The Importance of Credibility and Trust in Business Leadership

Exam 1 Material Chapter 1 - - - - Credibility o Your reputation for being trustworthy o The degree to which others believe or trust in The Role of Trust o How do you generally perceive business leaders? o Do you trust them and their choices? The Three Components of Credibility: o Competence: Refers to knowledge and skills needed to accomplish business tasks, approach business problems, and get a job done *Most people will judge your competence based on your track record of success and achievement* People develop competence through study, observation, and practice and realworld business experiences. How you communicate directly affects how others perceive your competence. Be a good listener. o Caring : Implies understanding the interests of others, cultivating a sense of community, and giving to others and showing generosity People distrust individuals who are perceived as unconcerned about the interests of others or disinterested in causes above and beyond themselves. Your ability to gain credibility strongly depends on your ability to show that you care for the needs of others. Effective communicators gain trust by connecting with others – that is, seeking to understand other’s needs, wants, opinions, feelings, and aspirations. o Character: Refers to a reputation for staying true to commitments made to stakeholders and adhering to high moral and ethical values Ethics: Rule of conduct or moral principles that guide individual or group behavior Business ethics : The commonly accepted beliefs that principles in the business community for acceptable behavior Transparency : Involves sharing all relevant information with stakeholders Open and Honest Communication o Why use open and honest communication? 1.) By avoiding open and honest communication business, problems, employees doom a business to poor financial performance. 2.) Dishonesty is among the primary reasons for lower employee morale. 3.) Dishonesty can be reason for dismissal. Chapter 3 - - - - - Barriers to Team Effectiveness o Ineffective communication o Lack of effective chartering and goal setting Not setting team guidelines o Lack of clarity and understanding of roles o Low morale o Low productivity o Lack of trust Principles of Effective Team Communication o 1.) Teams should focus first on performance o 2.) Teams go through four natural stages to reach high performance Forming: Getting to know each other, first time meeting; degree of awkwardness Storming (conflict begins): Starting to get into the task getting assigned. Storming can be difficult Norming: Performance getting better, getting better with conflict, and utilizing communication to better conflict and disagreements. Performing: Reach peak performance and focus on team accomplishment o 3.) Effective teams build a work culture around values, norms, and goals Team culture: refers to a set of shared perceptions and commitments to collective values, norms, roles, responsibilities, and goals Team charter: provides direction to the team in how it functions to meet shared objectives o 4.) Effective teams meet often. Question: how often is enough? Much more effective to meet face to face o 5.) Effective teams embrace differing viewpoints and conflict. Inherent diversity: involves traits such as age, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation Acquired diversity (developed through experience): Involves traits you acquire through experience, such as customer service experience, retail experience, or engineering experience o 6.) Effective teams provide a lot of positive feedback and evaluate their performance often. o 7.) Effective teams feel a common sense of purpose. When to meet? o Best time frame: 10 am-noon o Worst time: gradually gets worse from 2 pm on. Types of meetings o Coordination meetings – primarily focus on discussing roles, goals, and accountabilities o Problem-solving meetings – typically involve brainstorming about how to address and solve a particular work problem Agenda o Gets everyone on the same page o o o What’s listed? Date and times Purpose(s) Desired Outcomes Agenda item 1, 2, 3… Everything is timed (You do not have to give to everyone) Summarization Participants and names of who went over each section Virtual Teams Generally consist of team members located at various offices (including home offices) and rely almost entirely of virtual technologies to work with one another Run Effective Virtual Meetings Start the meeting with social chat Start with a contentious question. Ask “what do you think about” questions Make sure each team member is involved Articulate views precisely Take minutes in real time Focus on your teammates and avoid multitasking Use video when possible