Leadership and selective vulnerability, the magic ingredient for organisational trust

I've digressed slightly from the start of this blog around the importance of a platform of trust and access to information to make informed decisions.   By now however I have hopefully provided some insights into the importance of trust in teams and organisations to enable informed decision making and increased productivity, ultimately protecting the bottom line of organisations.   

While I believe that it is every individual's responsibility to ensure that they build healthy and trust-based relationships with the people they engage with, I have also experienced the positive and negative effects which leadership has on creating an environment which fosters and invites or inhibits the building of trust between individuals and teams.   Not only that, I noticed two remarkable effects which leadership has on establishing or breaking down trust in organisations.  One is the speed at which it takes place and the other is the scale of the effect i.e. how widespread the effect is across the individual members of the organisation.  

I recently listened to a podcast of an interview with Jim Collins (author of best-selling leadership books like Good to Great, Great by Choice and Build to Last).  In response to a question by the podcast host he mentioned how he asked his research team to look at listed companies over a 30 year period to determine what differentiated the companies which delivered sustained high performance over the long-term from those companies which only delivered average performance over the same period.  He said that he told the research team not to return with a "leadership" answer as his bias and belief was that one individual couldn't be the only differentiating factor.  The research team returned with a "leadership" answer which ultimately led to the concept of the Level 5 (Executive) leader which he describes as a leader who "builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and personal will".

This comment confirmed my own perspective and experience that once leaders have learned the ability to show selective vulnerability / humility they possess the magic ingredient which enables them to establish an environment which fosters and accelerates trust throughout all layers of the organisation.   By "selective" I'm referring to the ability of the leader to expose their own mistakes and humanity without compromising on responsibility and accountability.   Not being selective could also lead to familiarity creeping in which "breeds contempt" as the saying go, but more on that later.  

I definitely recommend any and all of Jim Collins work on leadership and how to build long-term sustained high performance organisations.

Landslides and mountaineering (continued...)

Continuing on the this topic of "landslides and mountaineering" I'm going to now cover the process of rebuilding trust, the "mountaineering" part as the facilitator called it at the executive leadership conference I attended some years ago.

I can't but help when I look at this picture to think of Everest, the ultimate mountaineering challenge where so many have perished trying to get to the summit.  It's definitely not for the fainthearted and having an absolute admiration for anyone who commits to these types of extreme sports challenges,  I see it as a very appropriate metaphor for the process of rebuilding trust in a broken relationships, especially if the relationship was of a very personal nature.

Looking at this more closely we can draw the following conclusions which is evident in the process of rebuilding trust.  I remember the facilitator pointing out that this process takes LOTS of energy and time, just like mountaineering.

Personal sacrifice and preparation
It takes personal sacrifice and preparation to start this process, especially if for the person who is willing to start the conversation.  That means, they have to swallow their pride and approach the situation from the viewpoint that they could've have made a mistake.  The approach I follow to make this easier is to try and think of the other person from an objective point of view.  Recalling previous non-conflict situations we were engaged in, I ask myself if I think they are a malicious person by nature, if they were really intentional in trying to hurt or harm me?  If I struggle with this I find that it is always good to get an outside perspective from someone who is not familiar with the situation but does know the person.

More sacrifice
Once they've done the mental preparation on how to approach this, the next step is to engage the other person with an attitude of giving and understanding.   In the example of Jim and Peter in the previous post, Peter would've approached Jim in the following way: "Hey Jim, I realise that I could've misinterpreted a comment you made to me when we were applying for the senior role.  Would you mind if we have a quick chat about it, just to put my own thoughts at ease?"

Belay
This almost seems too much, doesn't it?  Well, I can guarantee that if this is the approach which Peter took in this situation,  it would've not only resulted in rebuilding trust, but also would've strengthened the relationships by providing a belay (anchoring a rope to a cleat or anchor point in mountaineering) for any future conflicts which could arise.   Jim will now realise that Peter is not just a work friend but also someone which he could rely on and trust as a right-hand man in his future senior role.

Mapping out this trust building process on a graph could look something like this.  The timescale, as you would probably agree, could sometimes be years!

Now take this into the the context of organisations and think of the effect that the time spent on these seemingly insignificant personal conflicts could have on the performance of that organisation.   Now it's easy to deal with this once you have identified the conflict, however, how many of these conflicts goes completely unnoticed in large organisations, and only surfaces once it's too late?

One of the best works which I've read on a very similar theme and something which has had a profound impact on my life is Leadership and Self-Deception by the Arbinger Institute. 

Landslides and mountaineering

I have had the opportunity and privilege of attending a number of executive leadership conferences during my career, which provided me with a really useful toolkit I was able to use in business during my journey as a leader in business.

One of the topics we covered was around conflict and trust which provided a really good perspective of how easily trust is broken, and also how hard it is to rebuild and regain that trust.  While I thought this was only true for superficial relationships I subsequently experienced that this was the case even in some of the strongest and longest lasting relationships between two people, teams and organisations.

