Leadership Lessons - Part 2

In the last blog, I talked about integrity (Go home with what brung you to the dance) and there being no substitute for passion. I want to post my next two sections on the "Soft" lessons of leadership, which are, as it turns out, not so soft as one might suspect.



Here is the third lesson on leadership. It involves Trust.



Trust is the highest form of human motivation (Covey). This thought is echoed by many in the field of leadership development. The process of building trust is all about the predictability of relationships. No one feels comfortable in an environment where he/she is uncertain that the leader is going to “do the right thing.” or not. In our school organizations, I contend that the major distinction between followership and compliance is directly related to the trust one has in the leader. Trust is the foundation for a moral contact between two or more people, where each is assumed to do what is expected and preferred at all reasonable costs. Without it, the process of growth and productivity slows to a crawl and and relationships are framed by suspicion and uncertainty. One of my favorite authors on this topic is John Gardner, former HEW Secretary in John Kennedy's administration and later the founder of Common Cause. When he spoke of trust, he said: “For leaders seeking to win trust, another requirement is fairness – fairness when the issues are being openly adjudicated, and, equally, fairness in the backroom. Contending elements seek private access to the leader, and if it is believed that such offstage maneuvering works, the system is in a constant turmoil of suspicion. Nothing is more surely stabilizing than confidence that the leader is unshakably fair in private as well as in public.”



The fourth leadership lesson involves courage, certainly not a soft quality, but a critically important one. Courage requires that the leader take on unwanted and unanticipated challenges with the same modeling behaviors he/she expected of their leaders when he or she was a classroom teacher. Being popular is nice, but being right is nicer. How often have you despaired over a leader who made the wrong popular decision rather than the right, more difficult one? This gets at the issue of fairness as well. We expect leaders to have a moral core that guides their decision making. Covey compares this to an internal compass, always pointing to true north. It's not just bravery (although that's important), but persistence over time and the ability to snatch victory from defeat, as well as the ability to bounce back and move on when victory is elusive. Listen to John Gardner once again. He said: “Clearly a leader needs courage – not just bravery of the moment but courage over time; not just the willingness to risk, but to risk again and again, to function well under prolonged stress, to survive defeat and keep going.”



So, two more lessons, one on being trustworthy and the other on being courageous. I'd apprecaite your reflections on these thoughts. Please post your comments so we can have more interactive "conversation" going. I'd like to know what you think. I'll post a couple more soft lessons next week.