Language program leaders are often focused on the “task orientation” of their role, such as finalizing a decision, preparing an annual budget, or keeping the organization solvent. However, leaders ideally also expend energy valuing all employees as unique contributors to the collective effort, treating all with professional respect, and engaging colleagues’ contributions to the collective identity of the program. These two necessary roles in leadership, which at first glance seem compatible, sometimes seem to hold an oppositional relationship. How can leaders keep their responsibility to a positive, trusting work culture foremost in their mind? The tactics that help me are those that are encompassed in the smallest of moments in interactions with my colleagues: practicing authenticity(Harter, 2002), and suspending judgment through sustained inquiry (Senge, 1990). Both concepts surfaced in the business arena as good management practices in a strong research-based field of study called positive organizational scholarship.

In administrative roles as well as instructional, I have focused on trust as the affective element I most try to inspire and build. Arceneaux (1994) states, “trust makes collaboration, cooperation, harmony, and production possible” (p. 37). Interpersonal (trust in another) and intrapersonal (trust in oneself) trust are just as important in the leadership of my peers as it is of learners in the classroom. Trust among cocreators of organizational culture is what truly leads to successful program leadership. In a time of shrinking financial assets, however, and subsequent layoffs or nonrenewals, trust in leadership is particularly challenging to sustain. There is a way of being a leader that can mitigate the impact of even these tough times, and it is entirely within a leader’s sphere of control.

The greatest trust-generating quality in a leader’s toolbox, no matter the contextual stressors, is authenticity, most simply described by Brumbaugh (as cited in Luthans, Youssef-Morgan, & Avolio, 2015): “…the ability to make hard choices, and be accountable for mistakes” (p. 219). Research in the field of positive organizational scholarship (Luthans, Youssef-Morgan, & Avolio, 2015) points to leader authenticity as positively impacting employees’ trust in leadership, dedication to the organization, citizenship behavior, engagement, performance, and psychological well-being, not to mention organizational success as a whole.

Being authentic in leadership is basically a leader’s recognition that he or she is only one, fallible individual whose conscious professional identity is determined in large part by learning from, influencing, and codeveloping with colleagues, in order to make hard choices in an informed fashion. Leaders must necessarily encourage the authentic selves of their coworkers. Leaders must also be actively humble in claiming mistakes as their own. The humility of being accountable for mistakes (in all their inevitability) combined with explicit codevelopment that lead to confidence in making hard choices will be strong determinants of the degree of positivism and organizational trust that is generated.

We often see suggestions for leadership approaches referencing structures, schedules, objectives, and desired outcomes. Certainly those approaches contribute to good leadership, but sometimes, the plans and objectives of leaders are rendered useless in the course of a single conversation when a directive or response is given in the wrong tone or a negative orientation is taken or assumed by the sender or receiver of a message. How can that be avoided? The ability to suspend judgment through sustained inquiry is a second tool elemental to leadership communication, and may well be the social, affective foundation for the more technical aspects of leadership.

Here is an example list of goals for a language program: (a) the best possible experience for students; (b) equal valuing and respect of all employees; (c) clear and realistic expectations of all roles; and (d) collaborative, ongoing organizational learning. How those goals are arrived at might differ from one person to the next or from one role to the next. One person’s avenues of goal achievement might seem to be in direct opposition to some of the avenues others have taken in reaching those same goals. The most important task in the face of this potential area of dissonance is to begin from an assumption of positive orientation and work ethic. How does one arrive at that orientation and generate the same in others?

It is tempting, when being deluged with demands or complaints from coworkers simultaneously with dictates from higher authorities, to assume that a person or even whole group of people is acting selfishly, is not thinking about the big picture, or doesn’t have the interests of the students or the organization at heart, or to assume that a higher governing body is determined to make one’s job as difficult as possible. It takes herculean effort to start from and remain situated within the premise that every stance, demand, complaint, or dictate is grounded in positive intention.

