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>> So trust in the workplace is everything, as you probably know, and the easiest way
to discuss and underscore the importance of trust is actually to talk
about what happens when it's not present.
I use the acronym fear to describe the characteristics of a team
where a leader has not earned their trust.
Let's start with f - finger pointing.
Finger pointing is the classic behavior where everybody tries to throw each other
under the bus because they want to look good.
E is for energy wasted.
Energy wasted positioning oneself to look better than everybody else.
A is anxiety about speaking up.
Speaking truth to power in an environment
where trust isn't present is career limiting or career ending.
People are so afraid to tell you the truth because you haven't built that trust,
and then finally R. R stands for rumors.
Rumors are everywhere when trust isn't present, and the reason for that is if people don't feel
like they're being told the truth, they will invent an explanation
for what they see happening around them.
So an environment of fear, you can probably agree, is not what helps a leader be effective.
Let's talk about trust, and let's talk about the research on trust
and what happens when it is present.
There's a researcher named Kurt Dirks who at the time was an assistant professor
at Simon Fraser University, and he looked at thirty men's NCAA teams before the championship,
and what he did was he measured each of the players' levels of trust in their coach.
And when he ran the data, he looked at it before the conference schedule started,
and then he looked at their winning record, and he controlled for things.
He took things statistically out of this equation
like their prior record or the coach's experience.
So he could really isolate what's that impact of trust on the performance
of the team, and here's what he found.
In teams where trust was present, they had a seven percent winning advantage over teams
who didn't trust their coach, and then they looked at the extremes
which were also pretty interesting.
For the team that did the best, they were the team that actually trusted their coach the most.
The team that trusted their coach the least lost ninety percent of their games,
and their coach was fired at the end of the season.
Coincidence?
I think not.
There are two types of trust that all leaders must build, and these two types
of trust are very similar to two vital organs in our body.
Let's say our heart and our lungs.
We actually need both of them, even if one of them feels like it's enough.
So there are two types of trust that leaders need to build are as follows.
Number one is something called competence-based trust.
What that means is does your team believe that you follow through on what you say you will,
and that you're competent in doing the job that you're supposed to be doing.
Now that doesn't mean that a leader needs to know everything about the jobs
of every person working for them.
What it does mean is they need to understand where their knowledge ends and begins.
They need to fill in gaps in their knowledge, and then most importantly, they need to follow
through and do what they say they're going to do.
The second type of trust is called motive-based trust,
and the essence of motive-based trust is do your employees believe
that you have their best intensions at heart.
Do they trust you?
Do they know that they can be vulnerable with you and show you their weaknesses,
and you won't use that against them?
Let's review two bankable actions that will help you build your competence-base
and motive-base trust with your team.
Let's start with competence-base trust.
I think the most important tool here is for you to understand
that any commitment you make you need to keep.
Think about, for example, keeping a log or a notebook full of the promises or the actions
that you agree to take on with your team.
Write them down and don't cross them off until they're finished.
It also helps to review this daily or weekly to make sure that nothing that you agree to do
for your team is falling through the cracks.
The second bankable action has to do with motive-base trust, and there are lots
of ways you can build motive-based trust that I encourage you to read about in my book
"Bankable Leadership", but I want to give you one crisp and succinct tool.
The tool is called the Terry Wanger rule,
which is named after my wonderful mother, Terry Wanger.
Terry Wanger was raised in Bay City, Michigan, in the heart of the Midwest
by two very hard-working parents, and they raised her with the following adage.
They said, "When you mess up, you fess up.
You stand up, and you clean it up."
She raised me with that same adage, and much as I resented it and mocked it
in my brooding teenage years, I began to realize that this is actually one
of the most powerful things a leader can do to earn the trust of their employees.
So what do I mean by the Terry Wanger rule?
When you mess up, you have to understand that you have made a mistake.
People's BS detectors are very, very sensitive,
and what that means is they know you've messed up anyway.
If you don't acknowledge it, they'll just see you as being detached or removed from reality.
So when you mess up, fessing up is as simple as saying I messed up, or this one was on me.
It was my mistake.
When you fess up and you stand up, you say I am going to do something about this.
I have made a wrong or I've made a mistake, and I'm going to make it right,
and cleaning it up is the final action here, and that's actually going through the motions
of fixing whatever it is went wrong because of your action.
And when your team sees you do that, when your team sees you admit that you've made a mistake,
make a promise to correct it, and actually stand up and do that, that is one of the easiest ways
that you can earn their trust, that you have their best intensions at heart.