Building Higher Trust 117 Trust and Transparency

March 23, 2023

Trust and transparency are intertwined. In my leadership classes, we often get into a debate about trust versus secrecy. Conventional wisdom advises leaders to be more transparent to improve trust.  In this brief article, I will share a more balanced viewpoint.

First, let’s deal with an obvious fact.  It is not always good to be transparent. If you blurted out every thought floating around in your head, you would have a difficult life. For leaders, the issue of transparency is a major concern from a legal perspective.

Sometimes being transparent is against the law

Suppose a leader is contemplating an action that will have a material impact on the organization’s value. It is against the law to divulge the information until the action has been formally announced. In a merger, you could end up in jail if you are transparent too early.

More transparency is better than less

In most situations, being more transparent is the best philosophy to build trust. The best approach is to be as open as possible with people when discussing future changes. Let’s look at some of the conditions that make leaders hesitant to be transparent. I will try to dispel some myths here.

  1. Worry about sabotage. If the news is not good there is a concern. Think of a layoff as the example here. Once people know their job may be in jeopardy, they may act out in ways that hurt the organization. The truth is that most people can handle bad news if it is offered in the right way and at the right time.
  2. Spoiled relationships. Sometimes the news will focus on an individual or specific group. In that case, sharing the information may lead to open warfare between those individuals. Hoarding the information only makes the damage worse when the truth comes out.
  3. Leaking out too much process knowledge. Sometimes the nature of the information would provide the competition an advantage if they knew what was about to happen. That is a legitimate concern if it is real.
  4. Suppose plans are embryonic. Sometimes a planned action may not be carried out for several months. There is an incubation period where you need to study different options. If potential changes were shared too early, it would add confusion to the decision process.

Rule of thumb to link trust and transparency

When leaders are contemplating a “gag rule” they need to think twice. If they are not sharing something they know to be true, a flag should go up. Think through not only the short-term implications of withholding information but the long-term as well. There will be exceptions, but the majority of times it is better to share the information.  Share it with sensitivity if it is troubling information but don’t hide it.

Conclusion

Trust and transparency normally go hand in hand.  Make sure your decisions to withhold any information are thought through carefully. It can be a delicate balance. The best policy is to display trust by being transparent with your people.

 

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations


Building Higher Trust 116 Trust is a Marathon

March 16, 2023

Building trust between people is a never-ending process.  There is no finish line.  Managers who attempt to build higher trust with short-term programs or gimmicks are usually disappointed in the end.

Trust between people is similar to the concept of love.  You never stop investing in the relationship.  Recognize there will be times of setbacks, so you want to have as much trust equity to draw on as possible.

The marathon has no finish line

The concept of a race with no finish line is difficult to imagine, but that is exactly what is going on with trust. When we engage in building a relationship of trust, we keep putting one foot in front of the other forever. This process sounds exhausting until you realize the benefits you accrue all along the route.

Benefits of the marathon

I will list a few of the benefits you gain when investing in higher trust with another person. A full list is impossible because it is really infinite. Let’s take a look at some of the obvious benefits.

  1. Better communication. When you have a relationship of trust, you do not need to encode your messages with spin. You can be your authentic self and know your messages are not only heard but understood. If there is any doubt, the other person will ask for clarification.
  2. Improved alignment. You and the other person will align in terms of the shared vision. This benefit happens naturally because you are both viewing the world through the same prism. The result is higher empowerment because there is no gap in understanding.
  3. Less tension. Both of you have the blessing of spending your time in harmonic appreciation. The world is a more joyful place to be.
  4. Support when needed. You both can feel the benefit of having someone who is on your side, no matter what is going on. That confidence is a huge blessing when things get messy.  
  5. Productivity will be higher. Several studies have shown the relationship between trust and productivity. An environment of high trust is two to five times more productive than a low trust situation. There is no time lost in bickering and no need to circle back with justifications.
  6. A real environment, with no games. In a high-trust culture, you have a strong feeling that what is unfolding in front of you is real. People are not playing games with each other.

It is easy to see why smart leaders are willing to put in the effort of the trust marathon. For one thing, life gets easier rather than more difficult. The improved culture is well worth the effort to keep running.

Conclusion

Picture the process of building and maintaining trust as a marathon. You never reach the finish line, but why would you want to? The benefits are so overwhelming, you would be a fool to take any other path.

