Great leaders have tough conversations all the time with their people, and this necessitates building trust effectively says Ian Windle, author of The Leadership Map
Our culture craves excellence, yet it’s committed to creating an illusion that we can all have it with relative ease. We often view critical feedback and conflict as damaging and to be avoided. Some leaders can even be heard to say: ‘I leave that to other people, it’s not my thing.’ The problem is that this goes hand in hand with being an effective leader. It’s essential, and to avoid tough conversations is to erode your credibility as a leader. Tough conversations, focused on the issue not the person, must be the norm and the more you have them, the easier they become.
Great leaders have tough conversations all the time with their people. These conversations work, because there is a deep level of trust between the two parties. This is not a trust that means ‘I trust you to get something done’, but rather, this is a deeper trust that means ‘I know you’ve got my back’. This trust can only be developed over time through opening up about who you really are and what you really think.
Purpose and safety
The key is to develop trust in your team and between all the individuals. Whether you are developing a team or leading an organisation, you must start with purpose.
Any person or group needs something in common that binds them together, that they share. This can also be shared goals, or a shared vision of where they want to be. Whether you are sports team like the All Blacks rugby team, a charity like Mind, a global giant like Microsoft, or an SME, it’s the same. Once you know what you stand for (purpose), where you are going (vision) and what the plans and targets are along the way, you need to move to step two: creating safety.
Organisations succeed and fail on their ability to innovate, to create new, better versions of what they bring to market or when developing totally new products and services. When you’re innovating, you’re taking a risk, which of course means you can fail. Why are some cultures risk averse and others not? It’s simple, a leader must make you feel safe enough to take a risk and fail. Failure is not the opposite of success; it is part of success. Of course, there are lots of ways to mitigate the risk of failure, through research, preparation, rehearsals, following tried and tested systems and processes and building relationships, but ultimately whatever you are doing, at some point you have to launch the new product, step onto the stage or present your idea to a group of people. I’ve always looked at it slightly differently, there is no such thing as failure, only feedback! And feedback is a gift.
Building trust by opening up
After purpose and safety comes trust. To build trust as a leader you need to go first. What do I mean? Trust is based on opening up, saying what you feel and think, being courageous and vulnerable.
Here’s how it works. Let’s start with a regular weekly team meeting. You have six people in your team. You go around the table and ask people to provide a score out of 10 for ‘personal’ and ‘business’. You can vary these by adding or changing them. I often use ‘health and wellbeing’ as a third category and leave the ‘personal’ category for family and relationships. Everyone must also be prepared to provide a short narrative of their past week, focusing only on the biggest challenges, issues and opportunities they have faced. A simple heading for this narrative can be ‘your one big thing’. I give people between two and five minutes each, depending on the type of meeting and the number in the group. An issue, challenge or opportunity that arises is then discussed after the check in.
As the leader, you start. Your openness, courage, vulnerability and emotional exposure will set the tone for everyone else. If you score 10,10,10, then guess what, everything will appear fine, the scores will be high and you will get, as Patrick Lencioni [author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team] says, ‘artificial harmony’. You must be honest, frank and vulnerable and then others will follow. The scores in themselves will open up great opportunities for discussion. What if one of your team scores a 4 for ‘business’ or ‘personal’? This is likely to be a cry for help, which needs to be discussed either as a team or in a personal discussion following the meeting. The more you get people to open up and share their stories, the more others will care about them and feel able to challenge them about their issues.
Deeper trust is built with individuals and teams over time, in one-to-ones, over a glass of wine or coffee and on ‘retreats’ when the team relaxes a bit more. The results of developing deep levels of trust in relationships and teams is transformative. Trust allows you to put the real issues on the table, without fear of a personal dig or a roll of the eyes. Trust allows challenges to take place as people understand that it is a search for the truth, in the best interests of the team and the business. But the one overriding thing that I’ve seen trust provide individuals and teams is a feeling of authenticity, of bringing your whole self to work. Trust allows people to grow and develop, to grow closer to their teammates, to give more, to listen, and ultimately to fulfil their potential.
Ian Windle is an award-winning leadership speaker, executive coach and team excellence builder. He is also the author of The Leadership Map (Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2021).
