Education

Cornell University professor Dr. Tony Simons’ powerful article, “The High Cost of Lost Trust,” appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 2002. In that piece, he described his team’s efforts to examine a specific hypothesis (“Employee commitment drives customer service”) in the US operations of a major hotel chain. They interviewed over 7,000 employees at nearly 80 properties and found that employee commitment drives customer service, but, most critically, a leader’s behavioral integrity drives that and more.

Over 30 years ago I had a conversation with a teenager that caught me completely off guard - and reminds me of a valuable principle to this day. While I have a very well-honed skill for catching people doing things wrong - if I want to be an effective leader, I need to catch people doing things right. I work on this every day, with clients, peers, and bosses - greatly because of the jumpstart this conversation gave me.

As a leader, your credibility is maintained, day by day, when you do what you say you will do. For example, if you announce that, from this point forward, every team member will be expected to demonstrate our team’s valued behaviors, you have set a standard. Educating team members about desired valued behaviors is important, but, without accountability, those valued behaviors are just one more set of expectations that your employees can ignore.

Every business needs a captain, a person that sets the stage for all actions and all relationships that take place within the work environment. If you, as a leader, do not set the stage by defining and aligning practices to clear performance standards and values expectations, people will be left to “figure it out on their own.” This leads to widely varying practices – not aligned, proven practices. That lack of clarity and alignment erodes consistent performance, service, and results.

If you have never experienced successful culture change personally, as a team member in general or as a leader, you may not be prepared or know how to proactively manage your team’s culture. The culture of your team (or department or division or plant or region or whole company) is the engine that drives your team’s success – or its lack of success.

Sometimes people choose very distinct personas - that is, they choose to play a particular role for a period of time (or even their whole careers)

If leaders are able to reframe their role and responsibility as that of servant leaders, productivity will grow and engagement will grow.

If someone stopped by and asked your team today what your performance expectations are for this year, could they give a prompt, specific answer? Could they do the same for values expectations – how they’re supposed to treat each other?

Loyalty. Duty. Respect. Selfless Service. Honor. Integrity. Personal Courage. The US Army’s values are clearly spelled out, as core values are in all military organizations.

In my work with clients around the globe, I hear about team members’ frustrations with their leaders all the time. These frustrations are often based on the leader’s lack of consistent authenticity.