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations


Building Higher Trust 115 Unexpected Trust

March 9, 2023

Unexpected trust is a very powerful form of trust between people.  This condition happens for a number of reasons that I will explain. The result can be a huge powerful gain in trust, especially for leaders.

What is unexpected trust?

When people have been working in a low-trust environment, they naturally expect the abuse to continue.  There is no reason to believe that a clueless manager is going to make a change. 

In reality, when most leaders are showing low trust in people, they are not even aware of it.  One cause is the false assumption that if the leader does not check up on people they will abuse the system.

Conventional remuneration schemes for organizations have historically been based on hours worked. There is a natural tendency to check that people are working as much as they report. That is called command and control.

In the conventional office setup, managers can see when people are not applying themselves to the work.  When working remotely, it requires some form of extra verification such as a tracking system.

Tracking systems lower trust

All tracking systems have ways they can be defeated or at best confused into sending false signals.  When this happens, managers are forced to verify the tracking system, and more damage is done. In these situations, both the employee and the manager are miserable. Trust takes a hit.

There were several studies done near the start of the COVID pandemic. Most of them show that unmonitored employees put in more than the expected hours.  The reverse is also true. Heavily monitored employees found ways to trick the system and worked less than expected.

There are many different techniques that can take the sting out of tracking systems. One is to simply eliminate them.

Try visibly removing a system that checks up on employees

Management could simply reiterate the expected work hours (typically 40 per week) and show trust that employees would comply. This seeming loss of control would actually result in higher levels of work performed. A manager could explain it to the crew by stating the rationale. “Since I trust you, there is no reason to continue this cumbersome checking system.” 

In addition, the quality of work would increase because people would not feel the prying eyes of the managers. The unexpected trust would be refreshing for the workers.

Unexpected trust when a new manager takes over

One convenient time to shift from heavy control to one of higher trust is when a new manager arrives. The manager can state that this is a new era in trusting the workforce to do what is right. Not only would the quantity of work increase dramatically, but the problem of turnover would go down. The quality of work would improve also.

In addition, the phenomenon of “quiet quitting” would go away because there is no longer a reason for the employee to play games.

Summary: Less control means more work

Most managers have trouble believing that lower control means more work gets done.  Once they realize the tremendous leverage they are missing, maybe conditions will change. If you cannot believe this, then try an experiment in a small group. You will see the amazing power of unexpected trust.

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations


Building Higher Trust 113 Every Day Trust

March 2, 2023

Every day we experience trust thousands of times, but we rarely are aware of that. Can you imagine what it would be like to have a life without trust? It is pretty hard to do. I will attempt to do it in this brief article. Trust is so ubiquitous in our lives that we don’t recognize it unless there is some kind of failure.

What is life without trust like?

Let’s take the start of a day and remove the trust to see what it would be like.  First thing, the alarm goes off. Oops, we were trusting the alarm to ring at the time we set. If the clock broke or we set it wrong, we would wake up when our bodies got tired of sleeping.

We sit up in bed and turn on the light switch. Oops, we expected the light to go on. If it does not, there could be several different causes to investigate.

We walk into the bathroom and turn on the spigot. Oops, we expected there to be plenty of water and that we could regulate the temperature to suit. We also trust that the water is safe to drink. Unless something unusual is going on, we do not test our water every day.

On and on it goes until finally, we are dressed and ready to go down for breakfast. Of course, we trusted our child to put away his matchbox car. Did he leave it on the stair for us to slip on?

Life without trust at breakfast

We grab the orange juice and have faith that it has not expired. We don’t even check unless it tastes funny. We pop in a vitamin pill without giving any thought to the actual chemicals involved. We also do not picture the person who packaged the pills.

We pour our cereal and assume it is not contaminated by bugs. We turn on the TV to catch the news and our favorite channel works. The number of times we trust at breakfast alone is in the hundreds.

Life without trust in the garage

We are now ready to go to work. We push the button and the garage door goes up automatically.  We get in the car and step on the brake. We turn on the ignition and do not think about the thousands of explosions going on under the hood.

We put the car in reverse, and the vehicle backs out slowly, just as we expected.

We get to the end of our street and step on the brake. Magically, the car stops, even though the engine is still running.

