New Leader Tuesday at Management Excellence

The New Leader Tuesday series is dedicated to the proposition that one of the most critical tasks we have is developing the next generation of leaders. If you are new to leading or if you are charged with the development of new leaders on your team, please join the discussion, ask questions and share your insights!  And I would love to have you join our mailing list for our forthcoming New-Leaders e-News.

Respect. It’s a complex concept filled, filled with nuance and subtlety and gesture, all buried in a simple word. 

Most of us are wired to appreciate respect and to reciprocate in kind. And vice-versa.

Showing respect is a choice we all make at every encounter. For anyone in a leadership role, it’s quite possibly the most powerful performance tool in your toolkit, nosing out feedback at the finish line. (Of course, delivering quality, timely feedback to promote growth is in fact a means of showing respect to another person.)

One of the lessons the best leaders will offer is the importance of showing trust as a sign of respect in the people who work with and around you. For many early leaders, this notion of trusting feels incredibly risky and even threatening. “If I trust my team members to do their jobs and they don’t, I’ll be fired.” Yes, there’s risk, but it’s not likely you’ll be fired for starting out from a position of trust.

If you don’t trust your team members and you showcase this lack of trust through your management tactics (especially micromanaging), you will be moving quickly away from displaying respect. It’s hard to start an effective relationship on the basis of lack of trust and disrespect and expect it to improve.

As Keith Murnighan suggests in his excellent new book, Do Nothing-How to Stop Overmanaging and Become a Great Leader (Leadership Caffeine podcast interview forthcoming!), your choice to not show trust and do the opposite…test your people so that they can earn your trust is bound to backfire.

While it feels counterintuitive (and risky) to step into a new leadership role and trust the people who have been in place doing their jobs, it’s the right thing to do. If you have specific evidence that suggests that the team or select individuals are grossly under-performing, you still need to step in, trust and importantly, observe and form your own opinion. (aka, The Reagan doctrine of “Trust but Verify”)  The issue may well have been the prior manager…you don’t know, and you’ll never know if you start the relationship by not trusting and not respecting an individual or a team.

There’s risk in every approach we take in dealing with others. I’ll err on the side of trusting first, starting a relationship based on showing respect and then adjusting as conditions merit.

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For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check our Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. 

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An ideal book for anyone starting our in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

To talk about a workshop or speaking need, contact Art at via e-mail at [email protected]

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