SUMMING UP
Why Is It so Difficult to Lead with Candor, Humility, and Trust?
Responses to this month’s column, for the most part, represented a celebration of the values of candor, humility, and trust in leadership.
As Dan Wallace put it, “If you … recognize that your job is to help the people who report to you succeed, I think it’s pretty hard to lead with anything other than humility and vulnerability.” Dfallah said, “I believe candor, humility and trust are core values for visionary companies …” Michael H. added, “For several years, I’ve been advocating a shift from measuring success by not how many customers are sold but by how many are served…” Doing so, he continued, requires business leaders to commit to operating within a set of principles that include honest, transparency, humility, and love. Peter Schein, who co-authored the book Humble Leadership, reminded us that his book “raises similar issues in the context of building more personal connections and relationships in the workplace.”
Others disputed the notion that these values are making a comeback. J. T. Goh commented: “I don’t see these values as … trendy or fashionable… They may handicap or disadvantage (us) sometimes but rarely will one end up on the wrong side of right with these values.” Rod R. said, “Comeback? These have always been essential and valued… if you are strolling through life as a not trustworthy person that is arrogant and doesn’t listen to others, you’re probably living off of someone else’s success.”
There were several nuanced responses that prompt the question in the title above. Arie Goldshlager commented that, “for every similar (example to that of the Commonwealth Bank) candor marketing example, I see many more lack-of-candor counter-examples. I think this is because the return on candor is negative in the short-term and positive only in (the) long-term, and many companies are too focused on the short-term.” Robert added that candor is the honest and open exchange of ideas, “but the techniques must be learned and reinforced to become habits.” Nick C. questioned, “Do our intentions to act (with candor, humility, and trust) become too hard to execute in the fast paced environment we live in?”
Why is it so difficult to lead with candor, humility, and trust? What do you think?
Original Post
In the eyes of some, candor, humility, and trust have taken a beating, at least in the realm of public leadership, in recent years. Perhaps in reaction to what we read about in the daily news, these very concepts are at the core of what seems to be an increasing amount of research ranging from marketing to leadership.
Take this example in marketing. Research by Harvard Business School Professor Ryan Buell and doctoral student Moon Soo Choi caught my eye recently. Their study of a credit card offering to almost 400,000 customers of Commonwealth Bank, Australia’s largest, found that a typical promotion mentioning only the benefits of the card was outperformed significantly by one mentioning both positives and negatives of the card. The latter attracted not only customers who were more loyal and spent more money with the card, they were less likely to make late payments.
In this case candor paid off, contrary to conventional thinking among some advertising creators. [The study’s authors caution that results would undoubtedly differ from one group of customers and one product or service to another.]
It brings to mind marketing campaigns in the United States for Progressive’s insurance products, in which the Company regularly provides pricing information about its competitors whether it is favorable to Progressive or not. It must be working to the Company’s advantage in marketing products that require a certain amount of trust on the part of customers.
Vulnerability is good
Several recent books relying heavily on research have emphasized the importance of one’s willingness to project vulnerability—requiring a high level of humility—as a means of establishing a basis for trust among organization members. For example, HBS Professor Amy Edmondson, in her discussion of ways of building “psychological safety” and “voice” in an organization, suggests everyone use phrases that make the workplace feel ”just a tiny bit more psychologically safe: I don’t know. I need help. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”
How often have you heard your boss utter those words in the recent past? If rarely, is this about to change? According to Edmondson’s data, mentions of psychological safety in popular media increased nearly three-fold in a five-year period beginning in 2013.
The presence of psychological safety, according to a number of research projects, favorably affects things such as employee engagement, employee error reporting, and return on investment.
Here is more evidence of a resurgence:
- HBS Professor Emeritus Michael Beer, in a new book based on a large base of evidence drawn from consulting experience, concludes that “when employees can’t speak truth to power … they lose trust in those leaders and become less committed to change.”
- Roderick Kramer, of the Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty, cites evidence that “when leaders are generous at sharing credit, they actually are more trusted. It shows that they are fully confident.”
- HBS Professor Francesca Gino, in her recent book, reminds us of the importance of “remaining open and vulnerable in order to connect with others and learn from them.”
- And let’s not forget Jim Collins’ classic characterization of a Level Five Leader as one who scores high on the two dimensions of “humility + will.” His memorable analogy of “the window and the mirror” describes what he found in the successful leaders he studied. They were the ones who “look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well [and] … look in the mirror to apportion responsibility … when things go poorly.”
These are research-based ideas that are being taught today in leadership classrooms at business schools. Are candor, humility, and trust making a comeback among leadership concepts? If so, what will the impact be on leaders and their organizations? What do you think?
References:
Michael Beer, Fit to Compete: Why Honest Conversations About Your Company’s Capabilities Are the Key to a Winning Strategy (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020)
Ryan Buell and Moon Soo Choi study, as reported by Danielle Kost, The Upside of Highlighting a Product’s Downsides, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, January 30, 2020.
Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t (New York: HarperCollins, 2001)
Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley & Sons, 2019)
Francesca Gino, Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules At Work and In Life (New York: William Morrow, 2018)
Roderick M. Kramer and Todd L. Pittinsky (eds.), Restoring Trust in Organizations and Leaders: Enduring Challenges and Emerging Answers (London: Oxford University Press, 2012)