Securing information to secure your own value is nothing but a fallacy.
Information is power. You secure your value to your team through leveraging and flexing that power. How? Through giving it away.
Information is only powerful when it’s shared.
But, it’s common for people to hold onto to what they know, as a security blanket. Especially during transitions or periods of ambiguity and change, when the future is unknown and jobs aren’t secure. When people feel vulnerable, they can misperceive that being the holders and keepers of information can provide that security.
The opposite is true.
Securing information to secure your own value is nothing but a fallacy.
It only bogs everything down. Holds everything back. Makes you become known as the person who puts themselves before the team.
Recently I met with a group of leaders from Chicago. They’d come together from all over the city to learn how to build and leverage trust in their teams. One of their core struggles around trust?
People withholding information. Hoarding it. Rationing it out on a need-to-know basis. People coming from a place of fear and scarcity, not understanding that in withholding, they were eroding the very thing they most wanted: their intrinsic value to their teams.
Secure your value. Thoughtfully consider what you know. What you’re carrying. Is it confidential? If not, release it to your team. Open the floodgates.
You don’t want to be the person who holds back others’ creative contributions. You want to be the person who makes those contributions happen.
Trust Tip:
- Consider the information that you hold. How can you support the efforts of others through appropriately sharing it?
- What floodgates can you open? What channels of collaboration can you unleash through providing direct access to the information you have?