The underlying foundation for any leader-follower relationship is trust.
Yet we rarely examine what we mean by that word. Trust. Nor do we talk about why it is so central to the workings of leadership, or such a critical ingredient in how our societies work.
If you don't understand trust fully, you can't properly value it, build it or protect it. Which means that ultimately you can't exercise leadership fully, nor can we create the conditions where we experience more trustworthy leadership in our lives.
So this episode is all about trust. What it actually is, the critical role it plays in leadership, and how we can cultivate more of it.
Contact Xtraordinary Leaders
1. Tweet us @XtraordinaryLe2
2. Follow us on Instagram @xtraordinary_leaders
3. Email us at interact@xtraordinaryleaders.com.au
4. Check out our website for more info Home | Xtraordinary Leaders
Take Care, Lead Well.
The underlying foundation for any leader-follower relationship is trust.
Yet we rarely examine what we mean by that word. Trust. Nor do we talk about why it is so central to the workings of leadership, or such a critical ingredient in how our societies work.
If you don't understand trust fully, you can't properly value it, build it or protect it. Which means that ultimately you can't exercise leadership fully, nor can we create the conditions where we experience more trustworthy leadership in our lives.
So this episode is all about trust. What it actually is, the critical role it plays in leadership, and how we can cultivate more of it.
Contact Xtraordinary Leaders
1. Tweet us @XtraordinaryLe2
2. Follow us on Instagram @xtraordinary_leaders
3. Email us at interact@xtraordinaryleaders.com.au
4. Check out our website for more info Home | Xtraordinary Leaders
Take Care, Lead Well.
It's not about the ordinary. We've got enough of that. It's about
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the extraordinary. And we need more.
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Hi there. I'm Gerard Penna . And welcome to the Extraordinary Leaders podcast, where we spend time with recognized leaders and global experts exploring the art and science of remarkable leadership.
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This morning, I took a look at some news sites to catch up on what's going on in the world. Here's a small selection of some newsworthy topics. And as you listen, I'll invite you to ask yourself, what do they all have in common?
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Legislation passed the Australian Senate establishing a Federal Corruption Commission.
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The former Australian PM Scott Morrison was censured in Parliament for his undemocratic act of secretly swearing himself into five different ministries. The new British PM Rishi Sunak was promising an end to the revolving door of leaders in his country. As well as a number of articles regarding the various investigations into the past actions and dealings of Donald Trump and his various organizations.
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So what do they have in common?
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Well, the answer is trust. Or more precisely, the erosion and loss of trust in leaders. And I'd invite you to consider the implication of this.
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Leadership is by definition about influencing and mobilizing people. And leadership mobilizes people most successfully when there is active engagement and followership.
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And the underlying condition of foundation for the leader follower relationship is and must be trust. Yet we really examine what we mean by that word trust. Nor do we talk about why it is so central to the workings of leadership, or why it's a critical ingredient in how our societies work. I believe that if you don't understand trust fully, you can't properly value it, build it or protect it.
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Which means that ultimately you can't exercise leadership fully. Nor can we create the conditions where we experience more trustworthy leadership in our lives. So this episode is all about trust. What it actually is. The critical role it plays in leadership and how we can cultivate more of it. I hope you enjoy it. It's going to be a good one.
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Last week I had the pleasure of a pre-Christmas lunch alongside a good friend, a senior marketing professional at a large organisation caught up in the recent spate of database hacking. Whilst my friend works with the rest of the executive team in navigating the response to the crisis, they're keenly tracking customer perceptions and attitudes towards their company. As the events unfold. Is their relationship with their many customers being damaged, perhaps irrevocably. Or is it resilient in the face of challenging circumstances? Of course, measuring customer perceptions and the levels of trust in your brand and organisation is not novel.
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Doing so in real time in the middle of a reputational crisis is. My friend shared that I measure customer trust across two distinct traits competence and character. Competence is a trait that the organisation demonstrates through its dealings with new and prospective customers. It influences customer trust. When you can demonstrate capability and reliability over time. People trust that the brand has the expertise and the resources to do what it says it will do. It's competence that has earned Qantas the trust people have that they will arrive safely at their destination or that the new Mercedes you bought is well engineered and reliable.
