Leadership and selective vulnerability, the magic ingredient for organisational trust

I've digressed slightly from the start of this blog around the importance of a platform of trust and access to information to make informed decisions.   By now however I have hopefully provided some insights into the importance of trust in teams and organisations to enable informed decision making and increased productivity, ultimately protecting the bottom line of organisations.   

While I believe that it is every individual's responsibility to ensure that they build healthy and trust-based relationships with the people they engage with, I have also experienced the positive and negative effects which leadership has on creating an environment which fosters and invites or inhibits the building of trust between individuals and teams.   Not only that, I noticed two remarkable effects which leadership has on establishing or breaking down trust in organisations.  One is the speed at which it takes place and the other is the scale of the effect i.e. how widespread the effect is across the individual members of the organisation.  

I recently listened to a podcast of an interview with Jim Collins (author of best-selling leadership books like Good to Great, Great by Choice and Build to Last).  In response to a question by the podcast host he mentioned how he asked his research team to look at listed companies over a 30 year period to determine what differentiated the companies which delivered sustained high performance over the long-term from those companies which only delivered average performance over the same period.  He said that he told the research team not to return with a "leadership" answer as his bias and belief was that one individual couldn't be the only differentiating factor.  The research team returned with a "leadership" answer which ultimately led to the concept of the Level 5 (Executive) leader which he describes as a leader who "builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and personal will".

This comment confirmed my own perspective and experience that once leaders have learned the ability to show selective vulnerability / humility they possess the magic ingredient which enables them to establish an environment which fosters and accelerates trust throughout all layers of the organisation.   By "selective" I'm referring to the ability of the leader to expose their own mistakes and humanity without compromising on responsibility and accountability.   Not being selective could also lead to familiarity creeping in which "breeds contempt" as the saying go, but more on that later.  

I definitely recommend any and all of Jim Collins work on leadership and how to build long-term sustained high performance organisations.