I have been coaching through Delta Leadership at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business for the last two- plus years. The program, which includes lectures, relies on coaches to help the participants understand their leadership style and how to improve. Coaches analyze and help the participants understand a 360 degree assessment and then put plans in place to improve their leadership.

The model, which you can see at http://www.deltaleadership.com, has been developed by professors Allan Lind and Sim Sitkin at Duke’s Fuqua School. It defines six domains that constitute the leadership of any one person.

During the coaching sessions we first analyze what are considered the foundational domains: Personal, Relational, and Contextual. These three domains are the foundation upon which the three other domains build. Your Personal Leadership impacts the Credibility that as a leader you have. Your Relational Leadership impacts the Trust that others have on you. And your Contextual Leadership impacts the sense of Community that your followers have.

Later we move on to Inspirational Leadership (High Aspiration), Supportive Leadership (Initiative), and finally Responsible Leadership (Stewardship). All of these domains interact and, typically, the lower ones impact the effectiveness of the upper ones.

In addition, the participants receive verbal comments that clarify the raters’ input on their leadership skills. Using these inputs, the participants develop both a plan to improve their leadership skills as well as a plan to use their leadership to implement a change in their organization.

These discussions leverage the lectures delivered during the program by professors Lind and Sitkin as well as the connections the participants make during the program.

As a coach I always find it very rewarding to see how my clients’ eyes light up when they realize the power of the model to explain their leadership and, more importantly, what they can do to improve it. The model and the 360 degree assessment are the basis of our discussions. But it is through their application and our discussion that the client improves his/her leadership. Sometimes my clients are much more critical of themselves than their raters are. The model and the raters’ assessment and comments help us understand their strengths, which are better than they believe, and their areas of improvement. This realization builds their confidence and improves their leadership capabilities.

At other times it is the opposite, when a client believes they are better than the raters input. In those situations we discuss why the difference, what could account for them, and how to address them. In both cases I’ve been able to help them see how they are perceived and how to develop their leadership through the use of the model.

Many of my clients, as they develop their Personal Development Plan or PDP, determine to take specific actions such as clarifying and communicating their vision for their group. In later sessions they’ve confirmed the power of that shared vision, a key area of one of the foundational domains, the Personal Leadership domain. Their team members have rallied around the vision and, along by other actions undertaken by the leader, become a much more cohesive and integrated team, delivering much better results.

If you can, give it a try! I hope to see you at one of the programs.

Leadership is dependent on trust. Think about it—why would you follow someone you didn’t trust?

Deep trust is built through a long accumulation of favorable experiences, but recent research shows that there are three factors that that can nudge followers quickly toward being willing to follow a leader. Why would you need to build trust fast? Some examples:

taking on a new leadership position with an unfamiliar team
or
if you see some real challenges in the future that will stress your team or test your leadership.

Working with colleagues in New Zealand, Sim Sitkin and I used data from New Zealand, India, Europe, and the U.S. (collected with our 360 leadership survey) to study this topic. (For the full report, see the reference below.) We found that if a leaderacted in ways that showed even one of thesethree qualities they got an “instant boost” to their leadership capacity. So what are the qualities and how can you demonstrate them?

1. “Prototypicality” Scientists who study leadership discovered some time ago that people follow someone who epitomizes the values and skills that define the team. We tend to trust those with whom we share values, interests, and experience. What the new research shows us is that there is an extra-quick “bump” in followers’ receptivity for leaders who “walk the walk,” in terms of making core values part of their actions.

2. “Self-sacrifice” A leader who ties his or her personal success to the success of the team, or one who makes personal sacrifices in the interest of team achievements, gets a quick boost in leadership. We want to be led by those who share ourrisks and who show courage in the face of challenges. Leaders who are “out in front,” working as hard as they ask us to work and taking the career risks they are asking us to take, are quickly accepted as having a legitimate claim on our loyalty.

3. “Fairness” There are many forms of fair or unfair treatment in organizations. We found that leaders who listen, who are evenhanded with rewards and chores, and who give good, believable explanations for what they do, are seen as fair. Fair leaders get a boost, much like that given by prototypicality and self-sacrifice, in terms of quick trust and loyalty. One warning: we all think we are fair, but the fairness that matters is in the eyes of the followers, not in your self-evaluation!

All of these leadership boosters work in much the same way. We’ve all had experience with, or at least heard about, leaders who use their followers as a means to the leader’s own personal gain, and this makes us cautious about who we trust. Each of these three factors works to give followers assurance that this sort of exploitation is unlikely.

Why? Followers seem to assume that people who personify the values of the team will want to go where those values lead them, so it is safe to follow a prototypical leader. When a leader makes personal sacrifices for the team, followers conclude it is unlikely that the leader will turn around and exploit his or her leadership position. And a fair leader is seen as likely to be a good bet to trust because most untrustworthy behavior is also unfair.

How can you show prototypicality, self-sacrifice, or fairness? What will it take, in your particular situation, to garner the necessary trust to lead effectively?