I start writing a draft of this article sitting in an aeroplane. As I entered through the front door I had a look into the cockpit. The complexity of clocks and controls seemed to a layman impossible to master. It would have been a good time to pop in and ask the commander for his aircraft pilot’s certificate and an alcohol and drug test, but i didn’t. Have I done wrong?
So far all my visits to hospitals have been as a companion, but last year I had to have a cholecystectomy. They say it is a simple operation. Well, in fact they gave me a cocktail of drugs that made me unconscious, they made four holes in my belly and inserted cameras and forceps through them and blew carbon dioxide until I was inflated like a float. All this without me checking the diploma of the surgeon in charge or the anaesthetist.
Last week a fixed-term deposit where I had (or thought I had) some modest savings expired. I opened another one in another bank that will give me (or so I think) better interest. Now my savings are (or should be) in Portugal. The truth is that I have never seen the money. Will it be there when I need it?
We could go on and on with a long list of examples. We continually put our health, our wealth or our lives in the hands of others because we trust them. We trust professionals we don’t even know personally. Then, why do we distrust our employee, our partner, our company?
A sales manager installs vehicle tracking systems in the fleet to ensure that salespeople actually go where they say they are going during their working time.
One manager is radically opposed to teleworking. He fears that employees at home will be scattered around drinking coffee or watching videos, rather than working.
A group of employees are reluctant to adopt changes requested by their line manager because they fear that the plan will lead to failure.
A team member does not share his ideas and knowledge with a more junior new recruit for fear of being replaced or rendered irrelevant.
But that sales manager, director, employee or colleague does not hesitate to trust his bank, his surgeon, his airline pilot. How can this contradiction be explained? Why is it that almost all of us trust in high-risk situations, but some people are reluctant to trust in everyday situations?
It is probably a question of alternatives. They trust when they have no choice. When there is an alternative, some people choose to distrust.
It is irrational behaviour. With a little self-observation they might find that situations they trust usually end well, while the daily mistrust they exercise and sow in their working environment only creates discomfort, inefficiency and more mistrust.
Literature and comedies portray trusting people as naive, and distrustful people as Smart. Reality is not like that. In real life, the greater a person’s critical thinking skills and self-confidence, the more comfortable they tend to feel in trasting the right people. And it is the most incompetent people who are most prone to extreme mistrust.
Many of the dysfunctional situations we see in organisations are due to environments of distrust. Working in the absence of trust can be one of the most frustrating and sterile experiences in our professional lives. If this is the case for the company or team you lead, nothing is more urgent than changing that environment. Selling, teamwork and leadership start with creating trusting environments.
How to gain the trust of others?
Team leaders, salespeople and collaborative professionals benefit if they develop trust learning skills. Here is a simple (not easy) three-step method for that.
1.- Trust
The first thing we can do to receive trust is to give trust. For them to trust you, trust them first.
Trust is not a finite magnitude, which is lost when given. Like human warmth, when we give it to each other, we generate more.
Trusting is a decision. Decide to believe that the people you have surrounded yourself with will behave according to their promises. Then act on that assumption. You will take a risk, of course, and there will be times when they will let you down. There is no such thing as absolute certainty. But controlled and reasonable risk is worth it.
Economist and psychologist Paul J. Zac has studied the neuroscience of trust, and the role of oxytocin in trust. As almost every mother knows, oxytocin is the hormone that accelerates childbirth. Perhaps less well known, it also stimulates collaboration, care and empathy. Yes, we can say that a molecule makes us better. Zac found that the level of oxytocin increases when we receive trust, and that an increased level of oxytocin predisposes us to give trust. In practice, this means that a group that receives trust is more likely to trust. And, consequently, they are also more involved, more satisfied with their work, more energetic and at less risk of stress or burnout.
2.- Accept vulnerability
A collaborative team needs a climate of mutual trust, and that is only possible if all members dare to recognise their vulnerability.
In The Five Dysfunctions of Teams, Patrick Lencioni wisely elaborates on this theme. For Lencioni, trust is the first step towards building an excellent team. The pretence of invulnerability is a symptom of a lack of trust.
When we trust, we show our vulnerability knowing it will not be used against us. We can expect help from the group to compensate or correct our weakness. When we don’t trust, we strive to appear perfect. This titanic effort is exhausting, blocks cooperation, and is a useless effort. Nobody believes the person who always pretends to be invulnerable.
If you are the leader of that team, there are two things you can do to achieve a trusting environment. First, start by acknowledging your own vulnerability. Second, make sure that you never punish anyone who asks for help, anyone who acknowledges mistakes, anyone who admits to an area of ignorance or fear. Make sure you unblock the recognition of vulnerabilities.
3.- Say what you do, do what you say.
There is a trick for appearing sincere: be sincere.
When you can’t share information, say you can’t share it. When you are asked for an opinion, give it, even if it is unpopular. When you make a decision that is criticised, explain your reasons. And when you promise something, keep your promise. Or try to do it to the best of your ability and, if you still can’t, apologise.
Good salespeople know this. Customers buy when they trust. We need the customer’s trust on a personal level, but also their trust in our brand and in our company’s behaviours. The PWC reports show an interesting view of how CEOs are concerned about the decline in buyer confidence in their businesses.
And there is a trick to gain trust: deserve it.
It is by practising the above three steps on a daily basis that you can create an environment of mutual trust around you. And only in such an environment can work be productive, enriching and enjoyable.
None of the above three steps is improvised from one day to the next. As Simon Sinek says, building relationships based on trust takes time. You can avoid making the process even longer by not taking any steps backwards. But you can take no shortcuts. That is why leadership based on impatience and short-term view is incompatible with building trust.
Bad times for trust
Everything we do in community is based on trust, and without trust life would stop.
In fact, in 2008 life got paralized in a crisis of confidence. The greatest recession of the 21st century was the result of a breach of trust by large banks and financial institutions. Unscrupulous bankers betrayed the trust of their customers and investors by selling subprime mortgages that they could not collect. Toxic mortgages were packaged and sold to other banks to raise finance. When someone discovered that a castle of trust was being built on a false foundation, they decided to withdraw their trust. All the pieces of the global dominoes fell until the world economy collapsed.
For many of us it was an accelerated learning experience about how the new capitalism is not based on money, which does not exist, but on trust.
It was painful and time-consuming to rebuild financial confidence.
With political trust it can be even more difficult. When the rulers of democratic states fail to deliver on their promises and lack integrity, voters look to populist and illiberal options as punishment. The current rise of democratically elected leaderships that ignore basic principles of international legality and human rights is a worrying illustration of what happens when people lose confidence in the system.
In recent years, we are witnessing a distrust of information. The way the information ecosystem is organized today makes it possible for us to be bombarded with fake news. It seems to be increasingly less valued whether something is true or not. The only thing that matters is what emotions a piece of news generates. There are networks whose algorithms have been able to manage post-truth in a smart way to maximize political benefit for their owners.
I am of the opinion that the world is changed by small gestures. I don’t know how much we can influence this global state of distrust, but we can create micro-environments of trust around us. Unlike those politicians we criticise, or the spreaders of hoaxes, we can earn the trust of our followers. In three steps.
Not sure if we will change the world, but we will be better leaders, better partners, better salespersons.