DL Trust

TRUST

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Trust for High Performing Teams I’m sure that one of the most valued assets of any organisation is the level of trust they have. It’s currency, and more valuable than gold. If you’re not convinced of that, try operating your team with zero trust and see just how fast everything deteriorates to dust.

With low trust, and high suspicion, people hesitate. Decisions get put off or avoided altogether. People avoid accountability, or resent it when it’s there.

It’s worse. People who prefer manipulation and gamesmanship are attracted to and thrive in a low trust culture. They quickly get the ‘upper hand’, and that’s how they like it. It stops being about getting things done, and becomes more about who did what to whom, and will they get away with it.

I know this because I’m describing how my business was a few years ago. A bad hiring decision by me meant we had someone within our business who sort to destabilise our culture through brinkmanship, dividing and conquering and through questioning decisions I made.

Very soon, no one knew what was going on. But they did know little was expected of them, and if I asked for more, I was in the wrong.

Obviously, this person moved on once I decided to re-engage with my business fully. But the damage was done. And it took months to repair what they had done.

In a high trust culture, things happen. People don’t have to double guess themselves. They don’t waste time chasing up for information because the transparency means the information is available and readily shared.

TRUST AND ACCOUNTABILITY People welcome accountability and feedback. They seek to improve and value the input from others that can help them.

There’s results.

Put another way, unless there’s result, I don’t believe there can be trust.

The way I tend to look at it is that if someone is delivering, and saying what they mean, and is meaning what they say, and they follow through on commitments, they are deserving of trust and will tend to inspire it in and from others.

Someone who doesn’t do this may have a following, but will not have results.

There’s an egolessness to high trust people.

They don’t have to be right. They just want to do right. There’s less fuss around them.

There’s quiet determination. There’s no noise, just consistent productivity and delivery on promises.

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THE GAME OF TRUST I remember doing an exercise where I asked a team to share with me what they wanted from each other.

Every person in the room said they wanted to have a higher level of trust.

So I asked them to describe the characteristics of a highly trustworthy person.

They named lots of attributes. They enjoyed the exercise.

Then I asked them to write on a piece of paper the person or people in their team who they believed demonstrated these qualities.

Most could not name a single person, other than their leader.

Interesting.

I asked, once the exercise was done, if they thought they could have named themselves. The answers were still the same. They wouldn’t put their own names on the paper, because they could see they were not those qualities.

So the question became: Is what you seek within you, before you ask for it to be in others?

The room got very quiet about then.

Trust is the ultimate quality for transactions, business, negotiations, development of people and for anything to do with doing business. Just watch a world economy seize up when trust is lost.

TEAMS THAT TALK I love to see teams that communicate. I know if they’re getting along, and focused on what needs to be done, there’s going to be action.

Except…

Sometimes, all the team does is talk.

That’s what they think and perceive as action. They love talking about it. It feels great to chat about the possibilities.

They just don’t implement.

And then the talking stops being as much fun. The trust drops. The conversation turns from possibilities, to blame and buck-passing.

Because they didn’t turn their conversations into commitments, they became a ‘club’, rather than a business unit.

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TRUST ISN’T ABOUT ETHICS I have been in organisations where the words ‘honesty’ and ‘ethics’ are bandied about like confetti. I’ve seen those same words used as weapons.

We must be careful when speaking of trust. By confusing it with ‘ethics’ we become the judge of what is ethical and what is not, and thus able to withhold, unfairly, trust.

For example, a person in an organisation works in the back office, and happily so. They love the details, they love the numbers and the accuracy and certainty they provide. They love everything about getting a pile of paperwork and seeing it disappear during the day.

They loath sales. They especially loath the sales team. They think they’re brash. They think they’re uncouth and loud and obnoxious. They think they should ‘tone it down’ and take care of some of their own details. They should clean up after themselves more in the kitchen. ‘Who do they think they are, anyway?’

And they consider anyone who tries to ‘sell to them’ as unethical.

It’s a pure judgement call, based on their own personal preferences and biases. It’s not about what’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ here. It’s about what the back office person cares about and focuses on.

And as far as they are concerned, sales are wrong, and people who sell are unethical.

There’s nothing the sales team has done to earn this judgement. Other than sell.

Their clients love them.

They sell really well. All the time.

They keep making more sales.

To this back office person, that’s proof enough of their claims.

But it’s not ethics that are in question here. It’s perceptions.

I’m so careful when ‘ethics’ are brought up by my clients. I immediately assume the people involved are ethical, and that it’s a perception problem. This generally turns out to be the case.

So how is this helpful?

I don’t look at ‘ethics’, I look at results.

I look at two results…

Is the person someone character?

Is the person demonstrating competence?

With this, my measure of trust is based on what I can observe, rather than a personal perception.

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I’m not saying we don’t want ethics. Ethical behaviour can lead to trust. But sometimes ethics can be present, and there can be low or zero trust. Especially when it’s used as a weapon to control people and judge them.

Credibility, then – being a person of character and competence – contributes to the motivation to have trust.

TRUST AND THE FOUR CORES OF CREDIBILITY

Core 1: Integrity – walking your talk, being congruent and having the courage to act in accordance with your values and beliefs.

Increasing your integrity bank 1. Be honest in all interactions with others 2. Demonstrate respect 3. Demonstrate loyalty – give credit 4. Walk your talk 5. Celebrate the differences 6. Deliver bad news personally 7. Be clear on your values – stand up for them 8. Be open to learn new truths that may cause you to rethink issues and redefine values 9. Be able to consistently make and keep commitments to yourself

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Core 2: Intent – our motives, agendas and our resulting behaviour. Trust grows when our motives are straightforward and based on mutual-benefit. We build trust when we genuinely care for ourselves and for those around us.

Increasing your intent bank 1. Examine and be honest about your intent – don’t justify or rationalise decisions 2. Declare your intent 3. Admit your mistakes 4. Welcome complaints 5. Choose abundance 6. Avoid memo mania 7. Emphasise the positive 8. Be accessible 9. Extend trust 10. Reward what you want 11. Provide positive feedback 12. Advocate for your employees

Core 3: Capabilities – the abilities we have that inspire confidence – our talents, skills, knowledge and style. They are the means we use to produce results. Unless we’re skilled and trained to perform a task we will lack credibility in that area.

Increasing your capabilities bank 1. Run with your strengths 2. Get better – seek feedback 3. Ask their opinions 4. Listen 5. Keep yourself relevant 6. Know where you’re going

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Core 4: Results – our track record, performance, and getting the right things done.

We diminish our credibility by not accomplishing what we expect to do. We establish a positive reputation when we deliver as promised.

Increasing your results bank 1. Take responsibility for your results – and their lack 2. Clarify expectations 3. Make the call 4. Expect to win 5. Practice accountability This section comes about because of the great work already done by Stephen Covey and by John Maxwell.

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SHARON PEARSON Disruptive Leadership Module 4 | Trust Edition 1 | Version 2 | December 16 Published by The Coaching Institute Copyright 2016 Š The Coaching Institute All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or by information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

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