Chutes and Ladders

It pains me to see lost productivity (both money and joy). If the game of building a sustainable, compounding growth company takes everything we have, it is hard to watch trust being lost – because the cost to momentum is so high.

I have a couple of first time CEOs who have built companies in less than 6 years (sizes from seven to nine-figures), so by all accounts my clients are brilliant. One client has two key executives who are struggling to transition into the client’s and the company’s new expectations. One of my most used statements to all clients is, “you don’t know how important, and thereby powerful, that you are…” They adjust and we come up with practical methods to stoke the power of trust and gain productivity.

I have other CEOs who have been in the role for some time and do not yet understand their blind spots on breaking trust. They break trust (the receiving party loses faith in the leader or the business through emotional disengagement) in many ways; some examples are:

• Through their own anxiety, finding fault in staff constantly without offering or knowing the solution. Even worse, not being curious; thereby, skipping over the step of asking questions when a problem is identified.
• Through their own lack of self-awareness (arguably through anxiety or triggered behavior), speaking of what is wrong, and then making the blame sound or feel personal. This can be fixed with simple language changes (talk about the problem and solution, not the people involved).
• Speaking about his/her own feelings about a situation.   This is in place of more inspiring behaviors of asking how the team members feel, asking other questions, sharing an inspired solution, sharing hope or showing appreciation.

In that context, my successful CEOs will collaborate with the executive team, give a vision, change the direction, dive into details, collaborate directly with staff…all these things sound acceptable, however, my CEOs have to remember, that if they are more important than they think, then each interaction for the CEO’s staff is filled with anxiety and self-doubt. That is, the CEO is seen as revered and omniscient (and the provider or destroyer of a salaried job). 

As such, any comment from my CEOs can be more cutting than intended. If the CEO is in an unconscious bad mood, it is even worse.  They may not be behaving at his/her best and can unleash one or a series of unproductive comments. In a raw, vulnerable state, the staff may feel judged and perceive he/she is being attacked, and then, decide that some trust has been lost. When that happens, the CEO loses by not getting honest feedback. The risk is the CEO becomes tactically and emotionally on an island because the waters of trust have receded and the staff keep their hearts and minds to themselves. That is the single-most reason for corporate inefficiency in my mind.

I have other posts on how to regain or monitor for trust so I won’t repeat that here. It is simply important for all of us to know the cost of sliding down the chute of losing trust is it takes far more resources (I believe it is said that for each ounce of trust you lose, you have to re-invest 6-12 ounces of effort to regain your prior position) to re-ascend the ladder of trust. The good news is that it can be done because human beings want to be in trusting relationships so they learn to forgive and move forward.