I have been thinking a lot about trust lately. It is at the core of any group of people doing life together, and how could it not be? If you could not trust anybody, you should do these things in this order:
- Get a dog.
- Get a gun.
- Drive to the middle of nowhere.
- Live there.
That may appeal to the masculine urges of some, but for the rest of us, we have to trust others.
Not just trusting them to not kill us in our sleep, but to do what they say they will do. To be honest with us. To be there for us when we need them. To be competent in their role. To be able to make decisions on their own. To be able to both give and take criticism and feedback. To be able to be vulnerable. To be able to be wrong. To be able to be right. To be able to be themselves.
That is a lot to ask of someone, and there are many other areas in life where trust is absolutely essential. But, I want to talk about how trust is essential in the workplace.
In Patrick Lencioni's book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, he lays out the five dysfunctions of a team (shocker, I know). The first dysfunction is the absence of trust. Without trust, you can't resolve the problems that arise from not only the lack of trust itself but also from the other four dysfunctions. You can't have healthy conflict, you can't have commitment, you can't hold each other accountable, and you can't focus on results.
In a nutshell, everyone is a mercenary. They are only there for themselves, and they will do whatever it takes to get ahead even at the cost of the business.
And that is the natural state of things. We are all selfish creatures, and we will do whatever it takes to get ahead. But, we are also social creatures, and we have to work together to get ahead. So, we have to find some way to trust each other.
What can we do to build trust?
That is the hard part. As a nonstarter, there must be a base level of humility that each person must possess. Each person must admit that there are things they are good at and things they are not so good at. They also must recognize that is also true in others. No one is God, each person is imperfect, and each person needs each other.
Pretty tough stuff, huh? But, it is the truth, and it is step 0 in building trust.
The next step is to get vulnerable. This is the hardest part for most people. How are you supposed to be vulnerable around people you don't trust yet? It is a catch-22, but it is the only way to build trust. So be the change you want to see in the world. Be courageous and be the first to be vulnerable. Share your fears, your weaknesses, and your failures. Earnestly ask for help and advice. Eventually, someone will reciprocate, and you will be on your way to building trust.
An exercise my team and I did recently was to each share two ways we see each other person. We first shared how we see them adding to the team, and then we shared how we see them detracting from the team. After each person shared, the receiving person thanked them, noted what they said, and invited the next person to share.
After that exercise, each person then chose one thing that they could work on based on the feedback they received and committed to working on it. It was a very vulnerable exercise, but it has made all the difference in our team.
The dangers of not having trust
There are many dangers of not having trust, but I will just list a couple.
Without trust, you can't delegate tasks. The man at the top becomes the bottleneck, and the business will move at his speed. If he is slow, the business is slow. If he makes the wrong decision, the business suffers. If he is not there, the business is paralyzed even though everyone else is still there.
Without trust, you can't engage in healthy conflict. People will be afraid to speak up, and the business will suffer from groupthink. It will also lead to passive-aggressive behavior and politics. Gossip will run rampant, and backstabbing will be the norm. The business will be a toxic place to work, and the best people will leave.
Conclusion
The other day my wife was in a group call with her coworkers. She works as a nursing assistant in a hospital. At some point, the leader said that she will not give the rest of them the new gear they need to do their job because they are not using the gear they have now correctly. She explicitly stated that she did not trust them to take care of the new gear. Consequently, that new gear is sitting in a closet somewhere, and the team is still using the old gear that is falling apart.
We can all see the ridiculousness of that situation, but we all do the same thing in our own way due to the same absence of trust until we don't. We have to trust each other to achieve what we couldn't alone.