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Character traits influence customer trust by shaping their perception of the brand's interests and intentions. Does the company's intentions align with the best interests of the customer, or do they appear out to serve only themselves? Take the data hacking crisis as an example. Did the company immediately advise their customers of the hacking incident so that they could take precautionary action? And did they take immediate responsibility? And through the actions of the company, did it appear that they had their customers best interests at heart? Or were they slow to share the news, worried the bad news would affect their sales and share price? In other words, did their intentions appear aligned with their customers best interests?
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I was struck by the parallels with Trust in Leadership, where the same two factors have such a large impact. Trust of intentions and trust in competence. First, can I trust their intentions? And second, as a leader, do you have my best interests at heart? Now, if we mistrust the intentions of the leader, we'll be wary of that leader, and their motivations will likely protect ourselves and be on the lookout for self-serving actions.
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The second question Can I trust your competence is really a question of. Do you know what you're doing as my leader? And if we mistrust the competence of the leader, we worry that they don't know what they're doing. And we can never fully back their judgment or their actions.
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In my book Extraordinary The Art and Science of Remarkable Leadership, I wrote about the scientific research that revealed that our brains are hard wired to make these trust assessments in milliseconds. And that's because when meeting strangers, we historically required this split second judgment to survive potentially risky situations.
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Our brain is compelled to ask, What are your intentions towards me? And do you have the competence to carry out those intentions? Because should we meet a person with hostile intentions and they appear capable of carrying them out? Our brain needs to immediately put us on alert.
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Our brain evaluates the intentions of the other person based on very limited data, usually what it sees on their face and through body language within 1/10 of a second. So it makes that judgment about intentions within 1/10 of a second and reasonably quickly thereafter. The assessment of the individual's competence occurs with a bet within about 3/10 of a second. In either case, it's within less time than it takes for you to blink your eyes. So these compelling assessments, judgments made of other people based on limited data are made incredibly fast and usually below our consciousness.
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We're not aware of them as if they were just instinctual.
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Keep in mind that these initial first impressions of others intentions are broad brush, though our brain really is just making a binary, safe, dangerous, green light red light assessment. Diagnosing other people's intentions at a finer level is performed in our brains by our theory of mind mechanism. It's a capacity we developed by the age of four, and it helps us predict what is going on in someone else's mind based on what they're saying or what they're doing. In Australia, we call it our bullshit detector.
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It's a finely tuned thing. It's this mind reading mechanism that helps us answer an important question when we engage with others, especially our leaders. Can I trust that what you are saying is what you really mean? Or is there something else at play here that I need to be wary of? Can I really trust you?
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And so the question of trust inevitably appears in any robust or serious examination of leadership. And that's because the leader follower relationship is a contract underpinned by trust, and it's a contract that allows our societies to work the way that they do.
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The basic leader follow a contract in our society is based on an exchange.
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The follower authorizes the leader to exercise power over certain aspects of their lives. In return, the leader provides a service that the follower values. Writ large. This is what happens between citizens and national leaders of government. We, the people, authorize our national leaders to make laws that govern our daily lives and regulate the society within which we live. In return. We expect our government leaders to provide a stable, safe and prosperous system in which we can live and work.
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Even in the workplace, this kind of contract exists. The employee gives the employer the power to direct their actions for several hours a day. In return, the boss provides a service such as allocation of interesting or meaningful work. Payment of wages. Provision of development opportunities. And so on.
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We invest our time, energy and emotions into leaders who appear capable and interested in giving us what we desire. Whether that's a vision for a better life or protection from our greatest fears. When we vest in them, we are giving them power over us. And in return, we expect them to fulfill their part of the contract. And deliver a service.
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In many ways, the leader a follower contract is mutually self serving. The leader gets the support from others to do what they want or need to do, and the follower gets their needs met. And as long as we trust each other to fulfill our part of the bargain, we're usually happy to keep renewing that leader follower contract. However, the contract with our leaders can always be rescinded if we lose trust in our leader's competence or their intentions. We can rescind the contract and we can retract the authority over us that we have given them.
