Yours Sincerely
In our latest series of blogs we’re considering the importance of trust in high performing leaders.
We’ve been researching some of latest thinking on the factors that attract, earn or maintain trust in executive leaders in organisations. This research confirms our own experience in coaching senior executives, that trusted leaders demonstrate characteristics such as:
- Competence – people can trust they know what they are doing
- Commitment – people can trust them to be fully committed to the organisation, the purpose, the vision, the values and the people
- Integrity – people can trust them to act ethically and with fairness
However, we’ve also noticed from the research and our experience that another key character trait that builds trust is sincerity. People can spot insincerity a mile off. One definition of sincerity is to be ‘free of falseness’ which is a vital characteristic of any authentic leader. Knowing and being yourself. Being open and straightforward.
Since the 1700’s the formal way of ending a letter has been ‘Yours Sincerely’ but with the dominance of email nowadays it’s not a phrase that we use as much in our everyday communications. A leader who is behaving sincerely attracts trust because people can see when a leader is acting genuinely and they will follow an authentic leader they can trust through all of the changes and challenges in their business.
Yours sincerely,
The TOWARD Team