Your Reputation may be one of the most important assets you have as a Leader.
How’s yours?
Leadership coach and author, Ron Carucci, suggests that we each need to pay special attention to one particular aspect of our reputation – our trustworthiness. He suggests four key practices to build trustworthiness between ourselves and others:
1. Be Who You Say You Are. Share your values with your team. And then, even more importantly, make sure that your stated values match your behavior. If you mistakenly act not according to your values, then own it. Apologize, clean up any mess you have made, and recommit. Note that you can only do this so often.
2. Treat Others and Their Work with Dignity. Create a “safe fail” culture. We all make mistakes and need to learn from them. Create opportunities for others on your team to shine and then recognize them when they do.
3. Balance Transparency with Discretion. Openly share your personal life – it makes you seem like an actual person, versus just a boss. Also freely (appropriately) share organizational information. Keep people in the loop! Hold onto people’s confidences like gold. Everyone knows the people with whom you cannot share a secret. Do not be one of those!
4. Build Bridges that Unify. Look for common ground – especially among factions that may exist within the organization. Turf wars and silos are not good for anyone.
Just because you don’t lie frequently does not make people want to trust you. We need to be proactive about it. Work on these key practices and help build your trustworthiness.
*Ideas for this blog taken from: Carucci, R. “Build Your Reputation as a Trustworthy Leader,” Harvard Business Review online, June 11, 2021.
