Last week, I introduced the second pillar in the “Four Pillars of Trauma-Informed Leadership™”, Trust. Trust can be defined as, “Choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.” (Feltman, 2021, pp. 17-18). Building trust is a two-way street. Leadership needs to demonstrate that they can be trusted for their team members to truly trust them. Only then can the team itself develop into a culture characterized by trust. That’s why this week, we’re going to start with you.
First, let’s do a quick exercise (adapted from Feltman, 2021) to unpack how you understand trust. I’d like for you to take a moment to think of someone you trust and answer the following questions:
· What is it you are willing to entrust to them that you consider valuable?
· Why do you trust them with this?
· What do the people you work with entrust to you?
· Why do you think they trust you?
Next, I want you to think about your role as a leader and answer the following questions about how trustworthy you are for your team members:
· If a new person on your team asked your manager how trustworthy you are, what do you think they would say?
· If this person asked your peers, what would they likely say?
· When you do not yet have any experience with how someone behaves, what is your usual attitude toward trusting him or her? Does it take time to build trust, or do you trust more quickly?
· Are there certain types or categories of people you tend to trust more or less? If so, what are those types?
· What criteria do you use to decide how far to trust someone when you don’t know anything about him or her?
Now grab a piece of paper and let’s do a quick survey. Use a scale of 1-10 where 10 = Can always be trusted in all situations and 1 = Can rarely or never be trusted. How do you:
1. Rate YOUR Trustworthiness
2. Rate the average trustworthiness of the people you work with as a group?
3. Rate the average trustworthiness of your immediate supervisor?
4. Rate the trustworthiness of your company’s top management in general?
5. Rate the trustworthiness of your peers in the company?
6. Rate the trustworthiness of your direct reports?
7. Rate the trustworthiness of others below your level of responsibility in the company, as a group?
Now that you have a sense of your own sense of trustworthiness, let’s dive a bit deeper into the various components of trust. In her work, Brene Brown has explored trust from a more holistic perspective, and she created the BRAVING acronym to talk about the various components of trust:
· Boundaries: These are such a significant component of trust that in the coming weeks, we will spend some time talking about the importance of boundaries as essential parts of Safety and Trust. However, in its simplest form, trust is created in a relationship when we both feel comfortable setting our individual boundaries AND we both respect each other’s boundaries. I want you to think about this for a minute – don’t you feel better with someone when you can state your boundaries and they respect them? And they are clear with you about their boundaries – there’s no ambiguity?
· Reliability: When most of us use the word “trust”, it’s likely that we are thinking about the reliability component of trust. Essentially, this means that you do what you say you’re going to do. As a trauma-informed leader, this means that when you tell someone that you are going to look into something or get an answer for them, you do it. If you cannot do it, then you probably shouldn’t promise it. This can be harder than it seems, since often as leaders, there are so many things we WANT to do, so we make those promises. This requires that you spend some time being very clear of your own competencies and limitations – whether that is knowledge, skill, time, and resources, and you stick to them. Even though it can seem like your staff want you to know everything and to respond to their concerns immediately, it is far better to take a step back and assess your current resources and adjust accordingly. This will create more opportunities for your staff to trust you and may even change the culture of your team!
· Accountability: Accountability is another component that is so layered and critical for the trauma-informed leader that we are going to spend more than one post talking about it. In general, it is important that you transparently own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends. If you can do this, it will empower your staff to do the same thing with each other, building more trust all around.
· Vault: I can’t tell you how many organizational cultures I’ve seen topple over because someone on the team shared something about someone’s personal life that they shouldn’t have. This can be related to your resident “busybody” who always seems to be “in the know” about things and tells information that they probably shouldn’t. Individuals who have experienced significant interpersonal trauma might have grown up in homes characterized by secrecy and where information was only shared through side channels. Or they might feel it’s important to share everything they hear because they DON’T want secrets. Helping our staff distinguish between what should be shared (e.g., rumors about why a leader has made a certain decision) versus what shouldn’t be shared (e.g., a personal event in a colleague’s life) is critical. Creating a culture where we don’t share (or tolerate others sharing) information that is not theirs to share is critical for developing a culture of trust.
· Integrity: In my work with leaders, most of them say that this is an area that comes easy for them. However, integrity is a tough word – something we all want to embody but is quite difficult to enact daily. If we are a leader with integrity, it means that we are willing to be uncomfortable, make tough decisions, and have difficult conversations. You have a north star for what “right” decision is, and you pursue that, even if everyone is unhappy with that decision. A leader with integrity chooses to practice their values rather than simply professing them.
· Nonjudgment: in a culture of nonjudgment, we are both able to ask for what we need without judging each other. This sounds straightforward but becomes particularly challenging if I feel like you consistently don’t carry your weight, or you feel that I am micro-managing your every move.
· Generosity: In a culture of generosity, it means that you extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others. Even if your staff person has called out sick every Monday for the past month. Sure, maybe they are “working the system”, but what if that is the best that they can do right now? Right now, I want you to take a moment and think about your MOST challenging staff member. Sit with this – do you have a picture of their face, their behavior, what is challenging for you? Now, I want you to imagine that they are doing the very best that they can. How does that change things for you? Now, I’d like to be clear that being generous doesn’t mean that we don’t discipline as needed or set boundaries. It just means that our perspective about the person has shifted and has likely created more opportunity for a real conversation.
In order to truly get a sense of where you stand on each of these components, I’d recommend that you download the BRAVING inventory and walk talk through each component and identify which ones come easy and which are most challenging. It can be helpful to do this activity with other leaders or peers so that you can discuss each component, and then think about how they apply to you. This activity can help set the stage for more discussions about trust and why it’s important.
Now that you have a sense of where you stand on each of the components of trust, it’s helpful to think about the broader practices that promote high trust leadership. Feltman (2021) has identified the following:
· Model trustworthy behavior. While this may seem obvious, it is something that leaders often forget. Your team looks for you for cues. It is up to you to show the way when it comes to being trustworthy.
· Trust your team. If you don’t fully trust them, it is up to you to lead the conversations needed to build or repair trust.
· Clear Mission and charter. Ensure your team fully understands its mission and charter – why it exists – and what it’s expected to produce.
· Be transparent. Be as transparent as you possibly can with everyone on the team. Avoid sharing certain information with only one or two team members unless it is necessary. If your team consists of some people with whom you interact regularly with in person and others who are located remotely, take extra time and effort to connect with those remote team members often.
· Decision-making. Be clear about how team decisions will be made. Are you the final decision maker? If so, what criteria will you use to make the decision? Will the team decide by consensus? Is one or a subset of the team going to decide? Lack of clarity about the decision-making process often results in at least some team members distrusting the process, the people, or both.
· Address issues quickly. Whether it is one person’s disruptive behavior, an interpersonal conflict, or anything else that distracts the team’s attention from getting good work done, it needs to be dealt with. These issues almost never go away by themselves. It is your job as a team leader to take the lead in addressing and solving them.
Now that you have a better sense of what trust means to you and your own trustworthiness as a leader, we are going to dive deeper. Next week, we’ll talk about specific strategies that you can use both with your individual direct reports and your teams more broadly to build trust.
In the meantime, is there anything you learned about yourself doing the exercises above? Feel free to share below.