| “It isn’t how much you know that matters. What matters is how much access you have to what other people know. It isn’t how intelligent your team members are; it is how much of that intelligence you can draw out and put to use.” From Multipliers by Liz Wizeman |
Leadership is not getting people to do what you want them to do becaue you are their leader, it is getting them to do what needs to be done for the organization to be successful. But how is this possible unless the leader is trusted?
I don’t believe it is possible to lead without trust. It is posible to manage or to supervise or to dictate what others will do but that is not leadership and will not have the same level of effectiveness. Interestingly it will also not be as enjoyable for those being supervised because they will not have the same level of engagement or fullfillment in their activities since they did not participate in the setting of the direction if not trusted to do so.
How willing are we to share our “Intelligence” as Liz Wizeman put it, if we do not trust our leader. Do we have the freedom to be wrong? Are we praised for being right? People will not share ideas without an environment of trust and why should they if they are just going to be admonished for being wrong.
Consider the story of the 3M Company and Post-It notes. In 1968 Dr. Spencer Silver was
attempting to develop a super-strong adhesive. Instead he accidentally developed a not very sticky but reusable adhesive. Five years later a colleague came up with the idea of using the adhesive to anchor a bookmark. If 3M had not had the trust of team members to share their failure we would not now have sticky notes!
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