Stand for something

Employees often tell me -- with regret -- that they don't respect their management; they don't think they're trustworthy. They're often in organizations where core values of integrity and trust are plastered on the walls and slapped on coffee mugs. Why the disconnect?

Don't you wonder what people are looking for in their leaders  -- that the leaders think they are already providing? Because you can bet when I'm in conversations with the leaders in those same organizations, they believe they are honest and trustworthy and deserving of respect. Not only from their employees but from their customers too.

They're subtle, these things we refer to so glibly as trust and respect. We know at our core if we respect someone and yet, it's tough sometimes to articulate why. Just like parents who say one thing and then do another, leaders leave an impression with people of whether or not they are deserving of the respect they assume comes with their roles.

What is that quality that teenagers see lacking in their parents that leads to behavior appalling to their folks? It's congruence - or the lack thereof. For many parents, their messages and their lives are two very different things. They're kidding no one, most of all their kids.

Neither are leaders. When a leader talks about investing in employee development for the long term but then clearly makes decisions driven by next quarter's stock price, employees see through it. And talk about it among themselves. They jump ship ("misbehave") and leaders wonder why.

True leaders know what they stand for and they live by those standards. There's congruence between what they say and what they do. They've got to stand for something if they expect others to stand with them.

Flickr photo courtesy of dollhead77.