We get onto the highway and go over an overpass.  We have no compunction about this because we have no reason to suspect the car will fall into the river below.

We simply expect the other drivers to follow conventional rules and laws.  Sometimes that is a stretch, especially when it comes to speed limits.

The process is ongoing and never ends

This description was bare bones in order to get the message across in a compact form. You realize there are hundreds of other trust areas I left out.

The point is that on any given day we all experience trust thousands of times and never give it any thought unless there is a failure. If some system has a problem and fails, then we notice it for sure.

What about trust with other people?

Apart from the things and systems in our lives, we have trusting relationships with every other person we know. We have stated or implied agreements on how we will treat each other.  When a violation happens, regardless of the reason, we become upset and concerned. We seek to eliminate these annoyances in our lives. 

Sometimes the pattern of disappointment with another person reaches a state where we no longer trust the other person with anything. We assume the person will not follow through. When that happens, the relationship is pretty much doomed unless there is a kind of intervention.

Conclusion

It is impossible to live without trust. We manage trust every day of our life in thousands of ways and rarely think about it.  Trust becomes the anchor to secure the elements of our lives. Recognize and respect your relationships of trust with systems and people.

 

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations


Building Higher Trust 113 The Magic Ingredient

February 23, 2023

I have been studying trust in organizations for over 50 years, and I have found the “magic ingredient.” As a Division Manager in a large manufacturing firm, I studied the impact of trust on performance. After many years of comparing groups within my division, I came to a conclusion.

Trust is the magic ingredient

The success of any group rests most on how much trust there is in it.  I observed that high-trust groups were able to tackle difficult tasks and come away successful. In low-trust groups, even simple daily challenges became huge obstacles.

The difference was so stark that I described trust as the magic ingredient. Groups that could maintain trust seemed to have a shortcut to success.  Other groups where trust was lacking were always struggling to survive.

Trust was a magic ingredient for leaders too

I observed that leaders of high-trust groups found that leadership was a blast. They were allowed to be human beings and make an occasional error. The people would cut these leaders some slack. Basically, leaders of high-trust groups were having more fun.

The other side of the coin contains misery.  Leaders of low-trust groups are always miserable because people in the organization are out to get them. I picture the people in low-trust groups to be like coined snakes ready to strike at the least provocation.

Let’s take a look at some specific functions to enhance the contrast.

Communication

Leaders of low-trust groups had to watch every word. If they did not spin every statement correctly people would misinterpret the message. They had to rehearse every communication to see if there was any way to get the wrong impression. There were several instances where people heard the leader say what they thought he was going to say. They would hear bad news even if the message was basically good news. Getting to a precise way of communicating was always a chore.

On the flip side, leaders of high-trust groups could relax and be authentic. If something did not sound right, people would ask for more clarity. The leader was not subject to a trust withdrawal.

Conflict

Low-trust groups had to battle inter-group conflict at every turn. That is because the individuals had to continually watch for what other people were trying to do to them. The energy wasted in just trying to keep things civil was staggering.

In high-trust groups, the focus was on what they were trying to accomplish. The group members didn’t have to protect their interests, so they were more creative and cooperative with others.

Productivity

Since low-trust groups spent their resources fighting each other; they were less productive. They were always under the gun because they did not get things done efficiently.

My observation of high-trust groups is that they were at least twice as productive as low-trust groups. They were continually receiving praise and gratitude from upper management due to their output.  More than sheer output, they made it seem easy because it was for them.

Conclusion

The contrast between high and low trust groups could not be starker. That is why I am writing this series of blogs.  I want leaders to know that the element of trust is the magic ingredient for any group to be successful.

It is curious that when I look into low-trust situations it is usually the behaviors of the leader that are causing the problem. Let me put it more directly. Most leaders do not recognize that their behaviors are the root cause of the problems that are holding them back. Leaders set the tone for everything that happens in an organization.

 

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations


Building Higher Trust 112 Empowerment and Trust

February 17, 2023

Empowerment and trust usually go hand in hand. It is like looking at two sides of the same coin. Organizational redesign for more empowerment can be an incredible way to improve the performance of a group. If poorly done, it can lead to a loss of morale and productivity.

Where is the magic to achieve empowerment and trust?

The magic is in how you approach the problem as a leader. Trust is essential for a great result. As a Division Manager in a large manufacturing organization, I had the opportunity to witness some fantastic productivity improvements based on trust.

