Maintain Credibility

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Leadership   ProjectsAtWork  

Leadership requires trust from the team. It can’t be earned overnight, but it can be destroyed very quickly. To maintain credibility, leaders must live up to the team’s expectations while recognizing and addressing their weaknesses.

I hope I’m a good leader, and I hope that I am a good leader because of the environment I create for my team. I try to make that a collaborative environment where everyone feels able to offer opinions and challenge things they are uncomfortable with. However, early on in my management career a colleague said to me, “I always worry that one day people will figure out that I’m really not that smart, and then I’ll lose their respect.” That resonated with me because it was exactly the same way that I felt — almost unworthy of the leadership position that I held, with a sense that it was hanging by a thread. I am much more confident in my abilities now, but there is still a sense that I am only one misstep away from disaster.

In many ways I am just that one mistake away. It takes a long time to build a team, develop trust and create an environment where everyone can relax and give of their best. Yet a leader can destroy that environment in a moment with a bad reaction. There are any number of articles on how to avoid making that mistake, but in this piece I want to address another issue that can erode …

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