One of the observations I consistently make when it comes to CEOs, Executive Leadership Teams and trust, is they get it wrong. Most of the time, they think of trust in a predictive sense; if you can come to know how a person will behave in a given situation, you can figure out if they can or can’t be trusted. In this context, leadership teams are constantly waiting for their people to “gain” or “lose” their trust. Thus, you’ll hear sentiments like, “trust takes time” or “you can’t force trust.” However, if you want to transform how your team is operating so that you can focus more on growing the organization and supporting the growth of your people, then this predictive or reactive form of trust won’t serve you.
The problem with waiting for trust to happen.
As logical as it might be to wait for trust to happen, it’s not the type of trust that will result in a high performing, cohesive team. To have a high performing team, each person must come with a mindset to be a leader. Leadership isn’t about a specific role or whether you have some form of formal authority over someone. Leadership is taking full ownership of yourself, of that which you have control and the impact you have (good or bad). Leadership is active and intentional. Waiting for trust is passive and it’s not leadership. It doesn’t inspire anyone to want to grow or even give each other their best.
A leadership team where each person is waiting for trust to happen looks like this:
- They aren’t fully honest with one another. They don’t lie but are more guarded with each other
- They hold back during difficult conversations
- They reserve full commitment to things they have control over
- They hesitate to call one another on issues in performance or behavior
This type of team is walking on eggshells with one another and not a group whose members are taking an active, intentional leadership approach to their role on the team.
If your goal is to have a cohesive, high performing team, trust cannot be passive. You and each person on your team must intentionally be trust creators.
What is a trust creator ?
Very simply, a trust creator is one who proactively takes ownership of her role in creating an infrastructure where trust can exist and does not wait for anyone else to earn or prove they can be trusted.
Trust is discretionary. It cannot be ordered, only be volunteered. In order for that to happen, a trust creator behaves in a way where people can feel safe. They create the type of safety that has others knowing they can fail without the relationship being compromised, or that they can be direct and tell the truth without concern of repercussions.
When everyone on a team knows that everyone else is vulnerable enough to say and mean things like, “I messed up” and that no one is going to hide his or her weaknesses or mistakes, they develop a deep sense of trust and then trust is returned voluntarily.
Over time, this creates a strong bond between colleagues and teammates. This can be a little uncomfortable at first, but having a colleague or boss who creates an infrastructure of trust is freeing for people who are tired of spending time and energy overthinking their actions and managing interpersonal politics at work.
So, how would your team operate if everyone was a trust creator?
Here are some examples of what being a trust creator looks like in practice:
- Taking full ownership of each person’s role in the team and organization. This is more than doing or owning the tasks in a job description. Full ownership is being at cause and empowered in every situation rather than at the effect of the situation. Being at the effect of situations has one back on their heels. This stance has a person feeling like a victim and often results in passing blame or responsibility onto someone else. Full ownership of your attitude, your actions and the impact you have on others is a powerful “trust creation” action that models for others to do the same.
- Giving and receiving feedback. Trust creation often starts with willingly and openly receiving others feedback on your behavior and/or performance. Trust is then set in stone when you do something with the feedback. This practice then opens up the possibility to give candid feedback to others because you’ve proven to them that it is safe to do so.
- Listening deeply to another person as they are talking. One of the most vulnerable and easiest trust creating practices you can engage in is listening. Taking a genuine interest in what someone else has to say, even if you don’t agree, almost immediately creates trust.
- Helping to draw out ideas and solutions from others. The follow-on practice to listening is to ask questions that draw out even more from the person talking. This is especially true when they’ve brought a situation to the conversation that needs a solution. Helping them to problem solve and placing a value on their ideas is a practice in trust creation.
- Adapting your style to the style of someone else. Trust creators never have a “my way or the highway approach.” Those who don’t have a thought or focus to create trust have no thought about what another person’s style is. For a trust creator, stepping out of their own style and into the style of another person expresses humility and a value in the other person.
When a leader and each member of the team becomes a trust creator, this infrastructure of trust creates psychological safety. Individuals on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave your team or organization, they’re more likely to harness the power of diverse ideas from their teammates, they bring in more revenue, and they are recognized by those around the organization as go-to people and teams and consistently get more opportunities to advance and have an impact.
While the shift to being a trust creator is simple, it is not easy. The senior leader on the team can certainly cultivate this over time, but someone who is external to the team can often facilitate the shift and the creation of the infrastructure much quicker. Reach out in a direct message for support and to see how I can help.