How many people do we trust? Where do we find the balance between being too trusting and too skeptical?
We want leaders we can trust. Each of us might express it in slightly different ways, with words like authenticity, honesty, communicator. We look for leaders who can be trusted to tell us the truth. We do not expect leaders to be perfect, but want them to be straight with us about their mistakes. We understand there are times when we will need to make sacrifices.
Leadership does not always need to be happy or blissful, accurate or charismatic. It is essential to effective leadership we know we can trust our leaders.
How do we know when leaders are trustworthy?
There is no, as far as I know, algorithm for assessing whether leadership is trustworthy. Leadership is a complex network of relationships, built on impressions among diverse people. How do people we have never met decide whether we are trustworthy leaders?
It boils down, in its essence, to a balance encompassing our being alike and being different. We tend to trust people we recognize as like us. We want our leaders to be stronger than we are.
Our willingness to trust leaders is integrally related to our willingness to trust ourselves. Our lives balance between who we have been so far and who we are convinced we can become.
As we get to know ourselves more deeply, we appreciate our own potential. As we grow to accept who we are, we become the trustworthy leaders we can be.
Each of us leads in our own unique ways. We share the truths we are learning about ourselves with the people around us. As we trust ourselves, we learn to trust others.
Whose leadership do we trust?
Where is our leadership most trustworthy today?
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