Leadership tools and being fair

.....efficacy and standing as the basis of leadership styles. Those three prompts, in the order in which they will be discussed, are communication, task management and the driving of results and integrity and trustworthiness. While these items are collectively quite good in terms of being the basis of leadership styles, they should indeed be part of a wider collection of ideas and should not be left to stand on their own.

Communication On its face, communication is a good thing to focus on and have as part of a leadership brand and system. At the same time, however, too much of any good thing can indeed be a bad thing. Indeed, meetings and reports should not be overly verbose and common. Emails should be done in a focused way and should not end up with people being inundated and blitzed with a ton of words.

Going too far with communication can lead to people disengaging from the messages and this, of course, will lead to important things being missed. That would be why it is prudent and mindful to say that communication is important and should absolutely be part of any strong leader's methodology.

However, the means, method, medium and message of the communication needs to be carefully crafted so that people get the information they need, the information is important and there is not a lot of extra fluff and substance that is either not necessary or that can wait for another day or time. At the same time, going too thin and lacking with communication is just as problematic, but for different reasons.

Indeed, people do need to know what is going on, when it is going on and what they need to know. Information being disseminated in a way that is incomplete, untimely or otherwise problematic will obviously lead to the message not reaching the intended and/or nto reaching them in time. The people that are to receive and synthesize that message cannot and should not be held accountable for such a happenstance because it is not up to them to get that message out and drill it home.

Thus, leaders need to make sure to strike a balance and ensure that the "need to know" find out what they need to know but without a lot of wasted motion and information (Prolifics, 2016). Task Management & Driving Results Just as with communication, there is little argument (in general) against the idea of harnessing proper task management and the driving of desired results.

However, there are indeed a few ways and methods that leaders use that are less than productive or realistic when it comes to all of that. First of all, there is the concept of "rose-colored glasses." Management or ownership may want or desire certain results, but they have to understand the realities as they truly exist rather than demanding or assuming that things will be done a certain way.

For example, if a staffing situation is too lean and it is precluding the working people from getting their job done, that is a problem that leadership needs to be aware of and fix. It could very well be that the workers are not applying themselves properly and/or they are not organized in terms of their work. If that is a problem, it should be identified and fixed.

However, it should never be assumed that workers are "Theory X" and that they need the proverbial whip cracked to get their job done. Similarly, there should not be a cutting of corners when it comes to attaining desired results. Whether it be safety, quality or whatever else, cutting corners just leads to quality going down and workers being unsafe.

Either way, the bottom line is going to take a hit and the leaders in that situation are ultimately to blame if they let that malfeasance go on for any considerable amount of time. Leaders need to understand that their workers have expectations and needs to and they will not take kindly to it being assumed that they are wasting time and money when this can be proven to not be the case but the leadership will just not see it, for whatever reason (Mind Tools, 2016).

Integrity & Trustworthiness One might wonder why or how "integrity and trustworthiness" could ever be perceived to be a bad thing in a workspace. However, it can happen.

Beyond the fact that it can only be one part of the way that business is being done, there are also two terms that need to be kept in mind...tact and "need to know." Indeed, being honest is a good trait to have but there are times where speaking the truth or being honest about something can be unethical or even illegal. As such, there needs to be classifications of information and, concurrent to that, who has a right to know.

For example, the author of this response is in the banking and corporate governance spheres. With that in mind, we have to be very careful about who we divulge information to. Just as one example, if one spouse in a married couple wants to see the information or balance of their partner's account, we simply cannot do that unless the secondary spouse is authorized to do so.

Even if she stands to inherit or control that money in the event of her partner's death, she still does not currently have a right to access the account or the money in it. The Wells Fargo banking scandal would be similar. They were obviously required to reveal that they had let a lot of employees and managers run amok. This was disclosed openly and it should have been. However, they are not going to reveal who precisely was fired (other than officers) or who.