I once had the following experience with an organization: At the weekly leadership-team meeting, the CEO gave an explanation for why a deal with another organization had fallen through. He said it was the kind of thing that happens all the time, that the details just couldnt be made to work for both parties. I took notes on the reasons that the arrangement couldnt be completed, because I knew people would ask me about it. Sure enough, someone sent me an email stating that her group was very upset that this major event was not going to come off and did I know why?
I referred to my notes and responded to her email, asking her to keep these comments to herself so as not to fan the flames. I copied in the CEO and asked him for some guidance. His response was that he had never said these were the reasons, and followed up his denial with an email to the person asserting that my information was all wrong. I checked my notes, and there it was. I am a very good note taker.
Although the relationship continued for several more months, at that very moment I knew I was out the door. What had previously appeared to me to be problems of inattention or confusion I now saw as fundamental and insurmountable issues of trust. In simplest terms, the CEO was a liar and could not be trusted.
I also began to notice two other related things. First, staff in the executive office also could not be trusted; for better and worse, the leader defines the culture, and this culture, just beneath the surface, was one of mistrust, bitterness and dishonesty. Second, involved outsiders would often ask me, Whats wrong over there?
But not one of them could have ever put their finger on the core issue of lack of trust, which was, however, at the heart of the organizations problems, problems that year after year prevented it from fulfilling its promise. Nor, finally, could any of the people within the organization see the destructive power of mistrust. It was such an embedded part of their organizational culture that lying and compounding the CEOs lies had become almost as natural as breathing.
By now I imagine most readers have already dredged up the memory of some similar situation in which lack of trust was a pervasive problem or norm. I have also recently worked with another organization, one in the human services sector, which like all organizations has issues and problems.
Their systems and processes are not the best, and they have been so good for so long that there is a certain lack of urgency in making changes. But what is extraordinary is that the organizations management has created a culture of trust and a sense of overall fairness that effectively compensates for many of these deficiencies. Trust is such a powerful force that it overcomes a lot of weaknesses.
Imagine that you had a choice on a big decision between a handshake agreement with someone that you really trusted and an ironclad contract that covered every possible contingency with someone that you did not trust. Which would you choose? Ill take the handshake every time. In effect, this second example is a handshake organization.
In the long term, this handshake organization is going to survive and thrive, especially as it focuses on strengthening systems and enhancing accountability. It is harder to forecast the future of the first organization, but what is most likely is that it will hit a big bump in the road, pushing it into a major crisis and an unraveling of its board of directors as they discover that they have been misled.
In a management context, what exactly is trust, and what makes it so powerful in determining organizational and management success? In his excellent book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni describes trust as the foundation for leadership and management effectiveness. To him, members of great teams trust one another on a fundamental, emotional level, and they are comfortable being vulnerable with each other about their weaknesses, mistakes, fears and behaviors. They get to the point where they can be completely open with one another .
In my experience, this level of trust among peers is extremely powerful and very difficult to achieve. Once achieved, it also provides an extraordinary model for everyone else in the organization. It defines organizations in which everyone is moving in the same direction and managers speak with a single voice. Most organizations are like a car that needs a tuneup: in some cases, there is a slight miss, while in others the engine is belching smoke and the car is lurching along. Conversely, the organization or group with high levels of trust is clicking on all cylinders, with no wasted fuel.
At another level, there is the trust of people who report to you. The needs here are slightly different because the issue of vulnerability is somewhat different; professional distance can be a concern. Rather than peer to peer, where everyone shares responsibility, the manager or leader defines trust with respect to this group. The starting point is to see earning and building trust as a basic function of managing people. Once that lesson is absorbed, here are some useful ground rules:
Remember, words are important. Managers need to think about what they say because staff and other managers assign importance and meaning to their words. If workers feel these words dont mean anything, that they cannot be believed or that they mean something other than what the manager is communicating, he or she is in real trouble. Trusted managers think about what they want to communicate and also understand that they must manage their own emotions. Managers are not entitled to have a bad day, one on which they say things that are not true or are demeaning to workers.
Model ethical behavior.In many organizations, ethical lines are blurry. In a lot of ways they have gotten blurrier in recent years as company loyalty has eroded, those at the top have taken a bigger and bigger share of the pie and commitment to public service has been replaced by getting ones ticket punched on the way to some private-sector payoff. Part of the managers job is to make these lines clear and to demonstrate that they apply to everyone. I always liked the idea of using my own stamps for anything I mailed from the office and traveling second class because these things send the right message to everyone. They also make it clear that there is a single standard.
Dont ask people to do the undoable. This is a real trust killer, especially if the managers bonus, compensation or career advancement is linked to putting staff or other managers in the position of trying to complete assignments that cannot be done with the resources at hand. In the end, this behavior damages trust in all directions, in part because it requires deceiving those at the top about what is happening.
I dont know, I made a mistake, or I need help on this one are all signs of trust. Conversely, it is a sign of an absence of trust if a manager is not hearing these things.
Finally, the proof is in the pudding. We have all known people who assume that whatever road they are on must be the moral high road by virtue of the simple fact that they are there. This kind of circular thinking is dangerous and destructive because it can blind us to a variety of behaviors that destroy trust. A basic test of self-awareness is to look at ourselves within a context of our behavior rather than an inherent assumption of our own goodness. Many untrustworthy people are shocked when they are told by others that they cannot be trusted.
Trust is fundamentally different from other qualities that a manager can display. When we screw something up, say something wrong or make an error in judgment, there is almost always a way to fix it if we learn from our mistakes. Once the trust of an individual or group is lost, it is extremely difficult to get it back. It can't be fixed. Think about people that you have known who have lost your trust. How many of them have regained it? Very few. Better to build it and ne
ver risk losing it in the first place.
Editor's note: Dr. Frank Schneiger is the president of Human Services Management Institute, Inc., a 25-year-old management consulting firm that focuses on organizational change. Much of his current work is in the area of problems of execution and implementing rapid changes as responses to operational problems.
Readers are invited to submit questions, topics or issues that they would like addressed in a column. Submit to [email protected].