Before going into the some of the various reasons why trust get's broken or destroyed (to follow in future posts), I found it very useful to have an understanding of the the process which takes place when trust is broken, and also when it's being built back up.  The presenter at the conference compared the process of trust being broken to a landslide and the process of rebuilding trust to mountaineering.

The landslide (trust being broken) 

Landslides in Japan after earthquake Hokkaido in Sep'18

If we look at the characteristics of a landslide, the following stands out:

• It happens suddenly and escalates rapidly
• Almost nothing can stop it
• It devastates and usually results in massive collateral damage 

Now let's compare this to a situation which results in a breach of trust between two people, something as simple as a misunderstanding between two colleagues.  

Jim and Peter have been colleagues for 10 years and are middle managers in a large construction business. Having progressed through the ranks after starting as apprentices, they have built a strong professional relationship, often helping each other out.  A senior management position had opened up and both Jim and Peter had aspirations to apply for the position, something which they openly shared with each other.  One day, while sitting around a boardroom table waiting for their colleagues to arrive, Jim mentions to Peter that he heard via the grapevine that HR was looking for a person with prior financial management experience.  As he finished the sentence the rest of the team arrived and the meeting started.   Pause the scene....

This is what happened in Peter's head, as the meeting started.  He knew that Jim had completed a finance management course 8 years prior, even though he did not have any more practical experience than Peter had in this field.  And so the landslide started...

While this seems like there are a lot of steps in this process, in reality, the emotional journey takes place in less than a minute.   

I kept the last two blocks open on purpose, as you would agree that this could now go a couple of ways.  Peter could go speak to Jim after the meeting, understand his real motivation for the comment and all is forgiven; Or Jim could be promoted which will make Peter jealous and drive him to have strong negative feelings towards Jim and then leave the company altogether.  

Understanding this process and how quickly this happens has really been valuable to me in situations where I realise that something was misinterpreted or even where a real conflict has taken place for some reason.  

The presenter posed a question to the forum during the session which I will never forget, he asked us at which stage did we think should we intervene as managers or leaders?  The answer was, as soon as you can see that there is a problem.  The challenge is that once it is evident to people outside of the situation, it's usually too late, the landslide has already started.

Have you seen this play out in your business? What about your personal life?  I would love to hear comments to hear if this is helpful. 

Next post on mountaineering.

Trust and a lack of information...a short story

I'd like to tell a short story to give an example of how my own wrong assumptions of trust made an already difficult situation even more difficult and inhibited the access to information required to make informed decisions. 

The (wrong) assumption - trustworthiness by virtue of role and responsibility.

I had joined a larger business in a leadership role and part of my responsibility was to look after a subsidiary business which had just been downsized for various reasons.  A core staff compliment  remained, some on reduced salaries, in order to maintain the existing customer base.  They all reported to a general manager (I'll call him Simon) who in turn reported to me.   The plan was to continue business as usual and then see if we can pivot the business.  Morale in the business was low as you would imagine under the circumstances.

Having just joined the larger business with its own set of challenges I intuitively decided to make the subsidiary's team part of the corporate culture and staff meetings, thereby reinforcing a sense of belonging and team culture across both businesses.  What I didn't do was to sit down with the general manager and build report with him, nor did I really appreciate the value of leadership in difficult circumstances, at the time. 

As time went by, we established a senior leadership team who provided weekly feedback on progress and business challenges.  Unlike the other GM's I struggled however to get information out of Simon.  I continually had to go back to him to ask for additional information.  He seemed to only share the bare minimum and only provide information when it was asked.  This created a difficult situation for me who had to make judgments on the progress of the business, not trusting the information which I received.  I started getting frustrated with him which in turn caused me to perceive him as an under-performer, even going as far as to contemplate how he could be replaced.  Regarding myself as obviously being trustworthy, he clearly was being insubordinate and not taking initiative to help drive the business forward.  I mean, I was the one responsible for making the decisions here.  Wouldn't you agree that I was justified in my views of the situation?

Actually, I was not.  You see, I had not taken the time and effort to build trust with Simon, I was too focused on what needed to be done in the business.  I only realised this after a workshop with the management team where I shared some of my own mistakes and faults.  There were also an opportunity for each of the team members to express their views and provide input.  After the workshop Simon approached me and mentioned to me that he really valued the workshop and that he realised that I care for the people in the business.  I expressed my appreciation to him for taking the initiative of coming to talk to me and also invited him to do that any time he felt the need to do so. 

Things changed.  Suddenly Simon started providing more information and also highlighted some potential risks in the business which needed addressing, something he hadn't done before (as he did not trust me or my leadership), ultimately helping us to address the risk and avoid potential financial damage.  I had wrongfully assumed he trusted me because of my role.

The bottom line is, if I had intentionally decided to build trust with Simon from the start, I could have potentially helped the business (based on accurate information) in the right direction a lot sooner than the actual time it took. 

Have you seen this in your organisations / teams as well?  What wrongful trust assumptions have you made and are willing to share?  I'd love to hear from you.