A classic and real example

A Classic example occurred in a small, isolated work group in John’s department.  He had done some cost benchmarking. He needed to make a significant shift in productivity to be competitive.  He was considering a consolidation of this group with another in a different building. 

He bounced the idea off the workers and, of course, it was pretty unpopular.  Calling all 19 people in the group together, he gave them two weeks to come up with an alternate plan. Lacking that, he would go forward with the consolidation. The trick here is that John put the power in their hands, but he provided help to them.

John provided a facilitator so the team could meet efficiently to work on the problem. They worked for two weeks while keeping up with production. 

The plan based on empowerment and trust

Finally, they called John and me in at 6 AM one day to report progress.  They revealed a plan that, in three months, would improve quality and delivery while reducing the crew size from 19 down to 9 people.  They wanted to know if they had our “permission” to do it.  I told them it felt like I had just caught the winning touchdown pass in the Management Super Bowl!

They had removed an organization layer and eliminated some straight-day jobs.  Everyone had to get additional training and give up some perks they were previously enjoying.  In the end, they got down to 10 people rather than 9, but you never saw a more energized and dedicated bunch of people.  They owned the change because they had invented it.

Nobody had to leave the company

One key was that John guaranteed people upfront that we would find good jobs for anybody freed up by the exercise.  People trusted that promise based on John’s integrity.

Empowerment and trust

Without that condition, the result would have been tepid rather than red-hot.  Also, without a trained facilitator, things would have degenerated into a kind of organizational food fight. The team felt empowered to make changes. This is an excellent use of a consultant: to keep people on task.  Ultimately, trust was the key that unlocked the door to excellence.  John trusted the workers, and they trusted him. It worked!

Conclusion

By allowing the team to solve the problem, John empowered them and trusted them to deliver. A 50% productivity improvement in 3 months was a fantastic result.  When you add improved quality and delivery, it was a home run.

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations.


Building Higher Trust 111 Your Values and Vision

February 9, 2023

It is vital to keep your values and vision current and visible. I often witness organizations that do not do this.  When I ask if they have values, they start talking about honesty, integrity, customer focus, or employee satisfaction.  I get some vague statements about ethics thrown in for good measure. 

Then I ask where I can find the written values. Sometimes the leader can pull something out of a drawer where the items resemble what I just heard.

More often. I hear, “the values are posted in the conference room and the break room.” I go and look, and there is indeed a slightly-torn or smudged paper on the bulletin board. If I ask the employees about them, they tell me “Oh yes, we have the values posted, but “they” don’t follow them.”  If the posted values are not followed, they do more harm than good. They serve as a reminder of the hypocrisy.

Vision and values must be in play every day

There are several organizations where the words are in the minds of the executives but not even written on paper, let alone implanted in the hearts of the employees where they can do some good.

Three rules with values are 1) write them down, 2) talk about them at every chance, and 3) follow them. If you miss any of these steps, then you are forfeiting most of the power of having values. Actually, values do you the most good when they are difficult or expensive to follow. People see and appreciate the effort to live by the values.

Vision is the same

The exact same discussion applies to the vision of an organization.  If the vision is not committed to writing and included in discussions with employees, it loses its power. It does not direct the daily activities of the population to move toward the future with confidence.

Expand the publication to the entire strategy

These two things are most important to write down. I believe the entire strategy should be committed to written form. That would include the following things at a minimum:  vision, mission, values, purpose, behaviors, strategies, tactics, and measures.

Many organizations make a production out of generating the strategy. The resulting tome is way too heavy for the employees to lift, let alone read and understand.

Compress the result to a single sheet

I usually reduce the entire strategic framework to a single sheet of paper. On the front side, we have the purpose, vision, mission, values, and behaviors. On the reverse side, there is a neat array of the top 4-6 strategies. Too many strategies defeats the purpose of focusing effort. Then you have a few major tactics for each strategy. Finally, what measure do we intend to use to track our progress for each tactic? I like to laminate the document as a way to indicate legitimacy.

Can do in a couple days

Usually, the entire process of developing the single sheet framework takes from 8-16 hours of interface time with a management team. That is enough time to engage everyone in the process. It is far less that the burdensome six-to-18-month process that creates hatred for the process among the staff.

