didn’t happen. You need to maintain a culture of honesty and truth-telling at whatever level they are working.
These are our three tips about how important honesty is in leadership and how to use honesty effectively in leadership. Don’t forget to share this with somebody that might benefit and send me a comment if there’s a topic you want me to talk about or some area of leadership you’d like us to go down a rabbit hole with you. I’m happy to discuss anything you would like, so just give me a comment and let me know which way we should go next time.
If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details.
https://leadcommunicategrow.com/free-goal-setting-guide/
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