Trust in authority.

Trust is the essential connector. We all live interdependently and have to look to one another to fulfill routine services and help each other every day. That means the management of trust is central to all realms of personal and professional life, including the practices of management and leadership. Trust is the pivot point, or fulcrum.

It's important to manage the two key components of people's trust- their assessment of your values and your competence. To trust a person, it's usually critical that we believe that their heart is in the right place, that their values orient them toward performing with integrity to provide the services that we've asked for. But having shared values isn't enough. Even if someone has a heart of gold, we also need to believe that they have the knowledge and skills and overall competence to do their job well. So when we entrust people with authority, we expect both shared values and competence. One without the other isn't enough.

We can lose our trust in people, and we lose people's trust in us for either reason - a sense of shared values or a belief in one's competence that has been betrayed. We are all very sensitive to trust and to the betrayal of trust. Many of us today have become so distrustful of authority that we lose the ability to form authority relationships. We then struggle to function well in the organizational social, political, and family settings, where we need authority relationships to coordinate both routine and innovative collaboration.

The erosion of trust in authority is a serious problem in our social lives. It is so important for us to have the capacity to build healthy authority relationships with each other. Just imagine what your life would be like if you couldn't trust anyone to deliver what you expect of them. We need each other. Each occasion to reset trust is also an opportunity to prepare people to accept uncertainty and move with greater adaptability on other issues.

 When trust is broken down, it's probably a good indication that the current way of doing things isn't working. The odds are high that the organization's relationships, modes of innovation and problem solving, and structures of authority need to adapt if the organization is to renew and thrive. To repair damaged trust, you may need not only to take greater risks every day where you give authorities the benefit of the doubt, but also to become more trustworthy yourself as an authority in the roles you play in people's lives and work. 

We all should strive to strengthen your capacity to be trustworthy. And that's not easy because it may mean coming to terms with your own distrust in authority, learning how to engage in a non-defensive defense, and learning how to manage people who often will have unreasonable expectations of you in your positions of authority.

You will need to transform the expectations of authority - yours and theirs. So they better reflect the challenges you will be asked to help people navigate.