April 2010 Feature

Monthly Lessons in Leadership from the Daily News

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Is the Pope Catholic?

The physics of trust and transparency for his leadership and yours!

Is the Pope Catholic? It’s an ordinary joke, but it was no ordinary Easter for the Pope or any leader in the Catholic Church. Like a well-rehearsed choir, news reporters across the globe led their coverage of Easter mass with the all too familiar refrain, “The growing sex abuse scandal and cover-up in the Catholic Church is weighing heavily on the hearts of the faithful, even as….”

Bringing Church leaders to their knees?

Even as Pope Benedict XVI, thousands of bishops, and half-a-million priests went stoically about their work this Easter, church leaders were beginning to fall to their knees over the scandal. But it was not the pedophilia itself that was causing their knees to buckle. It was news about how the pedophilia had been ignored, covered up, and quietly transplanted from one innocent community to another.

While the faithful might not really be asking, “Is the Pope Catholic?” many are asking, “Is the Pope trustworthy?” A very similar question. And if people are wondering if the Pope is trustworthy, imagine how fast your staff will drop you when you lack transparency, candor, and humility as their leader.

The principle at stake

Here is the principle: When you lose transparency with your constituents, you lose their trust. And when you lose their trust, you lose their followership, the very definition of failing as a leader.

It’s a law of leadership physics, a timeless principle that cannot be ignored or changed by mere mortals. Yet the news is filled with business leaders, politicians, sports heroes, and now church leaders who have tried to outsmart gravity, thinking that they can “pull the wool” over the eyes of their constituents, at least for a time.

Richard Nixon was forced to resign, not over the Watergate burglary but its cover-up. Martha Stewart went to jail, not for her crimes but for lying to investigators. Bill Clinton was impeached, not for his indiscretions but for perjury and obstruction of justice. The fate of auto giant Toyota hinges even now on this very principle. What does it take for leaders to learn this lesson? The best advice I ever got on the subject is to live your life and work your work as if everything you do will be on the front page of the newspaper (now home page on CNN).

What leaders should do

People will almost always forgive you (and sometimes respect you even more) for admitting mistakes, but they will almost never trust you again for deceiving them. It’s a dramatic result from what some might consider a small indiscretion, but not when you realize that lack of transparency is a form of deception (i.e., what they don’t know won’t hurt them). When you deceive others, either by omission or commission, your influence as a leader is seriously eroded.

Perhaps most ironic is the Church’s lack of willingness to cooperate more fully, admit more willingly, and confess its sins, something demanded of its followers every Sunday from a very early age. Never has “practice what you preach,” had more meaning. Will the Catholic Church be more or less trusted going forward? My bet is that whatever they decide to do, there will be a direct correlation with how transparent they become.

Here is the question for you: will you be more or less trusted as a leader over time? My answer is the same. The more transparent you are with your staff and stakeholders, the more they will trust you. And the more they trust you, the more they will follow your leadership.

It’s a principle you can bet on, and it’s your job.