Trust or Bust

When I became an internal organizational consultant and trainer, one of my responsibilities was to work with people whose job it was to keep power plants operating. During one of my first trainings, I found myself in the bowels of a coal power plant, with mysterious clanging all around, standing in a control room with about ten taciturn supervisors in front of me.

I remember clearly the dour, passive faces, the arms crossed, the just-try-to-teach-me line up. Nervous? You bet I was. I was some green trainer from corporate headquarters with a – can you write the script – degree in theater arts and an M.B.A. trying to tell folks leading union workers in a fire-breathing, coal gulping, electricity-creating, power-distributing conglomerate of machines, people, processes, ore, and oxygen all working in harmony to safely propel a dangerous, addicting supply of energy out into a world that constantly finds ways to demand more of it.

The entire time I was training that day, one guy simply sat with his chair turned around, his back to me, hardhat on, nonchalantly and intentionally ignoring me as if I weren’t there. Snubbing me. I finished. They left. There I was. Drained. Alone. In the middle of a giant power plant.

It took me a long time to earn even a modicum of respect or trust from that crowd. But the more I learned about them, the more I respected and trusted them too, and to this day value those folks - who do critically important work under challenging conditions - as some of the best people with whom I've ever worked.

In the meantime, a good chunk of what I was training was what people call the soft skills – communication, working together, team building. “I have to go to charm school” was how it was derisively characterized by people who showed up - in some cases, had to show up, which is never well received - for my classes. A waste of their time, when important work needed to be done.

Yet….when I would ask people what their biggest challenges were, the “soft” part of working together almost always rose to the top. “We don’t trust each other.” “No one ever tells us….” “Our folks don’t get along with their folks.” "My boss treats me like..."

• Communication
• Listening
• Conflict management
• Teamwork
• Trust
• (Dare I say) Developing a caring and highly motivating culture

Soft skills.

Of those skills, building trust is one of the most essential for profound leaders. With trust, decision-making is better, people – especially those working at a distance – need less direct oversight (less micromanaging), and less time is wasted covering their tracks.

David Clemons and I wrote an entire chapter about trust in our book, Managing The Mobile Workforce: Leading, Building, and Sustaining Virtual Teams. In our book, we continually make the point that while technology may change and practices may change, the underlying principles of leadership do not. The processes, qualities, and outcomes of building trust are foundational for long-term, sustainable, substantive leadership. As we said then:

“Trust is something that is invisible to the eye but has tangible results. It is based on the relationships people have with one another. Trust is a source of sustainable competitive advantage. A lack of trust can devastate the most talented workforce. The principles of trust are the same regardless of the situation, but leading a mobile workforce requires more emphasis on communication, setting expectations and accountability, extending trust, and acting as a role model. Trust takes time to build, but it can be destroyed faster than a dropped call” (pp. 91-91).

Yes, leadership IS a sacred trust , but profound leadership also involves developing deep trust over time with others who are working together, and counting on each other, to make important and meaningful contributions to the world.

Reference:

Clemons, D., & Kroth, M. S. (2011). Managing the mobile workforce: leading, building, and sustaining virtual teams. New York: McGraw-Hill.