Trust Is The Doorway

Trust Is The Doorway

Trust is such a significant aspect of nurturing relationships that I am going to talk it about it back to back. Last week when I wrote about trust, I talked about it from the perspective of needing to being trustworthy. But there is another side to trust that is equally important.

It is absolutely critical learn how to trust others and to demonstrate that trust in clear and unambiguous ways, if our relationships are to grow to their full potential.

Whether it is our spouse or our children, our colleagues or our clients, the people we report to or the people who report to us, if we don’t trust them we will never be able to connect with them at any meaningful level. If we can’t connect with others, our influence with them will be extremely limited. And if we can’t influence others, our leadership lid, and John Maxwell calls it, will be very low, because leadership truly is influence—nothing more, nothing less. And this is doubly true in our relationship with ourselves!

It has been said that the lowest form of leadership is of someone in a superior ‘position’ of someone in a ‘subordinate’ position. Far too many us, when we are in this type of situation, rely on the power imbalance to get the people under them to do their bidding. When we doesn’t trust our subordinates we will often micromanage. Few things undermine morale in an organization faster than this. Everyone resents it and even if it may brings momentary gain it will certainly bring longer term pain.

People will eventually reach the point where they are only doing exactly the minimum required of them and even then only when they know ‘the boss’ is looking. We have to learn to trust our direct reports, and it may take several incremental stages of letting go, giving feedback and direction, then letting go some more. In the end, if the superior can’t trust the subordinate, if no meaningful connection can be made, one or the other will need to be let go or moved to another position.

The next higher level of leadership is among peers, colleagues, teammates. Trusting those we work with is crucial for many reasons. Collaboration means that we are sharing our ideas and our insights, we are doing our part while we rely on others to do theirs.

We will only share ideas freely if we trust others to treat those ideas with respect (not be ridiculed, and not being ‘stolen’) by others. We will only consistently put 100% into our part of the project if we trust that others on the team are going to make their contribution as well. The line of thinking, ‘Why should I bust my butt if you’re just going to make the project fail anyway?’ takes root. Morale falters and productivity declines.

Sometimes the current teammates are not letting us down at all; it is the memory of others in the past who have and we are still carrying those hurts around with us. We must learn to let the past go. Treat each situation and each new team differently, learn to trust our colleagues more completely, and give it all we’ve got. It is the connection among teammates that makes everything work at it’s highest level.

One step up on the ladder is leadership of those above us. If we don’t trust the people above us to do right by us, we won’t share the ideas or make the extraordinary efforts that can take an organization to a higher level. ‘Doing right by us’ can be as simple as recognizing us for the insight or achievement; rewarding us for our contribution through remuneration or promotion; or even by removing those of our colleagues who lessen or undermine our positive contribution.

Not trusting those above us will hurt our productivity and weaken our morale. We must trust them so we can give it our all, or we must find another place to make our contribution. Without that connection, nothing meaningful can come about because it is only when we bring our best that we exert our influence on those above us.

The highest form of leadership is self-leadership. Not only is this the most challenging and rewarding place to exert leadership, for some of us it is the most difficult place (and ultimately most rewarding) place to express trust. Too many of us carry around in our heads those voices that are quick to shout down any new or creative ideas we have, sabotage and undermine any initiatives we undertake, and to simply try to limit our efforts to change.

Those voices are not our voice. They are the voices of others; of parents, of teachers, of bullies, of countless others. Our voice is the one that whispers to us, ‘You can do this’, ‘This is a brilliant idea’. Our voice is the one that spoke up with the creative new way to do something. Our voice is the one that brought forth the desire to change, to grow, to become more than we were yesterday.

We must learn to trust our voice, to trust ourselves. Not doing so means we will be stuck where we are now, and even sliding deeper into our rut. The alternative means busting free and becoming our potential. Unless and until we have a deep and solid connection with ourselves, we can never be free.

As I wrote last week, being a trustworthy person is the bedrock upon which relationships must be built. But trust is the doorway through which we walk to connect. It is in that point of connection that everything changes!

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