Summary

Drive an efficient and high-energy process to create the strategy for your organization. Commit the resulting framework to paper and refer to it every day. You will have a much higher chance of being a successful organization.

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations


Building Higher Trust 110 Five Cs To Initiate Trust

February 2, 2023

Can you initiate trust with a new acquaintance by focusing on five Cs? The answer is YES! In this article, I explain that five concepts that begin with the letter C will help initiate trust.

This article is a companion to one that I wrote at the start of this series. That article was entitled “Planting a Seed of Trust in the First 10 Seconds.” The idea here is that an initial relationship of trust is established.  Full, mature trust does still take time to grow. That is because people need to witness your consistency over time.

You can initiate trust quickly

Most people believe that trust takes years to kindle. Trust requires that you have the opportunity to interface over an extended period of time. I disagree with this analysis. I think trust can kindle very quickly between two individuals. There is even a name for this, “swift trust,” coined by Debra Meyerson. After that, trust grows or shrinks based on the interactions that occur between individuals over time.

You can initiate trust in only a few minutes of time if the proper conditions are present. Trust rests on the relationship between two individuals. If you are going to trust me, you need to be personally convinced that I fulfill 5 conditions that all begin with the letter C.

These items form the basis for trust to start. We convey them from one person to another in short order. The first two conditions I borrowed from Stephen M.R. Covey’s bestselling book, The Speed of Trust. The rest of the list is from my personal experience and background.

Here are the 5 C’s to initiate trust

Competence – You must be convinced that I know what I’m doing to view me as credible. I pass the competence test if you believe I can deliver on my statements. If you doubt that I can deliver, then you will remain skeptical until you test me.

Character – Do I have the integrity to do what is right? You need to feel that I am not duplicitous. I will stand up for what I believe is right. It does not mean that we always need to agree on every point.  You need to see me as a person of high moral and ethical fiber before trusting me.

Consistency – You need to be convinced that I will do what I say. This characteristic normally takes people a long time to test. It doesn’t need to take months for someone to be convinced that I am consistent. You can discern the value of consistency through the way I word my intentions. Even the body language I use to chat with you contains clues. Am I relaxed and genuine, or am I uptight and rigid?

The ability to follow through with intended actions is easy to spot. You can also get back to the other person if conditions change. It is also easy to observe a blowhard who says nice things but has little fortitude to actually do them.

For example, if I promise to send you an article and I ask for your card, that signals my intent to follow up.

Congeniality – You are not going to grant initial trust to someone who comes across as morose or stern. To gain your trust, I need to smile and show that it comes from the heart.

A genuine cordial facial expression when first meeting a person is a prerequisite for trust to kindle. If I put on a false smile it is the kiss of death. It pegs me as someone who cannot be trusted at all.

Care – The final “C” in this handful is to project that I really do care about you. Again, people might say it takes years to show I do care about you. I disagree. Care can be displayed in hundreds of ways, just as selfishness can be worn like a suit of armor.

Giving deference to the feelings of others is an important component of Emotional Intelligence. People who have low Emotional Intelligence have the biggest blind spots, according to Daniel Goleman. If I come across as a phony, I will have little ability to detect this in myself. You will usually be able to see it quickly.

Conclusion

I cannot fake the 5 C’s. Words, actions, tone, and body language must all be consistent.  To initiate trust in just a few minutes, pay attention to the 5 Cs. It is then up to me to remain consistent and keep building on that base over time.

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations


Building Higher Trust 109 Your “Stop Doing” List

January 26, 2023

Do you have a “Stop Doing” list? From time to time, we all get overwhelmed with activities. Most of us turn to a “To Do” list to manage our priorities.  There are many systems that help keep people organized and assist them in making the most of their time. In this article, I suggest that having a specific “Stop Doing” list can be just as helpful at managing time as having a “To Do” list.

A Stop Doing list helps conserve time

Time is the most precious commodity we have. What makes something precious is comprised of two factors.  The thing must be of intrinsic value to us, and it must be scarce.  Diamonds and coal are chemically identical and both have intrinsic value to us. Diamonds are very hard to find, so their value is infinitely higher. Time has value to us because it is all we have to live with. Nobody can get more than 24/7 each day. Therefore, time has extremely high value; it is both important and scarce.

