“A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other.”
Simon Sinek
What is trust? Trust is not something that can be created by waving a magic wand and created through edict or decree. Trust is an intentionally curated and reinforced outcome or result. If trust is an outcome, then the critical question becomes: What inputs are required to create the desired effect? How do you focus on building trust?
“Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.”
D. Elton Trueblood
According to dictionary.com, ‘trust’ is the “confident expectation of something; hope.” This sounds like the perfect definition of faith to me…
“Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.”
Unknown
“But be quiet a while first…” This is often the most challenging part of discerning answers and enabling a journey to trust our own hearts. There is nothing in our world today that facilitates quiet time of any real significance.
Disconnecting and giving yourself the space necessary to hear the answers in your heart requires highly intentional and disciplined practices. It is far too easy to numb ourselves with all manner of distractions and, in the process, destroy our ability to hear anything our heart might be trying to tell us.
It’s quite simple. If you want to hear, you have to turn off all the noise…
“Increased trusted equals increased speed and decreased cost. Decreased trust equals decreased speed and increased cost.”
Stephen R. Covey
Trust is a result of intentional actions and choices.
In addition to the basics, such as truthfulness and integrity, several vital attributes build and enhance trust between people. Transparency, authenticity, openness, and sincerity all serve to increase trust dramatically.
These behaviors serve as the great enablers of productive human relationships. You can’t fake these. You either live them or don’t.
The key is that you must perform them first, without any strings or restrictions. Only then can trust be reciprocated and speed developed.
I find it helpful to think of building trust as an exercise. If you want to develop speed and strength, you have to work out specific muscles and continuously seek to improve your efforts. It works the same way with trust. If you want to be fast, you must be consistent in those key behaviors.
When you do this, trust happens. When you don’t?
Welcome to the slow lane.
“Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”
Patrick Lencioni
If you must have all the answers, or be right in every circumstance then vulnerability is missing. Without the ability to be vulnerable to others then cultivating trust is difficult if not impossible.
So if this is the case, why exactly do you have to be right?
“Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.”
Alfred Adler
I chose this quote today after reading James 2:14, 17, several times over the past few days and having a conversation at our LifeGroup last night about the value of committed action(s). ‘What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.’ James 2:14,17
From a leadership perspective it is incumbent upon ourselves to create the movement (actions or works) that align with our words. We have to live what we say and believe outwardly through our movements. It’s been on my mind a lot lately as I evaluate my personal leadership in all aspects of life, both at home and at work, and seek to hold myself accountable to a higher standard. That was the thought process from my post on Monday about “The man in the mirror.”
Movement (works and actions) is always what sends the most powerful message. Back to the mirror to ensure my movement is reinforcing my words…
“The best kind of accountability on a team is peer-to-peer. Peer pressure is more efficient and effective than going to the leader, anonymously complaining, and having them stop what they are doing to intervene.”
Patrick Lencioni
The key to accountability is the willingness to be wrong. Are you willing, and able, to look in the mirror and say to yourself, “you were wrong, you could or should have done or said something differently.” This is is easy to say, but incredibly hard to do, especially when emotions are involved.
Does your identity revolve around being “right” or “doing what is right?” If it is the latter then you have a tremendous leg up on 99% of the world where the default state is to point the finger at someone or something else and say it was “their fault.” If you are focused on doing what is right then that will guide your actions and make self-accountability and ownership much much easier.
I like to think of peer-to-peer accountability as an incredible opportunity to recruit others to help “watch my six” and offer insight and perspective to ensure that what I think I am saying and doing is actually what is being conveyed. Others can become the “accountability mirror” that help you own your behaviors and actions.
To build this degree of trust though is a two-way street, if a person is excellent at delivering sage advice and perspective, but can’t receive it in return, and action on it, then their insight and input will be limited because trust is limited. Foster those relationships that will tell you what you really need to hear, even if you don’t want to hear it, and seek the same from you in return.
To do this, you have to seek it out, and you have to be willing to be wrong. Accountability is ownership, and you are always the owner, 100% of the time…
“Trust is earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds, or even highly visible actions, but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection.”
