Episode #222: Trust Is Earned

Leaders gain automatic trust by dint of their position power. Title and authority ensure people will toe the line, laugh at our jokes, tell us “Yes”. This type of trust only goes so far though in gaining the willing cooperation of the team members. In a busy life however, with so many demands on our time, we mentally merge automatic trust with earned trust and confuse the two. Earned trust differs from automatic trust because it is based on the reality of our interactions and communication with our team. This is the “walk” as opposed to the “talk”. We imagine we have established a trust relationship with the team and therefore are getting their full support for our efforts to progress the business. As Yogi Berra once noted, " Leading is easy. It is getting people to follow you that is the hard part".

Time management is closely related to trust. The ability to leverage ourself as a leader and get others to work on projects for us, means we can concentrate on high level tasks that only we can do. However, if the trust is not there, the person receiving the task feels unmotivated and lacking in commitment to do what needs to be done.

If we are not able to trust our team we are afraid to delegate, because we a concerned they will not be reliable and we will suffer later, when things go wrong. The flip side of this scenario is we don't delegate and therefore kill ourselves twice. Once by not developing our people, by giving them a chance to grow through taking accountability and responsibility for higher level tasks. Secondly, because we murder our own time management abilities, by heaping too much work on our own shoulders, ensuring we are doing mainly lower and medium value tasks for the most part.

Discretionary effort is that jewel whereby our team want to go beyond, to innovate, create, think ahead and step up. They get paid for their services of course, but this is a much higher degree of commitment. It goes far beyond the basic expectations of labor in exchange for money. When the trust levels are high, then the discretionary effort levels are also very high.

Building trust is not a “one and done” effort. It is a constant and we can be adding. to and withdrawing from our trust account with our team. We lose our temper and lash out at one of the crew. The previously accumulated trust now goes through the floor. We take strong exception to a suggestion from a team member and in doing so, we just cancel their innovation ticket. We say one thing but do another, or we say something and do nothing, provide no follow through etc. and the trust is out the window.

We are well intentioned, hard working, busy people so we cut corners all the time to get it all done. One of those corners is with our communication. We are chronic non-communicators. Now some reading this may be thinking, " No I am not". Talking a lot and telling everyone what to do, isn't the type of communication I am referring to. I am on about the communication facility that leads to increasing trust. This is the communication of explaining the WHY, of listening, of asking for input, of seeking beyond the limitations of your own experience and ideas. This requires more time than telling those around us what to do and how to do it.

Here is where we close the loop on ourselves, like a hangman’s noose around our own necks. We don't have the trust to delegate, therefore we don't have the time to communicate properly. So we fail to build sufficient trust to delegate and so around and around we go.

Spending time with our team, finding out what inspires them, interests them, what they fear, what they hope for, are the fundamental building blocks of good communication. These efforts lead to a better understanding of how to build the trust with each person in the team. The starting point has to be making the time available to have those conversations and not just the prerequisite ones at performance review time. These have to be built into an already packed schedule. This means we have to take the delegation process seriously.

If we are delegating properly, we are matching the task with the person's career path and development track. We are having a discussion where we sell the value of the task, as part of their personal development process, as opposed to a hospital pass of something, bothersome and unpleasant. It means having them set the plan, the relevant milestones and we just monitor the execution to make sure it is on track.

This conversation and follow up requires time and that is where best intentions are often sacrificed on the alter of expediency. We uphold in principle, but we allow all manner of competing priorities to push this down the list of things we need to be focused on. Eventually it just seeps away almost unnoticed.

We need to change our mindset, work habits, time scheduling or nothing will advance. Instead of ten years of experience we will just be repeating the same year ten times in a row. How easily does this happen? All too easily, in the busy life of a leader.

Earned trust is so valuable for the leader and there is a price to be paid to receive it. That is time and consideration. If we really value our people, then we will vote for them to be higher up in our priority list. Because of this higher attention escalation, the necessary conversations are held, the time is spent and repeated consistently. This consistency builds lasting trust.

Action Steps

1. Understand the difference between position power and gaining earned trust
2. Learn how to delegate properly
3. Check to see you are really communicating rather than imagining you are
4. Make time available to get to really know your team