ALL-TOO-HUMAN FOIBLES AND TRUST

“The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story that the mind has managed to construct.” Noble-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman

Dilbert’s cartoon makes a key point on trust succinctly: Asok’s manager is giving him a lesson or two on trust. The manager asks Asok to fall backward and trust his manager to catch him. The manager reneges and Asok falls down. Asok asks the manager “why didn’t you catch me?” The manager replies “it wouldn’t be trust if it worked every time.” Dilbert’s portrayal of trust is how trust is seen and practiced in organizations.

As a corollary, I know of a senior leader, who had a serious problem of trusting his colleagues. But being an adventure sports enthusiast, he trusted an unknown instructor when he went for bungee-jumping or sky-diving. Trusting in organizations is difficult because it makes you vulnerable; on the other hand, a sky-diving instructor is trusted because s/he is seen as an unbiased expert. Needless to say, trust is a rare commodity in organizations.  

The conventional wisdom tells us that developing trust takes years but in today’s context, leaders’ performance is evaluated on 100-day timeframe. So, the key question is: How do leaders develop trust quickly?

I would like to cite a classic study led by Elliot Aronson of the University of Texas in the 1960s. At the most prestigious quiz competition, the candidates were asked 50 difficult quiz questions. Unbeknownst to the candidates, Elliot created four versions of the interview.

In the first version, the candidate answered 92 percent of the questions correctly and the observers were told that the candidate was an honor student. A second version, had the exact same stellar performance of 92 percent correct, but in the end, the candidate spilled coffee. The clatter of cups and saucer, the scraping of floor was audible and the candidate said “Oh my goodness, I have spilled coffee all over my new suit.”

In a third version, the candidate answered only 30 percent correct and was seen as an average student. And the fourth version was an interview of less impressive candidate with low scores, but ended with the same coffee-spilling episode.

After listening to all interviews, the observers rated the candidates. Here’s the question: Whom did they like better?

As you might expect, the candidates with high scores were the liked better than low-performing candidates. But what about spilling the coffee? It turned out that the observers thought more highly of the high-performing person who spilled coffee than the high-performer who was not clumsy.

A number of studies have been replicated since Aronson’s study and the conclusion was clear: highly competent people can make themselves more approachable by committing small human blunders. A small blunder makes them seem a little vulnerable and this vulnerability makes them appear approachable and warm.

The effectiveness of this strategy deflates the common assumption that it takes years to build trust. By making yourself vulnerable and more humane, it is possible to build trust in less time.

Of course, there are many ways of making ourselves vulnerable. One can use common foibles like craze for food, cracking a self-deprecating joke, laughing your guts out like a child- the list is endless. But not all belly-flops are good. The key lesson from Aronson study is: You must establish your credibility first before you get benefits of appearing vulnerable. Your credibility should never be in question.

As a leader, you must be careful, you should never undermine your credibility while appearing vulnerable and therefore, the context matters. A CEO can build trust by admitting lack of spreadsheet skills by saying “I’ve never been very good with excel.” But an Analyst cannot.

Vulnerability should never put a question mark on your competence, credibility or ethical behavior. You must be careful about what you’re revealing. On the flipside, showing subjecting yourself to inappropriate vulnerabilities can result in disastrous behaviors like bullying or sexual harassment and therefore one must be very careful.

People build a narrative about leaders’ overall behavior and then decide whether to trust him/her or not. Trust is not one-dimensional. As a leader, you must construct a coherent story about yourself through your behavior as asserted by Daniel Kahneman.     

As a leader, what vulnerabilities you show to make yourself more approachable and warmer?