Six Keys to Trust

'Without practice one cannot appreciate the truth.' - the Dhammapada

Theory only goes so far in establishing good leadership. To achieve a positive culture at work you need to apply the key qualities of a trusted leader every day.

The Six Keys to Trust are a guide for daily practice. While they are not hard to understand, even experienced leaders sometimes omit to follow some of these practices, and consistent application of them requires constant vigilance.

Discover more about them. They are:

1. Seeing the Whole Person : creating a people-based culture
2. Fulfilling Commitments : establishing your reliability
3. Reasoning not Rank: showing that reasoning, not rank, directs the team
4. Valuing Differences : welcoming differing or dissenting voices
5. Staying True : defining and holding to core values
6. No Ego: leading with humility and selflessness

Audit yourself regularly to check you practice them.Think of them as six keys to unlock not just your potential but that of the whole organisation.

Think of role models in leadership and examine their behaviour for signs of these six traits. Use negative role models in the same way to learn the right way of doing things. And remember that if you assume you are getting it right all the time you are by definition failing- because of the sixth key.

Looking at it another way, if you gave yourself a mark out of 10 for how well you meet each of the six practices - or if you asked people you lead to rate you anonymously - would you score a perfect sixty? How many leaders would? Almost everyone has scope for continuous improvement.