Do you trust your boss?

Alice and Bob are both supervisors at a medium size company. One day over lunch, they were comparing the pluses and minuses of some of their past bosses. During the discussion, they were reminded of Greg, probably the best leader they ever had.

While Greg was personable, focused and set high standards, they concluded Greg’s greatest quality was that he created a culture of trust.

Greg did not yell, threaten or lie to get his teams to meet short-term deadlines. He also did not, and would not sacrifice long-term success to meet short-term deadlines.

This was in stark contrast to Mack, who was Greg’s polar opposite. Mack would lie to his customers about the ability to meet accelerated schedules. In turn, he would peddle these same falsehoods to his team about a non-existent urgent customer need to meet the accelerated schedule. The kicker? After the team rallied to accomplish its goals on a sped-up timeline, Mack would proudly—and fraudulently—claim success for their results. He abused his team for his personal gain, and the team members would leave Mack’s team at the earliest opportunity.

Alice and Bob were both students of leadership and decided to compile a list of some of the things that Greg did, to create a checklist for themselves as emerging leaders.

 

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