Diversity MBA Magazine - April 2008 - (Page 46) The election-driven news of the day is filled with excited comments about whom we can trust. We’re drawn to it because the question is one that plays out on very personal levels. It’s kind of like that satellite view from Google Earth; it’s so fascinating because of the initial great distance from which the image is formed, but then can zoom all the way down to pictures of the top of your house. When the image is that close, it’s personal; you know somewhere in your soul the technology has the eerie capacity to look you dead in the eye. You have to ask, who do you want that close, all in your business, as they say? Who would you trust with that kind of intimate access? I often think leaders really aren’t aware of just how much they’re asking for when they ask us to trust them. They’re requesting access to the very core of who we think we are. But it’s tender in there; one reason why it’s intensely personal and very well protected. Access depends on a leader’s ability to present to followership, a sensitive set of social codes that link up with instincts that so primal that they size things up in the “blink” bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell describes. We have computers, certifications, and all kinds of credentialing data at our disposal. But in the real world, where so little is known about how Black leaders actually manage to leap tall buildings in a single bound, that diamond- hard, solid trust they ask us for only transfers through the rare scent of authenticity. It’s simple. We need to be with each other a lot in order to sustain the intimacy that allows us to trust each other. The Kicked-Up Scent of Authentic Leadership By Sandra Finley 46 That being the case, when leaders have so much riding on their ability to connect with diverse followers via our communal scratch-and-sniff, one wonders just what sense it makes for Black leaders to trade authentic cultural cues for corporate scentmasking behaviors? Results from the League Of Black Women’s (LBW) recent national survey report, Fostering The Leadership Potential Of Black Women In America, reveal that the top benefits Black women expect to receive from their relationships with each other are someone who understands where they’re coming from, and relationships based on mutual trust. “However,” the report notes, “nearly half of the women surveyed (41.3%) reported having no close relationship with another Black woman in their workwork place. As one moves up the corporate hierarchy, segseg regated groups of Black women start to thin out, forcing an unnatural race-biased challenge that damdam ages intracultural trust.” The LBW survey also found that, “while 69.6% of w w w. d ive r s it y mb a ma g a z in e. c o m http://www.diversitymbamagazine.com
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