As a rising sales leader, you’ve heard many descriptors of the modern successful leadership profile. Bold. Decisive. Results oriented. Fact based. Accountable.

Most of the terms are about what you do as a manager to produce positive financial results and help your organization grow. There is no disputing these important attributes. Your company is counting on you and your peer managers to produce success on the front lines of the business. These are prerequisites.

There is another characteristic of the modern compassionate leader that I suggest is as important as any of the hard business measurements.

Transparency.

But what is transparency? Is it as simple as not keeping secrets? Communicating goals and shifting priorities on a timely basis? Maintaining a level playing field for your team members?

Transparency is less about what you do and more about who you are. It is also one of the keys to unleashing the full collective potential of your team. It makes your team want to rally with you when a challenge arises. Without it you and your team will not become great.

One of the flawed expectations of a leader is that she should be an expert in all knowledge related to the team’s business. Team members often equate your arrival in your position as confirmation of your expertise in your area of responsibility. As a leader, you are starting from a perfection standard.

Many managers actually take this to heart. They believe they’ve earned that standard. While it is overly simplistic to say that the delusional manager believes she always has the right answer, we often see this manager bring a purely directive style of leadership to her team. She always has the final say. While she may invite input and make her team members believe they are contributing, the issue has already been decided. She closes discussion with the answer she had in mind at the outset, and the deception of participatory management continues.

This dynamic ultimately becomes self-fulfilling. Over time team members understand that the final decision will be that of the manager. They may try to predict the final decision so they can align with the manager’s point of view earlier in the discussion. After all, nobody wants to waste time driving on the wrong road if someone is only going to tell them to take another road in the end.

In the best case scenario, if the manager makes above average decisions, the team will enjoy some short term successes. But morale will soon fade. The team will stop following the manager. Problems that need debate driven solutions will be stifled and handled locally. Meetings will be shorter, with less input. Good ideas will dwindle. The business will suffer. It is a cycle that is repeated every day in the business world. Managers are replaced with other managers that have the same strong functional competencies, but gaps in the softer leadership skills. The beat goes on.

Here’s the secret. Managers are people. They know some things and don’t know others.

The ones that overplay their confidence to hide the gaps in competence, remain managers for awhile, then are replaced. Often the new manager has the same playbook.

Managers that face this reality with courage and transparency become leaders. Leaders help teams become great.

With the teams I’ve led, I thought of myself as learner first and leader second. I considered every day, every interaction, as a classroom experience. I used to make joint sales calls with a trusted colleague of mine. When we would leave the customer’s office, the first thing he would say would be, “OK, what did we learn?” I loved that. It didn’t matter if we had a senior manager with us or a junior salesperson. We might spend 30 minutes talking about what we learned before we talked about next steps.

As a leader, you must be transparent with your team about the things you don’t know. It is not a sign of weakness. It is true managerial courage. It builds trust. It makes you approachable. It makes your team accountable and stretches your expectations of your team members. Your team wants that.

I write about best practices in management and leadership for the rising leader. I write from my experience from becoming a first time team leader through my role as a vice president in a dynamic and fast growing company.

My reality is that some of the strategies and tactics that I encourage rising leaders to adopt are things that I did as a leader. Some are things that I did partially well, and learned in retrospect what I might have changed. And many are things I got completely wrong, and wish I had done completely differently. All of them are things that I paid attention to as a learner.

I’m a person like you. I know some things and I don’t know other things.

If you’re a leader, make sure your team knows that about you. Invite them in to solve the things you don’t know. Be confidently transparent.

You’ll get better answers, build trust, and break the cycle of management by genius.

Lead well.

(Please share your comments below.)

Click to visit Jim’s book page:

“The Modern Compassionate Leader – 12 Essential Characteristics of the Rising Sales Leader”

Follow Jim on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter.

© Jim Martin and www.jamesmichaelmartin.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jim Martin and www.jamesmichaelmartin.com