#67 Show Them: The Leadership Principle That Builds Trust

Speaker A: All right, team, welcome to another episode of the Exceptional Leadership Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Matt Hamilton. Delighted to have your company with me from wherever you might be listening to the show from around the world. It is a pleasure to have your company. And we're going to have a discussion today on a topic that I think is absolutely foundational from a leadership perspective, and that is the. I think about it in a very short, sharp way, and that is the phrase show them. When it comes to leadership, I think a foundational element of it, if you want to do it well, is the ability to back up your words with action, meaningful action. I'm sure you'll know what I mean when I say that so many people in this world are fantastic at, ah, projecting confidence using beautifully eloquent speaking skills, but few of them are actually able to back up those presentation skills with meaningful action. When it comes time for the rubber to hit the road and results to be instigated. Right. And promises to be delivered on, uh, there seems to be less of an appetite or an ability for people to deliver. So we've got to show them as leaders. We've got to show people. And I think in many ways, while speaking well and projecting confidence from a communication perspective is definitely important, I would argue that action at the end of the day is more important. It is the most important skill as a leader, and we've got to make sure that we can do it. So what we'll do is we'll set the scene by having a look at an example from history, as we so often do. We're going to go all the way back to 1914 and have a look at a situation, uh, that a gentleman called Ernest Shackleton found himself in. Now, he's quite a famous explorer. The name might ring a bell, but we'll set the scene, have a look at how he handled this concept of showing people from a leadership perspective, and then we'll break it down a little bit more. So, without further ado, here we go. In 1914, Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men sailed towards Antarctica aboard a ship called the Endurance. Their goal was ambitious, and that was to become the first team to cross the Antarctic continent on foot. Uh, but before they could even begin the crossing, the ice closed in around the ship. At first, the crew hoped that the ice would eventually loosen its grip. Instead, it actually tightened. Day by day, the pressure built until the timber hull of the Endurance began to crack and splinter. Eventually, the ship was crushed and sank beneath the ice, leaving the men stranded. Thousands of miles from civilization and in one of the most unforgiving places on Earth. Uh, from that moment on, survival depended entirely on leadership. The crew camped on drifting ice sheets in freezing temperatures, never knowing whether the ice beneath them would hold supplies. As you might expect, were limited. Morale constantly threatened to collapse. Yet Shackleton understood something important. The men were watching him all the time. So he became incredibly deliberate in how he behaved. He shared the same hardships as everybody else. He carried the loads, ate the same rations, slept in the same brutal conditions and refused any special treatment. When tensions rose, he stayed calm. When fear spread, he projected confidence. When morale dipped, he created routines, games and used humour to keep people mentally strong. One crew member later recalled that Shackleton never seemed to allow himself the luxury of visible despair. At one point, he reportedly gave his own gloves to a crew member who needed them more, damaging his own fingers in the cold as a result. It wasn't a grand gesture, there wasn't a speech attached to it. But. But moments like that stayed with the men because they revealed who he really was. Months later, with the ice breaking apart beneath them, Shackleton made an extraordinary decision. He selected a small group of men and sailed a tiny lifeboat across hundreds of miles of violent Southern Ocean towards South Georgia island, which is one of the most dangerous sea journeys ever attempted. Against overwhelming odds, they made the journey. Shackleton then organised a rescue mission and returned to collect the rest of his crew. Every single man survived. And what made Shackleton legendary wasn't motivational speaking or authority from rank. It was the consistency of his actions under pressure. His crew trusted him because day after day he demonstrated the standards that he expected of everyone else. Long after the failed expedition was forgotten, that example of leadership endured. And, uh, I want to zero in on that, that line. What made Shackleton legendary wasn't motivational speaking or authority from rank. It was the consistency of his actions under pressure. His crew trusted him because day after day, and here's the key bit, he demonstrated the standards he expected from everybody else. As a leader, you cannot expect people to follow you if you aren't willing to meet the standard or even exceed the standard yourself. So if you take anything from this podcast episode, it should be that sentence, you must be willing to live by the standard yourself. And people are always looking for leaders who don't do that. So, some thoughts on this topic. I've written down a couple here that I wanted to kick off with, and the first is that people love to be inspired. You know, I've seen even the most stubborn of people and it takes a while. But even they, uh, will often, in the end, begrudgingly acknowledge actions over words if the behaviour of the leader in question stays consistent over a significant enough period of time. You know, you might hear phrases like, well, I disagree with him, but at least he's consistent. You know, I don't agree with that policy, but at least it's coherent. And similar phrases. I don't like what he does, but you have to admire the tenacity, countless examples of that. And people have been conditioned over a long, long period of time to be suspicious of authority figures. And that's a healthy thing. We should be suspicious of our leaders until they prove that they can be trusted. That is, I think, a part of critical thinking. And this is certainly the case particularly in Australia, which, as you might recall, is a country born out of oppression. Many of our ancestors were actually brought here on prison ships as convicts. And some of you might not know that to attract that punishment, you didn't have to commit a crime too major. In fact, often something as minor as stealing food, uh, resulted in you being bundled up onto a prison ship, bound in iron chains and then sent to Australia as a convict. So we as a nation are, uh, born out of oppression and naturally, I think, have a very deeply rooted suspicion of authority. We like our leaders to get their hands dirty. We like them to lead by example. We don't like them, uh, to get to beyond themselves. So it's especially prevalent in Australia to make