Trust: The Currency that Matters
Everything Starts (and Ends) with Trust
In a previous blog last year, I discussed the notion of VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) as the defining characteristic of our current operating environment, exacerbated by COVID, and how it has reverberated in all facets of life and work, creating significant challenges for leaders.
Even with COVID winding down, the leadership challenges are still in play. In his book The New Leadership Literacies, Bob Johansen leverages this VUCA concept, saying:
“I believe that the world will be increasingly turbulent in the next decade due to disruptions that will create breaks in the patterns of change, on a twisting path toward distributed everything. Distributed everything will mean disrupted everything” (p. 142).
Yes, we are in a disrupted world; you all feel it!
Because of the demands of “disrupted everything,” leaders cannot exercise command and control, cannot micro-manage effort, and cannot always be present.
But they must empower execution in others.
Johansen further suggests that one of the anchoring (enduring) leader literacies that enables leading effectively in this “disrupted world” is the leader’s capacity to build trust across all aspects of organizational life.
Leadership Quotes
Leadership is a communications relationship characterized by trust and goodwill. - Pete DeMarco, CEO, Institute for Priority Thinking
Trust is the social glue that binds human relationships. - Kouzes & Posner, The Leaders Legacy (2006), 71.
So, what has become clear from these and many other comments from scholars and leadership practitioners, is that in today’s operating environment, trust is the currency required for effective leadership and is the bank account that funds individual, team, and organizational effectiveness.
For myself, as the Executive Officer (XO- Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff) of an 800-person combat battalion in the 4th Infantry Division, the currency of trust was exchanged on a regular basis. In the Fall of 1990, the division was preparing for possible deployment for war in the US response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
At the same time, the battalion was scheduled to undergo a week-long, intense Division inspection of all battalion equipment to measure the unit’s combat readiness.
Failure was not an option.
Preparing the battalion for this inspection was my job as XO; I was accountable.
With the disruption created in preparing a battalion for war at the same time, I could not micromanage the preparation for this inspection. I had to empower four individual company commanders (units of 150+ soldiers plus a substantial amount of equipment) to follow the commander’s intent for a successful inspection.
The relationships I built with these commanders over the previous year enabled empowered execution, resulting in the highest inspection score in the division.
What is this Currency We Call Trust?
There are many ways in which trust I described and characterized. And I suspect you have your own understanding of this concept as well. A distillation of the core characterizations of trust includes the following:
Trust is a powerful emotion, a feeling of safety in the presence of others.
Trust is a belief that one can count on another, a team or an organization: I have your back and you have mine. You are not alone.
Trust is a belief that others will do as they say—individual and organizational integrity.
Trust is a bond based on integrity and earned through respect.
Trust is a belief that others, or an organization, will do what is right, and not just act in its own self-interest or self-gain.
Trust creates the willingness to be vulnerable and accept risk on behalf of others and the organization.
Based on this distillation, trust is a promise of care, concern, understanding, respect, and fairness from and for others transmitted by an emotional connection that is the currency enabling relationships and the coherence, cohesion, and cooperation essential for achieving good outcomes in all aspects of life and work.
Why Does Trust Matter?
I suspect we all understand, in a very intuitive manner, that trust is important and fundamentally matters. Yet it is often an overlooked and taken-for-granted effect, and not as a more intentional process that requires leader attention. When leaders “pay attention” to building and sustaining trust, many good things happen including:
Create goodwill that enables the ability to effectively influence the behavior of others.
Enable greater employee engagement and commitment.
Facilitate greater innovation and creativity.
Realize greater productivity.
Enable greater influence on others by enabling effective communication.
Increase cohesion, coherence in work, collaboration, and cooperation.
Generate loyalty with all stakeholders, particularly employees.
The Bottom Line:
The 100 Best Companies to Work for, with 60% of criteria for inclusion in the list around trust assessments, earn 4X all others (Leader to Leader, 2011). Distrust is fundamentally more expensive than trust–so why do things or act in ways that cost more money? It does not make business sense to avoid intentionally building trust. And here are a number of great things that happen when trust is considered the “coin of the realm” of effective leadership and built with intention (from Price Waterhouse report, 2016):
55% of CEOs say that lack of trust is a significant threat to growth
106% more energy when trust is felt
76% more engagement
50% more productivity
50% more loyalty
70% more alignment with purpose
11% increase in empathy
40% less burnout
What is clear is that trust is a business effectiveness multiplier across many dimensions associated with high-performing organizations. The vaccine for this dysfunction is what leaders intentionally do in demonstrating competence and credibility, which enables the capacity to build effective relationships which enable trust.
What Can Leaders Do to Build Trust?
By most relevant measures, trust does matter, and building trust intentionally and sustainably has significant, positive outcomes. With this in mind, what are the leader behaviors that we know of, with certainty, intentionally creating the conditions for trust to occur?
First of all, we do know certain behaviors, often demonstrated in an unconscious, mindless manner, destroy the conditions for trust to exist, including:
Avoiding conflict and just getting along, vice getting it right
Breaking promises made
Focusing on compliance and not commitment through collaboration and cooperation
Failing to communicate and listen
Assuming trust exits
Trust is the emergent characteristic of the interaction of leader personal awareness that yields credibility, a precursor to building trust; relational awareness which is the engine that builds trust: and situational awareness, which builds a sense of shared purpose, team, and community which sustains trust over time.
Trust is earned, and we know that evidence-based leader behaviors enable trust to develop and flourish over time. The following are the most frequently mentioned leader characteristics that build trust:
Leaders behave predictably and consistently; they do what they say!
Leaders are self-aware, have clarity of vision, and are authentic and people of character.
Leaders demonstrate commitment and dedication to others; they have made the transition from ‘I’ to ‘we’
Leaders have competence and credibility
Leaders demonstrate compassion, humility, and empathy
Leaders build strong, effective relationships that are characterized by care, concern, understanding, respect, and fairness leading to cooperation and collaboration
Leaders simplify and focus effort, build cohesion, and create community
Leaders keep their promises
Leadership, under all conditions, is functional through the interaction of the leader, the led, and the situation. The leader has the ability to exercise influence across all three. So, as a leader, you can build TRUST:
Personally: Set the example for trustworthiness by having vision and purpose, shared values, authenticity in behavior, humility and vulnerability, courage in right action, and dedication to others.
Relationally: Take direct actions by demonstrating care, concern, and understanding through relational communication, respect, and fairness to all that enable trust as an outcome. Relationships are the foundation of trust.
Situationally: Create a psychologically safe work community where people feel respected, appreciated, supported, and enabled to live their values and take risks that sustains trust over time.
Final Thoughts
TRUST is the ‘sine qua non’ (an indispensable condition or action), the coin of the realm, so to speak, of individual, team, and organizational effectiveness.
Effectiveness in life and work, particularly in the VUCA context, is firmly anchored in relationships that are characterized by trust. Without the goodwill and trust that emerges from collaborative relationships, individuals, teams, and organizations do not have the currency to reach their full potential. This is a leader’s most important investment --- the currency called TRUST!
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