This week we saw the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, highlighting the lack of communication that caught employees and client’s completely off guard. The importance of transparency in leadership becomes even clearer when it promotes a workplace culture of an open community and responsible behaviours by employees and leaders.
As we steer towards 2023, one key area NewCampus clients and learners focus on is cultivating an honest culture.
Transparent leadership is the key to creating a culture of trust between leaders and their employees. Here’s how we’re seeing future-forward leaders put money where their mouth is.
Staying in the loop
Transparent leaders make sure that their teams are kept up-to-date and that they freely share information. These leaders keep their team in the loop, share information freely, and encourage open communication throughout the company.
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Dan Harvey, the Head of Growth at ReverseAds, learned this lesson as a young manager working at a large hospitality brand when he spent his first month working in every role, be it in the kitchen, the front of the house, or anywhere else. The goal was for managers to work with the people they would be managing to understand their daily work and the pressures they face.
Rather than demanding ad hominem obedience, the transparent leader gains the buy-in and confidence of his employees by answering questions, hearing their concerns, and working with them. By acknowledging this, even developing policies that safeguard employees’ confidentiality, transparent leaders demonstrate that they care and they enjoy their employees’ respect and loyalty in return.
Jeremy Wong, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Atome, emphasises the value of empowering employees to learn on the job with the fear of making mistakes, especially early in the role.
By representing leaders as real people (rather than mysterious superiors hiding behind scary office doors), transparent leaders will gain a lot of understanding and support from their employees, who are then more willing to take bad news or open themselves to constructive feedback if they feel that they have a personal connection to their leaders.
Trust is underrated
The more transparent you are, the more you are likely to create a sense of trust among your team. The more transparent you are, the more people trust and respect you. It’s as simple as that.
With the crypto ecosystem in a loom, with potentially other platforms at risk of failure, lessons can be learnt from what drove projects like LUNA into catastrophic failure. The project, like many before them, lacked transparency.
The flaws in its tokenomic model and lack of diverse utilities eventually resulted in a too-easy loss of confidence and panic selling which eventually led to its demise.
Transparency leads to a meeting of minds between your employees and the leaders in your company; people know exactly what is expected of them and what needs to be done.
Priska Lampangateia, Head of Brand at GoToko exemplifies this. While numbers and deadlines are still important to GoToko, she ensures team members stay open and honest when they hit brick walls. The shared purpose and knowledge that their work is impacting help them get through higher-stress periods.
Transparency in leadership means keeping employees informed, sharing both good things and bad things (while not being too open about it), and welcoming candid feedback from members of your team. Transparency does not mean that you have no filters with your employees, but simply that you value honesty and open communication.
Habit building starts early
Encouraging transparency means being forthright and leading by example. Encouraging transparency removes ambiguity and builds confidence among managers and employees while working to create healthy, happy, and fulfilling workplaces.
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Evan Januli, VP of Brands and Marketing at Astro, creates a safe space for learning, space to make mistakes, even if it’s high stakes.
You might not have the power to instruct your leadership team to communicate more openly about the performance of the business, but that does not make you any less of an essential part of workplace transparency.
Workplace transparency could mean executives sharing company information with their entire team or individual teammates sharing reviews among themselves and could even extend beyond walls to include what your organisation says to candidates, customers, and the general public. Start early.
Final thoughts
Transparency, as a value, is all about being open, honest, visible, and available as a leader. Ultimately, transparency builds an open, honest culture, which benefits all involved.
Transparency, combined with the willingness to acknowledge successes and mistakes, helps companies achieve a higher level of organisation. Being transparent means your business goals are shared with the rest of your organisation and understood well by your teams.
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This article was first published on November 28, 2022
The post Cultivating an honest culture: Why leaders should be transparent appeared first on e27.