Brene Brown
Trust is a gift. If you want to give that gift to others, and have them trust you in turn, you must first pay attention to oneself. Are you showing genuine care and connection for others? Are you listening? Are you paying attention? Are you looking for reasons to trust someone, or reasons not to trust?
Trust is a mirror and you can only see one thing when you look in the mirror. Yourself…
“Leadership contains certain elements of good management, but it requires that you inspire, that you build durable trust. For an organization to be not just good but to win, leadership means evoking participation larger than the job description, commitment deeper than any job contract’s wording.”
Stanley A. McChrystal
Who are the leaders that have inspired you to go further than the description or the definition of what is required from your role? The best leaders I have ever worked with are exceptional at inspiring because they were incredible at building trust. I knew that they had my back no matter what and were genuinely interested in me as both an employee and a person. Once you have experienced that type of leadership, nothing else quite measures up…
“Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.”
Booker T. Washington
WIth trust comes freedom. Freedom to act, to think, to stretch beyond where you are today and embrace what could be. Sharing with someone else that you trust them empowers them to grow. On the flip side, demonstrating that you don’t trust someone steals that opportunity from them.
How do you ensure that you convey trust through your words and behaviors?
“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”
Oprah Winfrey
Trust is what makes real relationships with other people work. It is the foundational platform for any relationship. Without trust nothing else works. Trust is based on integrity. Integrity is internal to a person. It is how they show up and act. It is their own personal moral or ethical code. It manifests and conveys in a myriad of ways. For example, I have known people that lie to others and I can never fully trust them because I know that if they lie to someone else, they will lie to me. They will say they are “white lies” but a mistruth is still a lie.
It can heartbreaking to find out that someone you know and respect lacks integrity. It is especially tough because without integrity there can’t be trust. Doing the right thing, means knowing and doing it, even if it has negative consequences for yourself. Frankly, that can build trust with others that share your same ethical and moral code.
Turning this thinking inward, what are the little things that you do that demonstrate your personal beliefs and ethics? How do you demonstrate that you desire to live a life of integrity? What does “doing the right thing” mean to you?
“We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.”
Thomas Moore
Openness implies vulnerability. To make oneself vulnerable to another person means that you are choosing to let them have access to stuff that perhaps you don’t even want to admit to yourself. But how do you grow if you don’t open yourself to others? How do you ensure that you have real perspective if you don’t have people who are willing to call you out when needed?
The old paradigm of leadership said that the leader had to be bulletproof. They can not show any vulnerability to those who worked for him or her. But if you aren’t vulnerable you aren’t building trust. I’d argue the exact opposite is true to be an effective servant of others. Be vulnerable. Show those that you that you work for and have the privilege to serve, that you trust them by being open and real. In turn you are making it safe for them to do the same. That’s how trust is built.
Easier said than done of course. But it starts small with one person and with a single conversation. Think about it this way. What kind of relationships do you want to have developed and fostered five years from now? Those built on openness and trust or those that maintain the status quo?
“Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”
Patrick Lencioni
Merriam-Webster defines “invulnerable” as “impossible to harm, damage or defeat.” We are taught at a young age that we have to be tough, that we have to win, that showing any vulnerability is a sign of weakness and frailty. So we carry that defensive nature into our lives and relationships, both at work and at home. Instead of accepting that we are all vulnerable we seek to be invulnerable with those around us.
Perhaps this is changing? The usage of the word “vulnerable” has certainly become more prevalent over the past few decades. Not bad for a word that has it’s root origination in the Latin noun “vulnus” meaning “wound.” (Finally all my college Latin courses are paying off!!)
Usage of “vulnerable”
But lets contrast “invulnerability” with “trust” which is defined as “allow someone to have, use, or look after (someone or something of importance or value) with confidence.”
How do you know when you trust someone? What does it feel like? For me it is the feeling of safety. That it is okay if I’m not perfect and it is safe to expose my vulnerabilities for the purpose of achieving a greater good. When I trust my teammates I am confident that they care, first and foremost, about achieving our shared goals and purpose.
Hmm, now that I think about it maybe “invulnerability” isn’t such a bad thing. If a team has a high degree of trust with each other I think they just might be a team that is “impossible to harm, damage or defeat…”