As great leaders, we all need to know what we believe and hold true. Because before we really can lead, we need to be able to connect our beliefs with our actions, and those actions with results.
By asking people to focus on particular results without understanding the ‘why’ of it, you are asking people to lay the cathedral brick by brick without knowing what they are building. It’s shallow and demotivating. And, it will never cause you to outwit your competitors.
“Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it
yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To
convince them, you must yourself believe.”—Winston Churchill
Have a vision.
Communicate that vision, effectively.
Then, [and with loads of details in between] your people will follow you.
I say all this now with the HP spying amongst the board and reports controversy recently in our midst. If the HP scandal has an underlying belief, it’s that Dunn and the board believed that finding the “truth” overrode basic ethics of disclosure, integrity between people, and the ability to see that the way in which we do things speaks loads about what we hold true. I feel sad for those that work in that culture.
