As your team’s leader, you will be watched to be sure that you live up to your employees’ idea of a leader, so you need to know what employees look for in a leader. Let’s look at the attributes one by one. Employees want their leaders to do the following:
Clarify direction. A leader provides the team with a sense of purpose. This can be a weighty responsibility for a new manager but, as a leader, you must take charge of yourself and of those who report to you. Responsibility for others emerges from setting goals as well as following through on those goals. Most importantly, responsibility means a willingness to be accountable for the actions of others under your charge as well as for your own actions.
Be masters of their skill. You are a manager now because your expertise was the launching pad for your promotion. As a leader, your employees want you to maintain your professional presence—and more. They also want you to acknowledge that you don’t have all the answers and, consequently, that you force yourself to stretch and learn new skills.
Focus, focus, focus. Clear focus keeps the unit pointed in the right direction and gives followers an unmistakable sense of direction.
Listen. When you listen, you not only know what’s going on around you, but you enable followers to share ideas, even when those ideas may conflict with your viewpoint. You let your followers know that you want them to be involved in the decision-making process. Listening opens the door to genuine communication as well as improved focus.
Coach the team. Demonstrate a desire to teach others. Not only do you acknowledge your need to learn more, you also offer opportunities to your staff members to grow.
Be patient. Being patient, because some people learn more slowly than others, demonstrates respect for people, which is integral to creating a sense of trust, a fundamental of teamwork.
Be passionate. Great leaders are enthusiastic and committed to achieving their goals. Everyone has the ability to be a great leader, but the real ones express their purpose, goal, or objective relentlessly.
Perform. Tom Peters has said that he, “would rather have a B strategy with an A execution than an A strategy with a B execution.” He’s talking about superb execution, the ability to get a job done in an A+ fashion. Great leaders strive for this level of performance.
Use vision as a guide for behavior on a day-to-day basis. You need to communicate your unit’s vision each and every day. Walk around and engage people in discussions of what they’re doing and why to help them link their everyday actions to that vision. Before that, however, with input from your employees, you have to create a vision that is compelling enough that your team will identify with it on a deep, personal level— without compromising their values.
Create resonance. Richard Boyatzis, author of Primal Leadership: Harnessing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, describes resonance as a “positive energy that motivates people to perform at their best.”
Earn your employees’ respect. People obey a leader they fear but follow a leader they trust and respect.
Show courage. Employees want a leader with the courage to act for the group’s benefit with minimum regard for the leader’s own well-being and self-interest.
Exhibit mutual trust. The most significant adhesive binding team members together is mutual trust. In light of recent financial scandals, at no time has this been as important as the present. Trust translates into belief in a person—the team’s leader. In everyday conversations, when your employees speak of trust in you, they are also thinking about these characteristics.
Honesty. Your employees are confident in your fairness—in the rewards you provide, the assignments that you give, and the opportunities for training you hand out.
Reliability. Employees expect their manager to carry through on prom- ises. Your employees are no different. If you say that you’ll do something, they want to know they can count on your word. Can they?
Fairness. If your employees disagree with you, they want to feel they can express their beliefs without being punished. They can trust you to listen to their ideas without disapproval, either now or in the future.
Truthful. Your employees want to count on you to express feelings freely, to say what you mean and mean what you say. There are no games being played on either side.
Trust is a value, and like many values it is best understood by considering the behaviors associated with it. Consider the following:
Consistency and predictability. Unpredictable behavior breeds anxiety and mistrust.
A congenial, supportive atmosphere. Your employees want to feel free to express themselves freely. Withheld feelings make for mistrust.
The important point for you, as a leader, to remember is that trust builds trust and mistrust begets mistrust. The more you give of trust, the more you get back and vice versa. Thus, it’s essential for you to use techniques that are certain to build, increase, and maintain trust. There is nothing vague or mysterious about creating trust. Like many values, it transfers into behaviors. Exercising these behaviors produce trust.