Curtis Swanson on Leadership Transparency

Transparency is easily one of the most important traits of a good leader. As a leader, you will want to uphold a strong flow of communication between you and those you are managing.
By following this process, you will keep your workers in the loop as far as company goals, potential mistakes or issues, and most importantly changes or other monkey wrenches thrown into your way of doing things. Addressing all these matters in a collaborative manner will keep your workplace balanced, comfortable, and organized as you strive to achieve your goals.
Here are a few ways to make yourself a more transparent leader.

Avoid sugarcoating
Leadership has many responsibilities attached to it, and one of them is the ability to keep your workers calm, focused, and ultimately productive. However, do not allow this notion to prevent you from being as direct as possible with your workers. If you sugarcoat major problems, confusions, or other issues, you will only foster a culture of deception, which in turn could be detrimental to your workplace as a whole. Give the cold, hard facts when you need to; it may be hard to do, but it will benefit everyone around you in the long run.

Maintain accessibility
Another strong quality of a good leader is approachability. You will want to make it clear that your workers can access you and pick your brain with questions and concerns whenever they need to do so; this will make them feel comfortable and will eliminate unnecessary stresses that could otherwise get in the way of their productivity. You do not have to be everyone’s best friend, but be as personable as possible.

Address failure
This approach is a sub-approach, if you will, to avoiding sugarcoating, but it is important enough to stand alone as its own focal point. Failure in any workplace is obviously undesirable, and it can leave you and your workers feeling defeated and lost for direction. However, as you work to overcome failure, make sure that you, as a leader, identify the failure at hand — no one is better suited to do this than you. Once you have gotten the failure out in the open, you and your workers can figure out what caused it in the first place and ensure it will not happen again.

Lead by example
Finally, make sure you are not burdening yourself with all the responsibility of being a leader in your workplace. Instead, pass this culture onto your workers, teaching them to be leaders in their own right. This method will level the workplace playing field enough to strengthen internal relationships and likely benefit productivity by means of a morale boost.

About the author

Curtis Swanson is the COO of ClearCyte Diagnostics, a cancer screening company in Bellevue, Washington. Curtis's company is dedicated to the international marketing of medical screening to a wide range of markets. Additionally, he has experience in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, accounting GAAP & FASB, and business operational management. Throughout his career, Curtis has proven himself as a leader, innovator, and developer.

Learn more about Curtis Swanson here.