Trust Requires Vulnerability (Wendy Samson and Curt Swenson, 2016)
The old paradigm of leading through the use of demands, abrupt conversations and bullet points is long gone. In fact, executing decisions by pointing fingers and directing people in what they need to accomplish next, may have been expected at one time, but has never been very effective. Respectful treatment of people, which includes listening to them, challenging them, giving them permission to think and operate on their own, allowing them to make mistakes, debriefing with them to adjust strategies and then encouraging them to give it another go, is the type of leadership that builds trust and gets traction.
What does trust building specifically require? The foremost quality, according to FutureSYNC researchers, is the ability to be vulnerable. Patrick Lencioni offers these words on vulnerability in his February 22nd, 2012 Bloomberg Businessweek article titled, “The Power of Saying We Blew It.” “Vulnerability is often seen as a weakness; it’s actually a sign of strength. People who are genuinely open and transparent prove that they have the confidence and self-esteem to allow others to see them as they really are, warts and all.” Conversely, you can probably remember a time when you worked with a supervisor who couldn’t be wrong, had to have the ideas and the answers, and truly struggled to share any of the solution-making credit with their team. Their leadership potential was limited, wasn’t it?
Take time to examine yourself right now. Consider that you may have learned these old leadership techniques from people who held positions of power, but were in fact, not leaders of people at all. Hopefully, you are now attempting to make the switch to a healthier and more authentic leadership approach.
Here are some DO’s and DON’Ts for building trust through vulnerability:
1) DON’T require your team members to adapt to your personality style.
When FutureSYNC provides DiSC personality training, we caution leaders that though your team members may try to honor you and adapt to your style on their own, YOUR primary goal as a servant leader is to be honoring to THEIR mode of operation and to THEIR communication style. The person with the most credibility in the room is always the one who is the most polite, respectful, intelligent and adaptive to the needs of the team. Requiring others to adapt to your idiosyncrasies just because you’re the boss does not build trust.
2) DO be honest. Share your concerns as soon as you see a pattern of poor behavior. Don’t wait and don’t ask someone else to do it. You have noticed it and you have the authority and responsibility to address it, so do it graciously. The conversation might sound like this: “I have to be honest with you, the last couple of times we’ve interacted and I have spoken with you about these specific workplace behaviors, you seem to acknowledge them and agree to make changes, but I just witnessed you doing it again. What should your next step be? How can I help with that? What should happen if you don’t make these changes? I will always honor you by telling you the truth, even if it’s not always comfortable. Please do the same with me.” If instead, an employee is reprimanded after the fact – and by someone who didn’t witness their behavior – that employee knows that they have been discussed. This does not build trust.
3) DON’T punish team members for honestly sharing their thoughts. In a staff training that I facilitated three years ago, the leader wanted to develop a safer work environment, yet right after the seminar, the leader issued warnings and reprimands to those participants who had shared openly in the training! Saying you have a safe work environment because you have provided training and then not implementing one, does not build trust.
4) DO deal with employee concerns individually, not corporately. The employee who has struggled to meet deadlines or who can’t seem to get to work on time, needs one-on-one conversation and not a corporate lesson on timeliness during a company meeting, under the guise that the message is for everyone. Everyone knows who the lesson if for anyway and it can be humiliating. Humiliation is oppositional to building trust.
5) DON’T make changes to a person’s job duties or schedule without explaining why. You may be making these changes for disciplinary reasons or you may not, but either way, you are dishonoring that team member by not explaining the purpose behind the change. Withholding information specific to someone’s job creates instability and anxiousness, not trust.
6) DO be inclusive, not exclusive in how you communicate information to your team. Some of the most successful businesses and organizations that FutureSYNC works with are those who are the most transparent. West Paw Design out of Bozeman, MT received the 2015 Employer of the Year Award. They are listed in the top ten companies worldwide, for sustainable products. When you walk into their facility, you will see their profit and loss statements, their production goals, their department needs and all types of intimate organizational detail, posted and regularly updated on an entire wall of the facility. West Paw Design employees are always aware of the current status of the company. Trust and stability grows from this level of transparency!
7) Be the company model for taking responsibility by claiming your own mistakes. If you can’t do this, do not expect your team members to feel safe doing it either.
Each of these approaches require you as the professional, to be vulnerable; to step into the fray knowing that you may not do things perfectly and that you might need to ask for help, or might need to apologize. Vulnerability means sharing information with people who may misuse it, but doing it anyway in order to keep everyone informed and included. Vulnerability means spending more time in awkward situations in order to truly hear people out. When you operate under the assumption that you may not have all the information nor all the answers, you realize that being vulnerable does not take away your authority – it ensures your leadership influence.