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     I recently presented at our biannual employee forum and wanted to really hit home my point that we are in the process of creating a high performing team.  Now, in my candor I was not really ready for the response from one of the employees answered when I asked, "what does transparent leadership mean?"  Her answer was, "it means we never get to see you".  Of course this advanced the audience to laughter. 

     After a brief disturbance in the meeting, I continued with what I believe is the the key to building a High Performing Team.  This belief may not be new to most of you and is not a twelve step process to improvement.  But, I guess recognizing that you don't actually have a high performing TEAM is the first step towards success.  Therefore, if any of you already have one of these teams and need no room for improvement, this is not for you.  Or you may be one who can learn something every time you read - well that is what I hope for this blog.

     Ok...Ok....on with it.  I already introduced the first Key in having a high performing team and that is Transparent Leadership, which I will talk about this week.  The other Keys are Expectations that are clear, Accountability and Measuring the right things.

     The meaning of Transparent Leadership is NOT what the above employee believes.  To the contrary, as Herb Baum states in his forum Transparent Leadership, "transparency is being completely open and honest in business."  He continues by stating, "if you are a transparent leader, ignorance isn't an excuse." 

     So how does a leader become transparent.  First - You must care.  I believe people don't care what you know until they know how much you care.  Gallup will tell us that people leave their supervisor NOT their company.  When you have a team of employees who are looking for you to lead them forward, they first want to know where they fit in YOUR plans.  An organization succeeds through change only because each person understands their role and sees their participation as something larger than themselves.  If a leader is not transparent then how will he or she create trust on the team.  If you have read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, you will discover that trust is the basic element of team.  As Karlene Kerfoot put it in her article in Nursing Economics, "it is impossible to create trust without transparency.  If you want to lead your people somewhere I guess you will have to earn their trust first.

       Second, there must be an elimination of the we/they attitude and it starts with the leader (you).  It is easy to get caught up in a conversation and tell everyone how "I" did this and "I" did that.  Wow - must be lonely at the top of your mountain.  Show me a high performing team and I will show you a team that has eliminated the we/they.  Sure, everyone has different roles and responsibilities within the team.  Not everyone can be the quarterback: someone has to block.  My favorite comment from a sports announcer is, "he did that all by himself and made it look easy!" 

     I believe to be transparent a good decision making model is imperative.  Each employee must know where he or she stands with decisions and how the decision was made.  I mean when you are driving a car how does the car behind you know when you are turning right?  You turned on your signal do let them know.  The great thing about the levels of decision making is that each person has a clear role.  See Below.

     I saved the third Key to last because it is so easy but yet very seldom accomplished.  Here it is, show your employees the numbers!  I worked for a company, not very long, that never exposed their bottom line to anyone other than the owner.  They believed all the employees were happy because when they asked them, the employees would say they were.  Finally, it was reveled that turnover was over 50% and the owner could not believe that - why? 

     Remember what I said earlier, each person must understand his or her roles.  They also wish to know how they are doing and want to see it.  So - share with them and don't wait until the annual review to do so - if you do them.  Be honest with them as well and allow them to understand the reasons why.  Each person needs to know how they affect the measures you show them.  For example, one can not expect a person to improve his or her productivity if there is no explanation as to what productivity is or if needed, what productivity statistics are.  Let's be honest, why would they try if it doesn't seem to matter?

I hope you have enjoyed this, my first ever blog.  I do encourage feedback and lessons learned.

Jeff Prater, MHA, CMPE