Long ago I consulted for a video game publisher. They were publishing a game being developed by a game studio several time zones away. Things had not been going well when I arrived on the scene.
There was lack of clarity around pretty much everything, but one thing was made very clear to me: the studio had not been hitting milestones. They’d have a list of deliverables for each month and only provide a fraction of them. My client wasn’t happy with the quality of the deliverables either. Communication was just bad.
I started building rapport with the developers at the studio and eventually one of their project managers asked me, “It seems like the publisher doesn’t trust us. What can we do?” I told him there’s literally only one way to build trust. You have to deliver. Do the thing you said you’d do.
Unless it’s based on your direct experience of someone repeatedly doing what they tell you they’ll do, any relationship isn’t trust. It’s a calculated risk. You can hire someone who interviewed really well, has a phenomenal resume, and has referrals singing their praises. But hiring that person is a calculated risk. You’ve mitigated that risk as best you can, but it’s still not trust until they start executing for you.
I probably read this in Amy Edmondson’s excellent The Fearless Organization, but it’s worth noting that trust is a one-to-one factor. You trust a person. You don’t trust your team or your company. When you consider raising your hand or voicing a concern on a call, you might be thinking, “I trust every individual here.” And maybe you do. But the sense of, “this is a safe place to raise concerns without fear of ostracization” is a group factor. That’s an important distinction between trust and psychological safety. Trust is individual, psychological safety is group.
Leaders, you’re on the hook for both. When you’re responsible for one or more team members, you need to build trust with them. Do the thing you say you’ll do. Everything else is risk mitigation on their part. “Should I believe my boss is going to do this thing for me? They say they have my best interest in mind and want me to grow. And they’ve been a manager for years so they’re probably good at this. I guess I’ll risk it.”
That’s different from, “My boss has repeatedly done X for me every quarter. They say they’ll do it this quarter. I trust them.”
So that’s trust. One to one. You’re also on the hook for creating a psychologically safe environment – a topic for another time. Just note that that one is on you too.
Leadership is hard.
image courtesy of Daniel Olah via Unsplash