You cannot get Truth without offering Trust

I would like to talk about a lesson from another great leader, Jack Welch. Though I have never had the chance to meet him, I have had multiple opportunities to learn from him, through his interviews in text or video format. The most important lesson on leadership that I learned from one of his interviews was about two key words “Truth” & “Trust”. If you wish, please read the whole interview.

Jack says in this interview, “…all these leadership books and stuff about leadership, it’s all crap.”?He says that the leadership today is just about two words: Truth and Trust. If your team can trust you, they will tell you the truth and then a very large organization can act with the speed of a small organization and win in the market, else it is easy to fail.

Read through this section to understand it better.

Jack says, Leadership today is all about two words: It’s all about truth and trust. Your teams depend on you and as a leader you have got to have their back when they did not win in the market, when they tried but failed.

?When they trust you, they will share the truth with you. And if you get truth, you then act with speed. If you act, you can ensure that you deliver results.

If people are afraid of you, they will walk into your conference room and even though you are the boss, they will spin you with stories. They will give you a flavor of the truth that might sell. If you could get them to share just truth and the whole truth, imagine how easy it will be for you to draw conclusions. You would not have to drill them with additional questions just trying to make sense of what is really going on. But that only comes from trust. They must trust you.

I do wish that you can get the Trust of your team and that they can tell you the Truth in time. May you always be able to act with velocity and follow the old adage, “A stitch in time saves nine”.