Leadership and Transparency

I have been thinking a lot over the last week about the importance of a leaders' ability to remain completely open, honest and transparent.  I am not sure if this ability to be honest is something that is a "skill" or if it is something that comes from a values base. I have a personal belief that honesty shows integrity and therefore an honest leader has integrity in the work that they do.

How important is it to a group of teachers that the leaders around them are open, honest and transparent about the work they are doing and the decisions that are made? Are they honest with their colleagues and with the community they work within?

To me, if you can answer, very to the first and yes to the second question then the work you do comes with a grounded ethical integrity!

I have recently experience evidence of a lack of transparency of the kind I would never have believed possible in an educational context! (NOT where I work by the way!)

My own personal belief in the importance of honesty and transparency have been confronted, and completely affirmed!  It seems unbelievable to me, that a school leader could be anything but open and revealing about decisions they make, collaborative with the people they work with, and clear in the processes they follow.

To be anything other than open, honest and transparent in my view is completely unethical and unacceptable in any space - most particularly in a place that models the way for our future generations! Dishonesty and a lack of transparency invites questions about honesty and develops guess work; Leading, in my view, to ethical and legal contentiousness!

Steven Covey has some interesting insights into this... Watch a short clip of him speaking here.
What are your thoughts on this?