Session 6 Studio Notes:
Granting Trust
This is the first of four sessions on trust. There will be other topics spaced in between to give you the opportunity to work on trust for 16 consecutive weeks. (Now there's an opportunity for mastery!) Why this much time? Trust is the foundation of all successful teams.
Some teams can take whatever time is necessary to build that foundation. We don't have that luxury on project teams. Project teams are formed and then dispersed once the goal is accomplished. On many teams, people come and go as the work demands. This changing team make-up poses additional challenges for maintaining and building trust. Project leaders must learn to produce trust expediently and build trust throughout the project life to deliver successful projects.
Let's start our work together by taking the trust test!
http://www.thetrustedleader.com/test.html
The most gracious act we take is trusting another.
Trust is the foundation of leadership.
One of the most important lessons a leader can learn is how trust works. To me, it is a little like earning and spending pocket change. Each time you make a good leadership decision you put change into your pocket. Each time you make a poor one, you have to pay out some of your change to the people.
Trusting others is the path to project success.
We can't do projects by ourself. Projects by definition take more than one person. Some of those people may be strangers. If we can't do a project by ourself and we have to do them with strangers, then we must trust and produce trust to be successful.
Granting others our trust is the key act for getting more done than we can do ourselves. (Ok, that's obvious. But trusting is NOT obvious.) Trust is a compound assessment of someone's capacity to perform for you.1 Trust is four assessments in one:
- When we say, "I trust" we are acknowledging a person's competence to perform successfully in a domain of action.
- Granting trust also means that the person has shown a pattern of reliability in performing as promised. This is different from the first assessment in that while someone may be competent, the person might not follow-thru.
- Next, we grant trust when a person acts on our concerns or interests as his own. One needs to be involved in another's life before the person will make that assessment.
- Last, we grant trust to those who appear sincere. Notice the word 'appear'. We can't know that someone is sincere or insincere. We only have signs that an individual's private thoughts are consistent with their public statements.
The book The Trusted Leader presents a similar set of four aspects for trusting as an equation2.
T = C + R + I
S
- Where:
- T = trust
- C = credibility
- R = reliability
- I = intimacy
- S = self-orientation
Try rating yourself with the equation. Use values from 1 - 10 for each of the variables. The maximum trust index would be 30, (10+10+10)/1, with a minimum score of 0.3, (1+1+1)/10
Trust is specific to a domain of action. (Sorry for the jargon.) I might trust you to look after my house, but not trust you to look after my 17 year-old son who has been acting out (hypothetically speaking). Competence, reliability, and sincerity in one domain don't necessarily transfer to other domains.
When we grant trust we do so with some confidence that our trust is well-placed. Of course we can't know that our trust is well-placed. We can, however, be prudent in granting trust. We are prudent when we ground our assessments of trust. Think of grounding as the explanation, not proof, that the assessment is appropriate. Good explanations (grounding) include clear standards for assessment, a specific domain of action, the concern we have for that domain of action, observations of the person acting in that domain, and perhaps tentative actions.
Start laying a new foundation
(T)alking about trust is essential to building trust. Even if talking about trust can be awkward or uncomfortable, it is only by talking about trust and trusting that trust can be created, maintained, and restored...trust is a matter of conscientious choice.
| Studio Drills |
Week 1: Assessing Competence
As you go about your week, make a point of considering the competence of three people who are performing for you or who are in roles of importance on your project. For each person answer the question, What gives me confidence that this person can perform the job?
You may not be competent yourself in the role that you are assessing. For instance, the person you are assessing might require a technical competence that is unfamiliar to you. How do you assess competence in that situation? Write the assessments of competence for all three people. You are doing this for yourself, not to be sent to your coach.
Send a short progress report (email) to your coach describing:
- What surprises you in this exercise?
- What you are learning
- What you notice you are good at
- Where you will put your attention in the next week
Week 2: Assessing Reliability
We gain confidence in others fulfilling their promises by watching them fulfill promises. You might have people on your project that have worked with you before. For these people you have clear data to support your assessment of reliability. How do you assess reliability for people who are new to your project or new to you?
Remember that assessments are never true or false, they are only useful or not useful. As you make these assessments of reliability, construct your assessment so that it is useful to you, to the performer, and to others on the team who rely on the performer.
Send a progress report to your coach as described above.
Week 3: Assessing Concern for Your Concerns
How is it that we know others care about us? Solomon and Flores say we know by their interaction or involvement in our lives. Galford and Drapeau say it is in the level of intimacy that we have in our relationship with that person. Either way, we can't know for sure. We can only have an opinion.
Make assessments of three more people. Describe how you are comfortable (or not) in counting on these people to take care of you (and the client) as they go about their role on your project. Be specific. Write out the assessment.
Send a progress report to your coach as described above.
Week 4: Assessing Sincerity
When our public conversation is congruent with our private thoughts or private conversation then we are said to be sincere. What signs do you notice that people are being sincere? Assess three people on your team on their sincerity for performing their role on the project.
Send a progress report to your coach as described above.
|
Hal and Greg
|