Communication and leadership a matter of trust

By Lethbridge Herald on September 20, 2024.

DAN O’DONNELL – GUEST OPINION

In the last few weeks, I’ve had a number of conversations about communication and leadership. These have taken place in all sorts of contexts: a meeting in Ottawa about how unions can better communicate with their members, and a local conversation about the difference between management and leadership.

What ties these discussions together is the question of trust. Good communication, like good leadership, is about trusting in the wisdom and understanding of the people you are working with.

In fact, I’d say that good leadership is the same as good communication. A leader’s job is to build on the energy and motivation of their community: to understand what people want to do and to help them get that thing done. This could be as simple as having a productive day at work; or as complex as building a better society. The key is understanding — and more importantly believing in and sharing — people’s hopes and goals.

This may sound naive, particularly when we are deep in the political season. Where was the trust in the recent U.S. presidential debate? How does yelling in Parliament build on voters’ energy and motivation? If you follow politics, you’ll know that the focus is almost always on tactics rather than substance: how politicians are speaking rather than what it is they are telling us.

This can creep into our regular lives as well. When you are in a leadership position — whether at work, a sports club, or someplace else — it is easy to spend more time thinking about how you should say something to the members of your organization than what it is you have to tell them.

This is particularly true when the news is bad: budget cuts, staffing shortages, new regulations, a need to make difficult compromises. But it also happens when the news is good: how can you “manage expectations” when you run a surplus? How can you keep people engaged when you are no longer the underdog?

The answer, I’ve found over a career in academic and union leadership spanning almost thirty years, is to tell the truth. To trust in your community’s ability to understand the challenges — or good fortune — they face and the reasoning behind your decisions. They might not always agree with you. But they won’t feel cheated or manipulated if you’re honest about what is going on. If you don’t think people will accept why you are making a difficult decision, then maybe you need to make a different decision.

Of course trust needs to go both ways. You can’t expect people to trust you if you don’t trust them back. A question I often ask candidates for senior management positions at our university is, “Tell us about a time when somebody reporting to you convinced you that you were wrong.” You’d be surprised how many people struggle to answer.

This is a very bad sign. Bosses can get away with ordering people around without worrying about what they think; but the cost can be poor morale. But leadership requires people to follow you. And people will only follow you if they think they can trust you to be honest about where you are going and why.

Former Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner once said that “a leader without followers is simply a man out for a walk.” That’s as true in the workplace as it is in politics.

Dan O’Donnell is a professor of English at the University of Lethbridge. The opinions are his own.