Do what you say you will do!*
This issue’s great advice comes from Mary Kay Ash, the incredibly successful entrepreneur who founded Mary Kay Cosmetics. She often advised up-and-coming leaders:
“Be the kind of person that people can rely on to do what you say you will do.”
Here’s the simple truth: you are, in great measure, personally responsible for your reputation in the workplace! Your behavior will define who you are in the eyes and minds of your colleagues and customers. Wise leaders will take their behavior and their reputations seriously, and take pains to perform with consistency and integrity.
I have worked with individuals who did not guard their reputation well. Every time they opened their mouth, I felt like flipping a coin, because half the time they made a promise, they failed to follow through and left me hanging! You do not want this kind of 50% reputation!
Kouzes and Posner (authors of the ground-breaking book, The Leadership Challenge) distill it to this simple abbreviation:
DWYSYWD*
There’s also a famous word of advice that goes with this:
UNDERPROMISE AND OVERDELIVER
Let me simplify this a bit for emphasis: JUST DELIVER ON YOUR PROMISES!! When you say you are going to do something…DO IT. Follow through and make sure it happens. Your team will come to trust you, and that’s a good thing—it will make you AND your team more effective, efficient, and productive. And productivity is important EVERYWHERE.
The truth is, WE DON’T FOLLOW PEOPLE WE DON’T TRUST. You know that it’s true for YOU… and you can be sure it’s true for everyone else as well!
One more thing—teach your team members the same principle! Make sure they understand that it’s honesty and accuracy that you value, not hyperbole. Make it safe for them to tell you the truth, especially if it’s bad news. You cannot lead well unless you have a firm grasp of reality in every situation. So… no sugar coating; no mincing of words; no flattering the king; and no hedging the truth. If there are problems, then you identify them clearly and tackle them head-on with your best ideas, your best people, and your best effort.
By the way, this is good advice for building a good relationship with YOUR boss. Keep it truth-based, and everyone will be the better for it. If you need any case studies to bolster this principle, just roll through the roster of big-time corporate screw-ups and failures that have peppered the headlines over the last decade—Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, British Petroleum, Bernie Madoff—look deep enough and you will find false or misleading information, stone-walling, or out-and-out fraud in every one of these examples.
If you need help building the right truth-based culture for your team or your organization, we can help! Call today and find out how our values-based leadership and management training can help your people communicate better, work together more effectively, and produce real results that can make a difference!
In the meantime…stay tuned to this blog for more great insight and tools!
Until next time… Yours for better leaders and better organizations,
Dr. Jim Dyke – “The Boss Doctor” ™ helping you to BE a better boss and to HAVE a better boss!