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In fact, in democratic countries, we do this every few years by holding elections. It's a relatively peaceful way to render our judgment on the performance of our current batch of leaders. If they're not fulfilling the contract to our satisfaction, we simply vote out the old leaders and we vote in some new leaders in whom we have a higher level of trust and give them a go for a while.
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Have you noticed that political attack advertisements target these two versions of trustworthiness? That those on the left can't be trusted because they're incompetent. And the Conservatives can't be trusted because they're heartless.
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I suspect that the question of trust was at the heart of Scott Morrison's recent electoral defeat. This morning I listened to an interview with the journalist Niki Savva, author of Bulldozed the Fall of Scott Morrison and Rise of Anthony Albanese. As she recounted the well-documented actions and statements of our former prime minister. I couldn't help but recognize the hallmarks of a leader who appeared overly self-interested. He's perceived resistance to an anti-corruption commission. A visible lack of commitment on the energy transition.
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An absence of genuine action on gendered violence. And then ultimately the revelations that he'd given himself ministerial powers in five additional areas without declaring it publicly.
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I often heard people from different sides of the political divide describe him as the king of spin.
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That what he was saying was for public consumption. It wasn't what he really believed.
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Scott Morrison, I believe, was a prime minister whose intentions were ultimately judged as self-serving, and he was subsequently outed from that top job. Of course, the leader follow a contract can also be torn up in non-democratic countries, although the process can be more violent and dangerous. We see this going on in Iran at the moment, increasing protests against the regime. People not following the orders of authorities, the very leaders that they had previously empowered to direct their lives. This may very well end up in revolution and an uprising of the people where they'd rip up the leader follower contract.
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This has happened many times in human civilization with the French Revolution and the American Revolution as some of the best known examples. It's also happened in more recent times in places like Egypt, Sudan, Serbia, Syria and even Ukraine. And the story I'm about to tell you of the Christmas revolution in Romania in the winter of 1989 is especially instructive in what happens when trust is lost in leadership.
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It was a very public moment that the leader follow a contract with rescinded. And it was caught on tape. For over 20 years. The communist regime headed by Nikolai Suse, who had ruled in Romania when Romania seceded from the Soviet bloc in 1964. It paved the way for Nicolae Ceaușescu to become the country's leader. Initially, he was applauded as the repressive rule of the Soviets was relaxed. However, as is often the case when leaders are in power for too long, things can turn bad for the people.
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Endemic corruption. The violent repression of people by the security police and the rapidly declining living standard led to a series of protests around the country in the late 1980s. On December 17, 1989, there was a particularly bloody clash between protesters and the authorities in the town of Timisoara.
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Nicolae Ceaușescu could see that he needed to quell the dissent. He needed to reassert his authority and regain control. So he organized to make a highly choreographed public speech in the main square of the capital, Bucharest, on December 21.
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On the day the square was full of tens of thousands of people. And it was televised live. Ceaușescu stood with his wife, Olina, who was the deputy leader of the party, and other senior figures on the balcony as he began to speak. Ceaușescu spoke for a few minutes and then a low noise was captured by the TV cameras and microphones, and it slowly grew in volume. And after a while the sound became more distinct and discernable. It was the crowd booing.
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Nicolae Ceaușescu can be heard over the TV microphones. They're confused and they're uncertain what is going on. They know that in this moment they are losing their authority to lead the people because the people no longer trust them. The leader follow A contract is being torn up.
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It's a stunning moment captured on live television and broadcast to the nation. Immediately afterwards, protests erupted right around the country and the military rank and file deserted the regime and swapped sides. This is excuse fled, but they were captured, trialed and executed.
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Now, your day job may not involve leading a whole country. But nonetheless, in your day job, if it involves leadership, it's still dependent on trust. Whether it's a project you're running, a proposal you're making, or a debate that you're having. Your ability to mobilize people and engage them in supporting you and your leadership agenda is especially dependent on trust.
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Research by the psychologist Amy Cuddy. Susan Fierce competitor Glick showed that the extent to which people trust your intentions and trust your competence can have significant effects on their followership behaviour.
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Where they trust in you in both areas. People are more likely to go out of their way to support you.
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Where trust in you, in either your competence or your intentions is lower. People are likely to be only lukewarm to you and what you're trying to achieve. Well, they may be mildly resistant.
