Honest Intentions Create Trust

Trust has become the new currency – the critical competency for individuals, teams, organisations, and even countries in today's networked and interconnected world. Trust impacts every situation and relationship, whether personal or professional.

Trust is a bit like water, which is the vital substance that sustains all life on this planet. When it’s there, everything flourishes and grows. When it’s not there, everything withers and dies. The same is true for trust.?Without trust, projects slowly die, employees lose interest, and strategies fail. Trust has a lasting impact on your team and your organisation. (Don't believe me just look at the state of the UK government right now. Trust levels are at an all time low and few members of the public trust either of the potential new Tory leaders to do the right thing).

Trust acts as a lubricant. It reduces friction and creates conditions for evolving an Unbridled Business. How well the team works together is the true indicator of future success and the ability to manage change.

Robert A. McDonald, Chairman, President and CEO of Procter & Gamble, when referring to Stephen R. Covey’s book Smart Trust, states:

“It is both a mindset and a toolbox for 21st-century leadership”.

Trust is an essential commodity that cannot be overlooked when building a business. Trust is the lubricant that greases relationships and is the common denominator that integrates the three cornerstones: evolving the leader, empowering others to act, and engaging the environment. Without trust, there is no harmony in the team or business, and dis-ease prevails. Interestingly, if there is no trust in a herd of horses, they fight and live in fear for their lives because there is no safety – a lack of trust brings chaos.

Honest Intentions Create Trust

A high-performance culture can only occur when team members know that the leader’s intentions are honest. Being open is perhaps the most powerful way that a leader can create trust. When a leader opens up and has honest conversations, people tend to be more open in return and a genuine interest and respect can develop. Conversely, if the leader is a “closed book”, people find it difficult to connect with them; there is no commonality of purpose.

This is the reason why, prior to COVID, open-plan offices had become more popular. The lack of closed doors made managers and team leaders more accessible, and some of the physical communication barriers were broken down. Nowadays, with so many people working from home, Unbridled Leaders need to figure out how to build trust in a remote environment. It’s not easy, but it is possible if you are intentional about it.

Unbridled Leaders are also more likely to instil trust in their team members if they demonstrate fairness, especially when making contentious decisions, and if they can admit to their own Achilles’ heel and seek to address this. Ultimately, though, trust is developed through serving others (and/or a higher cause), as opposed to serving self. Building trust in your abilities is achieved through exuding appropriate optimism and confidence and ensuring that your accomplishments are recognised appropriately.

Breaking the Rules

Trust is the biological reaction to the belief that someone has our well-being at heart – that they care about us. Great leaders are trusted by others to obey the rules. They are also trusted because they are flexible and know when to break them. The rules are there for normal operation.

When a situation dictates it, we want team members to break the rules and go the extra mile for customers. This is how great customer service results.

In Entrepreneur Magazine Richard Branson shares the story of when one of his team members did exactly this. They broke the rules to provide exemplary customer service. The essence of the story was that a passenger was flying from New York to London in Virgin’s Upper Class and as a result was entitled to a complimentary limo pick up to take them to the airport. For whatever reason, the limo didn’t arrive and the passenger was forced to make their own way to the airport.

When the passenger arrived at the airport, they informed the check-in attendant of their experience, and from her own pocket, the check-in attendant refunded the passenger the cost of his taxi fare to the airport. When the check-in attendant sought to reclaim the money from her superior, her request was declined because she did not have a receipt.

Eventually, this story reached the Virgin head office, and the check-in attendant was immediately refunded the money and praised for her initiative, which had created great customer loyalty. Conversely, the check-in attendant’s supervisor was reprimanded for blindly following the rules without recognising that this was a case where breaking the rules was acceptable because of the customer loyalty that resulted.

The Trust Mirror

Working with animals, particularly horses, can provide us with a perfect mirror of how trustworthy we are as leaders. When two horses meet for the first time, or indeed when a person encounters a horse, the horse is asking three questions:

1.???Who are you?

2.???What do you want?

3.???How do you operate?

Effectively, the horse seeks to assess how trustworthy you are in your intentions. Are you greeting the horse to make him do something for you, or are your intentions simply that you want to say ‘hello’? How the horse answers these questions will influence the response that you get.

During the summer of 2004, when I was having an ongoing issue catching my horse, Toby, I suspect his answers to these questions would have been something like:

1.????????????That is my miserable owner who only turns up at weekends.

2.????????????She wants to throw a saddle and bridle on me and expects me to take her for a ride.

3.????????????She is again being really self-serving. It is all about her; she cares nothing for my feelings or what I want from this relationship.

Against that background, it is hardly surprising that he opted to vote with his feet and not allow me to catch him.

Reflecting on this situation made me think about similar questions that team members might unconsciously pose when they meet another person in the organisation. Some of the questions that might run through their head are:

1.????????????Do you care about me?

2.????????????Do you know to help me?

3.????????????Can I trust you to make unbiased recommendations that meet my needs and not your own agenda?

The last question is particularly relevant when creating a culture that supports effective decision-making and promotes high-performance teams; if there is any doubt of the intentions of the other individual, then there will be no connection or trust.

So how are you building trust in your team? If you'd like to learn how to create Unbridled Trust in your business then please reach out for a complimentary chat.

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Business leaders hire me when they are ready to throw out the rule book and reinvent their business by learning how to lead through uncertainty so that they can thrive in a complex, constantly changing environment. If you want to be the best leader you can be, or empower the most effective leadership teams within your organisation, then?subscribe?to this newsletter (do comment and share), check out my latest?book?-?Unbridled Business,?listen to my?podcast!?

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