Steven Sinofsky Quotes

Players are smart. That locker room knows. So don't hide anything.

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.

Communication between band-mates is imperative. Communication is the key to any healthy relationship. If I need to be checked, I expect to hear it put in plain words what my faults are, and give my band-mates the ultimate consideration by shutting up and listening, then acting on the advice given. Same goes for anyone else in any band.

I learned my first lesson at the Walt Disney Company about not being able to trust my associates.

Trust brings a higher level of communication and a higher level of commitment and accountability.

For me it was just about staying the course, staying true to who I believe that I am, being open, being honest, being transparent with the players, being firm with the players but at the same time listening to the players.

Believe me, you don't want to be at a company where there is more candor in the hallways than in the rooms where fundamental ideas or policy are being hashed out.

I had a rule - I didn't have a lot of rules - and one of them was we're going to operate from a mutual respect. I won't embarrass you, and I don't expect you to be embarrass me.

I'm very open about my referencing; I'm very open about who I work with.

Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.

Secrecy is the enemy of efficiency, but don't let anyone know it.

If the players don't trust the coach, it is a problem, and vice versa.

I find that when you open the door toward openness and transparency, a lot of people will follow you through.

Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.

The only way to move forward is to be able to trust whomever you're with 100 percent.

I've had teammates I didn't get along with, who hasn't? I've never had a teammate call me a bad guy, while he was my teammate, and if he did when I was gone what kind of teammate was he anyway?

The single hardest part of leading any organization is knowing what is going on. There's too much noise in the system, too much complexity: you absolutely depend on people speaking up and raising concerns.

The way you build trust with your team is around super-clear communication in that instant when they say, 'I will be sad if you don't do X.' You have to say, 'We're not going to do X, and here's why, and believe me, you'll be much sadder later if I let you go do it and you spend a bunch of time on it and nothing ever happens.'

People love to play expectations games, and that is always bad for collaboration internal to a team, with your manager, or externally with customers.

Make sure that everyone who should know what you are doing knows what you are doing.

The biggest problem is when a player asks a captain why he is not playing but does not want an honest answer.

We're always working on our communication, which is something that's important. Instead of going through managers to discuss things, we will sit down and have meetings about things. That's a process. And you have to be able to be honest with each other as much as you can.

You need to set a tone at the top that inspires trust - and encourages open and honest 2-way communication. So you hear the brutal facts, and you listen to the good news and the bad news - so that, in the spirit of continuous improvement, you can make changes.

If you're not open, you're not transparent, you're still holding on to vaults of information, you're not going to build that trust.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It's a lesson I've had to relearn quite a few times.