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And if trust is absent, especially in your intentions, it can even lead to people going out of their way to sabotage you or your efforts.
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I have my own personal experience of not being fully trusted by others. And the impact it had on their willingness to support me. And at the time I didn't really understand what was going on.
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As I've progressed in my career, my career, and understand more clearly about the role of trust in leadership, I've been able to develop, I think, a more helpful and sobering assessment of what really went on.
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I was in my twenties. I was working in a global consulting organization. I'd been performing pretty well and I'd been anointed into the global high potential program. That is, I was being earmarked as a potential future managing director of the Australian business or something similar to that.
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The world in many ways was my oyster.
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When I look back on the way that I was being successful, it was largely based on competence. I worked very hard. I valued knowledge and contribution and effort and diligence. And I think I pretty much expected that of other people, too. I had an identity, a way of being in the world, which was largely based on working hard and being smart. There was an aspect of how I operated that was missing, though that didn't help my leadership. I wasn't as concerned about my relationships with others.
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I invested in doing the work and I invested in acquiring knowledge and competence. But I didn't invest in the relationships I had with others. I didn't go out of my way to spend time with people. I often wasn't present at the social events that are necessary to lubricate the relationships that exist within working groups. I was often working at clients on site, and when I had a choice to be on client site or to be back at the office, I often chose the client site. And it was no wonder when we had a change of senior leadership in our organization that the new leaders went through the process of trying to understand who we all were and who were the future senior leaders.
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And even though I was on this list, they still went around and spoke to other people about each of those people who are in the high potential program.
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Sometime later, when one of the most senior positions in the organization became vacant. And I thought I would have been a good chance of getting that role, I wasn't even considered. I was a bit stunned and shocked by this, and I approached the managing director at the time to have a conversation with him about why that was. And he shared with me that he'd spoken to a number of my colleagues within the organisation and that whilst they applauded my capability and my contribution. They did make a number of comments about my lack of connection.
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That I didn't appear interested in engaging with them.
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I thought at the time it was just sour grapes that other people were jealous.
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But I was wrong. Some years later. Now I understand what was really at play. My decision to not spend time with people do not value those relationships and to not invest in them was of inevitably sending a signal to others that I wasn't interested in them, that I was only interested in results or only interested in myself. That hardly made me good material to be a leader. And whilst it was a painful experience and one I now look back on with some level of shame and embarrassment, it was an essential lesson that I needed to learn.
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If people don't trust your intentions towards them. How can they trust your leadership? How can they engage willingly in the act of followership?
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I've seen this same phenomena play out many times now in my career, working with leaders who ultimately are being stymied by a lack of undeclared trust in either their competence or in their intentions. And often the work initially, the difficult work for them is to understand what's really apply here.
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But not only can it get in the way of the individual leaders progressing with their agenda, being able to enlist, support, mobilize others, or even enlist other support for their own leadership, career progressions and ambitions. It can also affect how leaders work together at a peer level.
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And I've seen how this lack of trust in either competence or intentions can affect the way in which groups work together or struggle to do so. I've seen this firsthand. He's an example. Several years ago, I was asked to work with the National Basketball League and their partner, Basketball Australia. Basketball Australia used to run the National Basketball League. But unfortunately, owing to some commercial decisions and some financial consequences and Basketball Australia were unable to continue to run the National Basketball League, and so they sold the rights to it.
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These rights were bought by a businessman by the name of Larry Kesselman. Larry was the former founder of Dodo Internet, which he had subsequently sold for quite a large sum of money. And he had a very large property development business amongst a number of investments in two high tech companies, disruption companies. Larry was a very capable and very competent businessman who knew how to create a marketable commercial success, and he'd set out to do that with the National Basketball League.
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Basketball Australia is the governing body for basketball in our country. They're responsible for managing the Olympic teams, managing many of the competitions except for the National Basketball League. Basketball Australia at a board level is made up of some very competent people, but they engage as volunteers. Their principal interest is the sport, not in making money. And here in Lied
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, the rub. The National Basketball League and Basketball Australia were experiencing friction between the two organisations.
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They were struggling to see eye to eye and to work together for the betterment of the sport as a whole.