sure that you can practice what you preach and lead by example. Now, if we tie that example to the modern world that we live in, and this applies absolutely everywhere, and I sort of alluded to it at the top of the show, distrust often comes from the observation that when people like politicians make promises, they often lay to break them, don't they? They're eloquent, they say what they think you want to hear, they attract your vote, and then a little while later everything changes. And those promises are often broken and worth noting that often it doesn't matter what side of politics you're on. That is the case. So we're naturally distrustful of people in power. Certainly in the modern world, we are not unfamiliar with people who have beautiful, eloquent speaking skills leading us down the garden path and in breaking that trust, that they were able to win. And I think that's why when we see explorers, when we see innovators or incredible performances on the sporting field from inspirational captains, for example, it appeals to something really deep within us. We love a, uh, inspirational performance don't we? We love a comeback story, right? We love an underdog, someone who's able to, against all the odds, find something deep within and come up with an inspirational performance to achieve a win. We love that it appeals to something really deep in us. We want to follow people like that. We want to follow people who inspire us to maximize our own potential because they show us that bigger and better things are, uh, possible. They expand our imagination and our belief and our thinking through their example. And that, I think, is the foundation of truly exceptional leadership. We must do what we say we're going to do, because if we can't do that, nothing else matters. Now, of course, I like to use, uh, the word nuance. Use that a lot. That's because it's so applicable in something like leadership. Explanation still matters. Behaviour alone is not always enough. People are more likely to adopt change sustainably, for example, when they understand a few things. They are the purpose, the reasoning for the change and the meaning behind the behaviour that we're modelling. So the evidence doesn't suggest that, you know, demonstration replaces explanation. That's not what I'm trying to say here. Instead, I would suggest that the strongest leadership pattern, and one that we should aspire to, usually goes something like this. Firstly, we explain the why. Then we model the behaviour consistently. Thirdly, we'll align incentives and systems so that we can motivate. Then we'll create a visible social proof and repeat until normalized. Because words without example, and rightly so, create cynicism in people. Example without explanation can create confusion. But if we get those things right together, uh, so our words and our explanation, coupled with the example that we set, that is our behaviour, those things done right and together create, uh, alignment. That really is the gold standard. So we're after alignment now. The asymmetry is important in this, isn't it? It's really important to understand that even just a single contradictory behavior from you as a leader can outweigh many verbal messages. For example, a leader speaking about psychological safety but punishing dissent destroys the message immediately. A leader that quietly admits mistakes may strengthen accountability culture more than a formal values campaign. And in fact, researchers in organisational culture often summarize this as what leaders tolerate and model becomes culture. So it's not about what we announce. You know, um, I got some really good advice a long time ago that I think applies to this and that was that. And I've said this before on the show, but it's worthwhile mentioning again. The advice was always remember that trust takes Years and years and years to build and about five seconds to completely destroy. And that's what I'm playing with here, this theme that especially as a leader, people look to you, your actions are under a microscope more so than anybody else, because holding that position of authority is consequential. So remember that, remember that even one action that contradicts the message you've been working so hard to deliver can derail the whole thing. Trust takes years and years to build and seconds to destroy. So from a leadership perspective, in closing, if your goal is, let's say it's behavior change, right? A common one. From a leadership perspective, the evidence suggests that people infer priorities from observation more so than instruction. I. E. You have to model the example. Leaders are always signalling norms through conduct. Visible behaviour from influential individuals tends to spread socially, right? So that's why our uh, politicians are so important. That's why we should expect such a high standard of them because that behaviour signals what is acceptable socially. So on a broader level. And then lastly, explanation is most effective when it matches lived example. So the highest leverage leadership communication is usually as follows. Coherent behavior plus concise explanation, not extensive explanation alone. That is no good. So a useful shorthand that I would like you to take away from this episode is telling, informs, showing, convinces and repeated modeling will eventually transform culture. Guys, that's why culture is so hard to change. Because it has to be behavior, um, that is modelled repeatedly over a long period of time to have that change embedded. So that's why it takes such a long time, guys, we'll end it there, um, really foundational and I want you to prioritize this over all else that is behavior. What do you do? Okay, now obviously explanation, as I said, super important and really it needs to go hand in hand with the behavior. But if you were going to give up one, you know, if you had the choice between being a beautiful, eloquent speaker, uh, like Barack Obama for example, who can just captiv room versus someone who doesn't have any of those skills. But geez, they do what they say and they inspire through action. It's ideal to have both of those things together. But I would choose the latter absolutely. Because that is what people will eventually think, uh, of, right? They want to follow. They look to your actions as evidence and proof, um, that you are worth following. Guys, couple of things in closing and it is worth sticking around to hear these. So uh, before you switch off, please bear with me. Um, there is quite a lot of value being created for you on the exceptional leadership Podcast website. So I don't want to sound too salesy here, but I'm not selling anything. It's all free. Uh, and it is all for you. So let me tell you a little bit about what you get if you do head to the site and have a look. Firstly, uh, if you sign up to something called the Brief, uh, that is a fortnightly newsletter that will come to your email address. No sales, nothing to sell, just good quality information. 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