The key, as Senge (1990) states, is to advocate your own view as assumptions that are potentially incomplete and in need of more perspective, and to inquire after others’ assumptions and genuinely consider and value them. Doesn’t everyone want their leaders to assume that they have very good reasons for holding the views that they hold? Think back to an interaction where a coworker expressed an opinion about something, and you automatically jumped to an assumption of a negative underlying emotion or orientation (e.g., “That’s selfish/defensive/aggressive/apathetic/obstructionist!”). The moment that a leader allows him- or herself to continue a dialogue while still holding a negative assumption of intent is the moment that an opportunity to build or sustain trust is lost—never truer than when there is a difference in level of authority between the interlocutors.

Senge (1990), founder of the learning organization business concept, proposes a particular kind of interaction between managers and employees, specifically, bidirectional inquiry assuming positive intention and opening up one’s rationale to criticism—which must be initiated and actively sustained by the person holding more positional authority. He states:

…when inquiry and advocacy are balanced, I would not only be inquiring into the reasoning behind others’ views [inquiry] but would be stating my views [advocacy] in such a way as to reveal my own assumptions and reasoning and to invite others to inquire into them. (p. 199)

By asking meaningful questions, looking for the positive intention beneath a colleague’s assumptions, and explaining the positive intentions beneath one’s own assumptions, leaders become more authentic and more trustworthy. A human being cannot prevent a negative assumption from surfacing, but with good self-management, a human being can train oneself, as soon as that assumption surfaces, to take a deep breath and ask another question or two. Only by inquiry can we pull back from our immediate, incomplete assumptions and get at the values and intentions beneath the expressed thoughts and behaviors of our coworkers. Only by advocacy—making the values beneath our own thoughts and behaviors explicit—in the humility of authenticity can leaders hope to inform coworkers’ assumptions.

Perpetually overburdened leaders might ask, “Doesn’t all of this take more time?” The short, honest answer is yes. It will take more time for a leader to actually address a coworker who has just voiced a concern about a direction the leader has chosen because the leader must ask questions about the concern and where it is coming from. It will take more time to explain, perhaps multiple times to multiple coworkers at different times, the coconstructed values basis for a decision. Every conversation that makes explicit your authenticity (i.e., your willingness to have your expertise and your determinations questioned and expanded) and your valuing of others’ perspectives and values grows organizational trust on a personal level, one person at a time. Is organizational trust worth the time? On the other hand, if trust is not sufficiently generated, how much time might be lost in employee turnover, resistance to change, or ineffective collaborative efforts?

What kind of trust are leaders asking for? Leaders hope employees trust that they are valued, that leaders are listening, that leaders are making hard decisions conscientiously and with deep caring. That level of trust can’t and won’t come from the simple cloak of a leadership role (e.g., that person has been appointed leader, therefore, he or she must be trusted). Coworkers must sense caring, conscientiousness, and trust in every possible moment of interaction. They must understand, in other words, that leaders value and trust their professional intentions as well as the values underlying them—that can only be had via ongoing, authentic positive inquiry and discourse. It is well worth the time.

References

Arceneaux, C. J., Sr. (1994). Trust: An exploration of its nature and significance. Journal of Invitational Theory and Practice, 3, 35–49.

Harter, S. (2002). Authenticity. In C. R. Snyder & S. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (p. 382–394). Oxford, United Kingdom. Oxford University Press.

Luthans, F., Youssef-Morgan, C. M. & Avolio, B. J. (2015). Psychological capital and beyond. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Britt Johnson is academic director at the American English Institute; supervising more than 50 teachers across IEP, EAP, and online courses; and ensuring a comprehensive faculty voice in governance, curriculum, and faculty review and policies. She has supervisory experience in both higher education and adult education and has taught ESOL in Poland, Japan, and the United States. Her areas of research interest and continuing development are leadership philosophy and positive organizational scholarship.