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And both organizations knew that if that status quo remained, the sport would not be able to flourish. And so Larry Kesselman and Ned Kotin, the chairman of Basketball Australia, reached out to me to see if I could help them come together.
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I set out by interviewing several members of the board, Basketball Australia and a number of senior leaders from the National Basketball League. And what became apparent to me very quickly was that at the core, at the heart of the issues that they were having was a lack of trust. Part of it was driven by stereotypes, unfortunate and unhelpful and in some ways untrue. The stereotype of the National Basketball League was of a very commercial, profit driven organisation that was principally interested in making money, not really in the development of the sport across the country as a whole.
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From the other side, Basketball Australia looked like a well-meaning, well-intentioned group of volunteers who weren't able to make the tough and hard decisions that would enable the sport to succeed, particularly at the National Basketball League level. And it was these perceptions that were creating the rub. On one side, they didn't trust the competence of the other group. On the other side, they didn't fully trust the intentions of the other group. And the absence of trust meant that the real conversations weren't able to occur.
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The genuinely authentic, open, transformative, candid conversations were unable to occur. And no groups can work together in the absence of those conditions. Well, at least not work together well. Fortunately, these leaders were courageous and they were committed to the betterment of the sport. So with that mutual interest at heart, they were able to start to build trust in each other through a series of activities and exercises which were designed to do so. And over time, they started to learn to trust each other, work together collaboratively, and pursue a shared purpose of the sport of basketball thriving in Australia.
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And I'm pleased that the sport of basketball in Australia is thriving. Very well. Thank you very much.
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But it's a salient lesson in the importance of trust in relationships, particularly when we need to engage others in a willingness to follow our leadership. So a big question therefore must be how do we build trust and not erode it?
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There's a number of things that you can do. And what I'd like to do is summarize a few key ideas for you. The first is pay attention to how you show up. Because your trustworthiness is assessed in milliseconds. If you appear to be uninterested in others or their needs, your intentions may be quickly judged as self-serving. The stakes are pretty high with first impressions, because a negative assessment of your intentions can be a difficult one to reverse over time. In other words, you may not get a second chance to make a first impression.
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The second tip is to be authentic. Allow the real you to show up. When people feel that they know the real you, warts and all, they can trust who you are. And as a result of that, they can make more generous interpretations of your intent. Rather than hostile ones. The third tip is be open and honest. Give people the full picture. Share the news, whether it's good, bad or ugly. If you try and hide or sugarcoat anything, their bullshit detector will pick up on it.
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And it might decide that you're self-serving. You're self-interested, and you don't really care about them.
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The fourth idea is have integrity. And this is particularly important for building trust in your competence. Do what you say you will do. Deliver on promises. Don't make commitments that you can't keep.
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A key idea that I took away from the basketball experience was that you need to recognize that you may represent a stereotype. What you're interested in, the experience that you have, the track record that you've got might cause you to show up much stronger in other people's minds in terms of competence or in terms of your intentions. And you might need to battle that stereotype. You may need to deliberately amplify aspects of yourself that play to the other area of trust.
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And understand that people also have biases or different levels of concern for each type of trust. For example, one I've worked with public service or non-government organizations or not for profits, I find that they pay a lot of attention to the question of your intentions. Our intention is to serve the common good. When I work in corporations, particularly commercial profit making organizations, they are often very concerned about the question of are you competent? Can they trust that you know what you're doing? And what I've discovered is that I need to adjust how I show up and how I approach them.
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To better meet their needs. Because you can't lead people from where you are. You have to connect with them where they are and then mobilize them and influence them to move where they need to get to. But the starting point has to be where they're at.
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And if people believe that you understand where they're at.
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They're much more likely to trust you.
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If you'd like to invest in your own growth as a leader or that of someone that you know, you'll be pleased to know that we have a public program kicking off in early April next year. Feel free to reach out to us at interact at extraordinary leaders dot com that are you if you'd like to pre-register for the program or you'd like to go on the mailing list for us to keep you updated about this program or other offerings from extraordinary leaders. I hope that you and the people that you care about have been able to enjoy the festive season and take a break.
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Recover, replenish and rejuvenate. Take care. Lead well.