One of my favorite and most human-centric leadership quotes is by Teddy Roosevelt - “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”
When you reflect back on your own experiences, think about how much expertise from those in leadership positions matter. How much more credibility and trust do you give to the vision and strategy built on that expertise because you also felt that they have your interests in mind?
The context in which we lead is evolving. In this two-minute video, I share three major trends that new leaders must adapt to:
Technology shift: Changing how followers interact with leaders.
Power Shift: Moving from institutions to individuals.
New Employee Expectations: Employees are demanding humanity from their leaders.
How can new leaders adapt? Here are three priorities for building their leadership playbook:
Show Your Humanity: People follow humans, not titles. Wendy Clark, (CEO of Dentsu International at the time of our interview), connected with her team by recording a welcome video at home with her daughter during the pandemic.
Read more of the interview with Wendy in this past issue of the Superpowers newsletter here.
Connect Personally: Help your team see they matter. Lieutenant General (Ret) Dr. Nadja West, the first African American woman to be the Surgeon General of the US Army and serve as a 3 Star General, inspired a private through a simple 15-minute interaction.
Listen to LTG General (Ret) West recount the story and share other human-centric leadership insights on her Duke Life of Significance Podcast episode Making an Impact, Keeping Joy and Defining Leadership.
Be Strategically Vulnerable: Trust is built through vulnerability. Show you don’t have all the answers but are willing to figure things out together.
For this and the next two special editions of The Leadership Playbook: Superpowers with Sanyin, I’m teaming up with AceUp, one of the most innovative coaching companies that is working overtime to deliver human-centered leadership transformation in turbulent times. AceUp’s Human-Centered Leadership® work with the Institute of Coaching, is so relevant because the workplace is constantly changing, at a pace never seen before.
Trust is fundamental to leading. A classic definition of trust, shared by my colleague and renowned leadership scholar Sim Sitkin, is “A willingness to be vulnerable in times of uncertainty.”
When we think about how much vulnerability followers need to embrace in order to follow leaders, leaders need to take the care to steward that wisely and take the time to know their people and account for the latter’s hopes and fears. It’s not only about competence. Invest time to cultivate compassion as a superpower.
Dialogue Review Column: It Takes Trust to Build Trust
Leadership is fundamentally about relationships; relationships are fundamentally about trust. Leaders today are called to relate in increasingly complex ways to those under their influence, and that means we need a better vocabulary for the animating force of those relationships: trust.
When your team shows trust in you, they are being vulnerable in the face of a plethora of possible outcomes. But research shows that to earn trust, you must first be willing to exhibit trust.
Dialogue Review is published by Duke Corporate Education, recently ranked by Financial Times as the #1 corporate education provider in N. America. A premier leadership and management journal featuring insights from the world's leading minds and corporations, it reaches 1 million readers globally.
Thank you for reading this issue of Leadership Playbook: Unleashing Your Superpowers! Look for our next special edition on June 11.