Making decisions on your stop-doing list

The world serves up a huge smorgasbord of activities every day. I am sure that each person reading this article has a huge number of things to do today.  Carving out a couple minutes to absorb this information means that something else is not going to get done. 

We normally make decisions on our use of time thousands of times a day. Most of these decisions are unconscious. It becomes more critical to make the right decisions in times of peak load.  I am pretty sure you have not had a day this year in which you could just kick back and do whatever you wanted for the entire day. We manage our time by prioritizing the things we must do or want to do. 

Rarely do we take an objective look at the time-burning habits that are not really logical. Sometimes we do these by rote and don’t think about it. An example of this might be putting on makeup. For me, I have a habit of checking my blood pressure ten times in a row each morning and averaging the numbers to arrive at a data point for today. One time would probably be sufficient.

Purge your list

If we had a system of bringing our time-consuming habits up for conscious decision regularly, we might be able to purge several things off our list. It is a gut reaction to sort the things we want to do in terms of priority, but it takes specific effort to focus on time wasters and cull out the ones we can live without.

Experiment

Try this experiment. Sit down in a quiet place and try to identify at least 10 things you could stop doing this week. If you find the exercise helpful, you might want to make a date with yourself. Do it a couple of times a year to hone your “Stop Doing” list.  You will have a wonderful feeling of really managing the most important commodity in your life: your time.

 

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations

 

 

 

 


Building Higher Trust 108 Humility

January 20, 2023

Humility is a key characteristic for everyone to embrace. True humility is not seen often in the ranks of leaders. Ego, rather than humility, seems to be the more common trait in management circles. Let’s examine why this is and suggest some ideas to modify the pattern.

Anyone who has reached a leadership position has a tale to tell. He or she got there through a series of steps and events.  Some steps were deserved, and some of them were just being in the right place at the right time. Another common factor is knowing the right people.

Getting ahead

It usually takes a lot of energy and talent to get ahead. People in the organization may look at a newly appointed leader and remark how they “lucked into it.” As Earl Nightingale said in Lead The Field, “Luck is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity.” There should be some level of personal satisfaction for a leader when he or she emerges from the pack and is elevated. We should celebrate this kind of milestone.

The tendency toward inflated egos

Upon reaching a higher level, the leader quickly becomes aware of an increase in power and influence. I once got a big promotion, and a Dilbert-like IT employee in the new organization started calling me “thou” and “thee” until I put an end to it. It is very easy to let the trappings or perks of a higher level inflate one’s ego. There is nothing wrong with appreciating one’s self-worth if it is kept in proper perspective. It is also important that the person also appreciates and publicly acknowledges the worth of others.

Unfortunately, many leaders do lose perspective and start acting like jerks. Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert Cartoon Series, would have needed to make a living in some other field if not for the hubris of leaders.

How humility helps

The role of humility in creating and maintaining trust in organizations was well documented by Jim Collins in Good to Great. Collins identified passion and humility as two common traits of the most effective leaders – he called them “level 5 leaders.” Here is a very brief video clip of Jim Collins describing the difference between a level four leader and a level five leader.

It would be easy to say, “don’t be too full of yourself,” and show the benefits of humility. Unfortunately for the narcissist leader, changing the thought patterns and behaviors is extremely difficult.

How to fix it?

If it is so important, what can we do about it? Is there a kind of anti-hubris powder we can sneak into the orange juice of over-inflated executives? Oh, if it was only that easy.

What we are talking about here is re-educating the boss with influence from below. We want to let him know that his own attitude is getting in the way of trust. Reeducating the boss is always tricky. It reminds me of the adage, “Never wrestle a pig…you get all muddy and the pig loves it.”

Work to educate the leader

One suggestion is to form a kind of support network with the employees and leaders on the topic of leadership. Book clubs where employees along with their leaders take a lunch hour once a week to study the topic can begin a constructive dialog.

You can’t just march into the boss’s office and say, “You are a total narcissist, knock it off and get down from your pedestal.” You need to use a water drop treatment with lots of Socratic Questions.

Conclusion

If you are a leader, try this little test. If you think you are a humble servant leader all the time, you are probably off-base. Chances are you have some serious blind spots. Go and get it checked out! If your mental picture is one of an imperfect person trying to learn more about how to lead, then you are probably okay.

 

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations