Trust in Trust
I have lately been thinking a lot about the very simple yet complicated and sometimes elusive concept of trust. What got me started was noticing more “slippery” candidate behavior in the markets in which I work than I could previously recall. People making commitments then backing out of those commitments. This is to be expected in a tight labor market where there is a war for top executive talent, but it seems to have hit a fever pitch recently.
Then I rediscovered an essay I wrote in high school where the prompt was to break down the essence of leadership. It was part of some national contest being put on by a non-profit organization I cannot recall.
I re-read my essay, chuckling a bit to myself at some of the word choices that skipped off the page from my seventeen year-old self. I paused to admire the audacity (and optimism) of the since-forgotten organization for assuming that a bunch of kids would and could tackle such a huge topic in just a few hundred words. I also tried to recall where I got hold of a typewriter to write up my entry; this was during the pre-PC epoch.
My essay’s thesis was that leadership begins with trust, and that the two ingredients necessary for a leader to gain trust were the frequency and tone of the leader’s communication (words) coupled with the leader’s example-setting (actions). The best leaders were highly trusted and thus were the ones who had the most consistency between what they said and what they did. I used a couple of brief anecdotes from teachers and coaches I knew to illustrate my points.
Pretty simplistic, I thought on the day I re-read the piece, but not bad.
Sitting here many years later, having been a student of leadership for much of that time, having read books and taken courses on leadership, having had some opportunities to lead and coach teams and be a parent, having evaluated and assessed senior leaders for a large part of my career, I find myself really appreciating the simplicity of the argument put forth by my teen self.
I would probably add some things to the paper if I were writing it now. Like how great leaders and coaches often impart purpose or vision or plans or even just rules that others buy into. Or how great leaders are flexible and adaptable, with an ability to be exceptional improvisers when their plans go awry. Or how great leaders tend to exhibit the perfect blend of confidence and humility in their character make-up. Or how great leaders do not need all the credit and glory.
But I keep returning to this notion of trust. When I wrote my paper, trust seemed to me to be the meta concept of leadership.
The great leader or coach (or parent) who has the great plan, vision or set of rules that others buy into — those buyer-inners buy in because they trust that person with the plan.
The master improviser knows that all great improvisations, whether in comedy or music or art or business or politics, hinge on trust. Some new situation or disruption appears, and the person on the receiving end (who may not even be considered an “official” leader), instead of fighting the situation accepts it, and not only accepts it but adapts and starts to build a new, better future. This acceptance, this yes, and approach, is the embodiment of trust — in the unknown, and in the idea that others might be inspired to perform similarly.
I recall the context in which I wrote that essay when I was 17. A few years earlier, my dad had told us he needed to separate from our family for a period of time. This was devastating for me since until that moment, dad was the person I trusted most in the world, and the reasons behind his separation from us more than challenged that trust. Thankfully, mom was a master improviser. She adapted to the situation and somehow made our world even better. Eventually, the whole family reunited and healed.
Trust is so simple and complicated at the same time. So concrete and yet elusive. It can take forever to build and then vanish in an instant.
Consider these scenarios -
- Someone you know and perhaps love sends you a nasty, hateful message in an email, text or on social media, something they never would have said in person.
- You make what you think is a funny, slightly off-color remark out of earshot of someone, but it turns out you were not out of earshot and what you said proves to be hurtful to that individual.
- You and a few of your co-horts have a special “pre-meeting” before an important meeting or gathering, which creates a dynamic where some of the participants in the real meeting feel blindsided by what now feels like a new sub-group commandeering the agenda.
- You make a promise to an individual or group that you cannot keep, and you never acknowledge the failure.
These are just a few ways that trust routinely gets eroded or completely destroyed in our small worlds and in the larger world around us. Can you look at your life and say you have never been guilty of any of these kinds of behaviors? Or that you have never been on the receiving end? I cannot, and I think I am thought of by people who know me as a pretty trustworthy individual.
Can you think of anyone in your life whom you trust absolutely and completely, and where that trust has never once been violated? If you are lucky, you have at least one person who fits that description. I feel fortunate to have several such people in my life today, and my late mom was another. It’s a high bar to chin when you really consider the question. If we live long enough, there is a high likelihood we will experience small or large breaks in trust with even our closest friends and family members.
I went to a great talk a couple years ago given by Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. He talked about his views on the four ingredients necessary to change society: the power of proximity; the willingness to change narratives; the importance of remaining hopeful (“hope is our superpower” were his words); and the willingness to do things that are uncomfortable or inconvenient.
(Author’s note: I wish I had heard Mr. Stevenson speak before I wrote that simplistic essay in 1983.)
When I think about relationships in my life where there has been a break in trust, caused by me or someone else, the ideas from my simple essay seem to apply. I lost trust in someone (or they lost trust in me) because something went wrong in the tone or frequency of our communication, and/or because one of us started behaving in ways that were inconsistent with what we said we believed.
But when I overlay Stevenson’s four ingredients for change, it is possible to see the path to the restoration of trust.
In the case of my dad, I learned the incredibly hopeful lesson that broken trust can be regained. It happened slowly and steadily, over the course of decades in fact. My dad was not a great verbal communicator, but as he got older he let the consistency of his actions do his talking. He and I (and my mom and siblings) invested a lot of time seeing each other, so proximity played a critical role in our evolution. There were a few moments and conversations over the years that were uncomfortable and inconvenient, but we soldiered on with hope of a better future for our relationship.
My children only ever knew my dad as a trustworthy figure, perhaps one of the most trustworthy people they’ve ever known. And I got back to a place where I trusted my dad fully and completely long before he died. The narrative changed.
Probing further into the notion of proximity worries me a bit, given how we live in an increasingly virtual world where proximity can feel harder to attain. Perhaps it just needs to be redefined.
No matter your views on the definition of proximity, it is easier to violate trust, or to never develop trust in the first place, in situations where two parties do not feel much of a connection to one another or have never met. This is the root cause of some of the recent candidate behavior I mentioned at the top, and it dawns on me that perhaps the “slipperiness” I referenced is not the fault of the candidates but my own fault for not working hard enough to develop a trust-based, more proximate conversation in its earliest stage.
I am going to keep pondering trust.
When it is all over for me, I want to know that I was trusted by those closest to me. I think this means I will need to seek out and embrace more proximity to others in my life, not less. And remain hopeful. And be willing to challenge or change narratives that do not seem accurate, in addition to engaging in activities and conversations that might be uncomfortable or inconvenient. Most of all, I need to stay vigilantly focused on managing that space between words and actions, ideally causing it to disappear.
I’m going to trust in trust. And hope it leads to more yes, and…..
Jeff Constable
9.23.2021
Song Recommendation(s)
One of my music highlights in the last month was the release of the album, How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? by Big Red Machine, a band introduced to me by my son. The songs feature a multitude of incredible musicians and varying musical genres. The entire album is worth listening to but my favorite song is Easy to Sabotage, which is a description that can be applied to so many aspects of our lives, and almost nothing is easier to sabotage than trust.
