Trust Alignment in Leadership

Recently, I was running a workshop for a leadership team of a global IT company. The workshop's objective was to develop a deeper awareness of critical thinking. In a meeting before the workshop, the group's CEO mentioned to me that she would like to see her senior management team ask tougher questions of each other and their people, with the hope that the team would use that awareness to dig deeper into issues and come up with bigger solutions that are more pro-active than re-active. We agreed that we would customize the workshop using material and assessments from Everything DiSC, the Five Behaviors of a Team, and the Five Energies Assessment, from my book: Five Energies of Horrible Bosses and How Not To Become One.

At the beginning of the workshop, I opened with two very simple questions: "How important is trust to you and how important is it to the success of this organization?" Across the board, all members agreed that trust was one of the most important factors in a successful team and organization. I then decided to break the class down into several smaller discussion groups where they had the opportunity to discuss two more simple questions: "1. What is your definition of Trust? and 2. What does Trust mean to you?"

After a little while of heated debates, I pulled everyone back together and asked every group to share what they came up with. Interestingly, not only did every group member have a very different understanding of trust, but trust also meant something very different to each of them. To one group member, trust meant being able to predict an action or behavior from someone. Another person felt that trust was built when we can rely on someone to do something we want them to do. To other people, trust was a much more emotional experience. For some, it was the ability to rely on someone to have your back when the chips are down, as to others it was knowing that someone would act in your best interest, even when you aren't around.

What struck me from this exercise was that even though everyone unanimously agreed that trust was the most important factor in building a strong business, there was tremendous misalignment around trust and its meaning to each person. Trust, and therefore team growth, can never be optimal without a common agreement of the parameters of trust and what they all mean to each individual. Of course, this is not their fault. In a 2002 meta-analysis by researchers Kurt T. Dirks and Donald L. Ferrin, the researchers analyzed over forty years' worth of research on the subject of trust and found tremendous diversity in how trust was defined, constructed, and practiced. In other words, when we assume that our personal definitions and values related to trust are the same in our people as they are in ourselves, we set them, and us, up for potential failure.

Over the decades, a consensus has arrived with regard to a workable and generally accepted definition of trust. Based on my own research combined with two decades of field experience working with leaders, I have arrived at this definition:

Trust is the willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of others with the expectation they will act in your best interest even when you don't have visibility of where they are and what they are doing.

From this definition, we can extrapolate four variables that are highly subjective, and thus contribute to the complexity of individual relationships and experiences with trust. First, the word willingness implies that a person needs to be at a level of readiness to want to trust another person. This propensity to trust others is highly individual and is influenced by many variables such as personality, prior experiences, learned behaviors, current emotional wellbeing, and current work environment, to name a few.

Second, the word vulnerable implies a level of confidence that I can open up to you, be myself, and share my deepest concerns with you without any fear of repercussions. This degree of psychological safety is imperative in trust as it opens the door for very healthy conversations and feedback that raise the bar in how we operate as a unit.

Third, the word expectation is a highly subjective standard of satisfaction that is very different in each of us. Some of us place a much higher value on and set much higher expectations than others. In my coaching practice, I see this as one of the most common detractors of trust. Many leaders struggle to trust their people who repeatedly fail to meet their expectations. In most cases, their people fail to meet those expectations because the expectations have not been clearly defined and agreed upon. In return, many leaders fail to meet the expectations of their staff members for exactly the same reason.

Finally, acting in someone's best interest is an equally challenging statement in a team and business setting. For many leaders, finding the balance between operating in the company's best interest while simultaneously operating in their people's best interest can be perceived as a very thin line that becomes an exhaustive balancing act. Yet, what I have learned is that the most successful leaders don't perceive this as an Either/Or balancing at. Instead, they treat it as an And/And opportunity. Operating in your people's best interest is in the best interest of the company while at the same time, all company interests need to serve the interests of your people. If there is a discrepancy in either side of the equation, trust will disappear.

So, why is having a conversation around trust critical when running a workshop on critical thinking? In his book: Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni explains that before healthy and honest conversations can happen, such as asking tougher questions and inviting deeper conversations, a level of trust must already exist. Without trust in ourselves, our peers, our subordinates, and even our company, tough questions will never be asked out loud. There is a degree of comfort that comes with knowing we can trust someone in such a way that allows us to be ourselves without fear of any possible negative consequences. Skills such as critical thinking, strategy, and influence can only be fully utilized when the Five Behaviors of a Team are encrusted into the DNA of the organization.

With so many trust variables up for individual interpretation, it's no wonder many teams and organizations today are still performing below their potential. For this reason, rather than just having a conversation with your people about trust, engage in serious dialogue that allows everyone in your team to be aligned as to what trust means to them, and what each team member must be willing to do to be vulnerable, and what is required from the team to create an environment that is both trusting and trust-worthy. By raising your team's Trust Alignment, you will immediately notice a significant improvement in how your people work and perform together, which will have an immediate impact on your company's bottom line.

Marcel Daane, MSc Neuroscience of Leadership, PCC

As a late teenager, Marcel was diagnosed with Clinical Depression and Anxiety because of the harsh realities of life in exile that he endured as the son of a South African Freedom Fighter. Despite the tremendous challenges Marcel endured living with a mental illness that initially took him down a dark path of alcoholism and attempted suicide, Marcel’s salvation eventually came in the form of studying Martial Arts, Energy Healing, and Neuroscience where he learned to develop a new relationship with his mental health that offers many fresh and unique perspectives to how we live and work.

Years later, Marcel has emerged as a multi-award-winning Executive Leadership Coach and Author of two critically acclaimed leadership books where he leverages his unique mental abilities to help high-profile leaders access even deeper levels of wisdom, knowledge, and intuition for better decision-making, confidence, strategy, and presence.