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Trusting Just Right

TEAMWISDOM INVITATION

Learning to trust just right can make any relationship better. Although trust is something that is hard to establish and even harder to maintain, it is arguably the most vital resource a company has to draw upon in order to support and sustain long-term working relationships in the new economy. Trust may be the most critical component of global business, for instance.

It’s a simple, hard truth. When we are working in teams, no matter how carefully we plan, lack of trust can sabotage our success. Over the course of my career, I have learned that people motivated by accomplishments are the least likely to conceal their agenda, and so, are the most likely to deserve our trust. I tend to trust people motivated by accomplishments more than people motivated by personal ambition.

Experienced leaders can usually tell when people are working on the basis of hidden agendas. But not always. Some people are able to hide their agendas even when those agendas demand that the person work against team goals. Oftentimes, these people believe their agenda is more important than the group’s agenda, and their failure to communicate this belief can be devastating to a group’s success. When someone has ambitions contrary to the group’s goals, the group can’t afford to allow that person to participate in a collaborative environment. That person could compromise the environment for everyone.

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It’s my belief that people who trust freely are those who have established a sense of personal security. Because they are not driven by fear, they are not as worried about getting hurt. They can share rewards, for instance, instead of requiring that all the rewards go to themselves. It’s not that these people haven’t had their trust violated. People who trust freely and wisely don’t build relationships around the exception; they build them around the rule. Most people are trustworthy; most people have integrity; most people want to be a part of a team.

I measure trust by my ability to have what I call “tough conversations” with a person. We all enjoy the feel-good conversations with peers and subordinates in which we praise each other. But working effectively with others requires more than just praising each other. For people to really trust each other, each person needs to know that being able to have “tough conversations” is part of having a good relationship.

Applying the ideas about trust in this chapter will make you both a more trusting and more trustable member of any team, any time, anywhere.

Trust me. This is good stuff.

JOHN W. GIBSON, JR.
Chief Executive Officer
Landmark Graphics Corporation

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Trust Reflects Responsibility

Want more trust in your life? Consider this: We think of trust as something that only happens between particular people for particular reasons. But, if trust exists only between people, how do we explain those all-trusting persons who seem able to trust everybody all the time? Are they naive? Or have they got something figured out? I think they have got something figured out.

From my vantage point, folks who trust everybody all the time have figured out that trust depends on more than interpersonal dynamics: it’s also an intra-personal event. Whether we trust others or not actually has less to do with others than it does with our ability to respond to what others do. And this is true not just sometimes, but every time we trust. Trust isn’t simply a product of a good relationship between two or more people, it’s a product of what’s happening inside of you, too.

As you focus on teamwork as an individual skill, you will find the level of trust you are able to achieve in a relationship reflects the level of your individual response-ability. That is, the more you are able to respond to the actions of others, the more you are likely to trust them. As your ability to respond grows, then, your trust in others will grow as well. In the end, how much you trust others is really a reflection of how much you trust yourself.

It might help to explain this complicated observation with a personal example. For three years, I turned down repeated requests to teach Sunday School to toddlers at my church. My justification was “I specialize in teaching adults.” The truth was, however, that I didn’t trust a roomful of two-year-olds. I didn’t know what they would do. I finally admitted the truth to myself and confronted the fear of not knowing what a room full of two-year-olds might do. After I examined the possibilities, 114however, and came up with a few responses to typical two-yearold behaviors, I was able to go through with the teaching job. As a result of thinking things through, I was able to trust a room full of two-year-olds.

Keep in mind that trust is more about what is inside you than about what is between you and another person. If you are always waiting for other people to prove their trustworthiness to you, maybe, just maybe, you are playing too small a game.

Personal Challenge

Refusing to empower other people is often an example of our imagined inability to respond to what other people might do. Identify at least one relationship where you have been balking at trusting the other party. Consider how you could expand your response-ability in order to trust the other party. Then, take the steps required to do so.

Team Challenge

Discuss with your teammates what it means to trust each other. How will high levels of trust help your team?

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The Formula for Building Trust

Have you ever been abandoned by a team? Does the fear of this happening again get in the way of your committing to teams?

Team members must have confidence in one another if the team is to be successful. What it takes to build confidence (and, therefore, trust) may seem hard to define, but, basically, the elements are embedded in the way we make and keep agreements. Think about it. Do you trust people who haven’t kept their agreements with you? I will bet you don’t make important agreements with them anymore. 116

From my perspective, the formula to build trust looks like this: First, make a small, low-risk agreement with someone, an agreement you can afford to have broken. Second, complete the agreement, keep your end of it, and find out whether or not the other parties keep theirs. Third, make a larger, more risky agreement and repeat the process. This formula sounds really simple, but in my experience it is too seldom applied. Small agreements are easy to make and forget because, obviously enough, they are small. But trust is almost always built by making and keeping small agreements. Why? Because if you don’t keep small agreements, you won’t get the chance to make large agreements.

Two rules about agreements:

• Never make an agreement you don’t fully intend to keep (no matter how small).
• As discussed in the previous chapter, clean up all broken agreements at the first opportunity. Later in this chapter, I’ll tell you how.

Personal Challenge

Carry a 3 × 5 card with you wherever you go and record every agreement you make over the course of a day or two. Carry the card until you complete each and every agreement.

Team Challenge

Establish a shared space or standard communication process for making, completing, and following up on team agreements.

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How to Trust Just Right

Most of us would like to be more trusting. It’s just that we have all had relationships where our trust was violated.

One thing is for certain: We can’t change other people. But we can change ourselves. So, to be more trusting, the first place to look is at ourselves. Examine how your own trusting goes wrong.

There are only two ways that trust goes wrong: We can trust too much or too little. Unfortunately, as most of us struggle to trust “just right,” we usually err in the direction of trusting not too much, but trusting too little. Think about it. In the organizations you know, do people exhibit too much trust or too little?

Here is how I think it works: When I trust too much, it costs me time, money, results, or credibility. Worse, I judge myself and I judge others. That is, I feel like a chump when an agreement is broken because I should have seen it coming. I am embarrassed because I imagine others saw it coming too, and I think I must look like a fool to them. Worst of all, I am apt to maintain a negative attitude toward the person whom I trusted too much.

Most of us work in environments where there is a premium placed on always being “right.” In such environments, trusting too much and being burned is seen as a mistake—and making 118mistakes is seen as being “wrong.” There can be dramatic consequences to being “wrong” when the stakes are so high; therefore, the most popular strategy is usually, “At all costs, trust too little.”

The immediate repercussions of trusting too little seem never as severe as the repercussions of trusting too much. When we don’t trust enough, the evidence seldom appears immediately and seldom is linked to our choices. Just because the evidence is indirectly linked, however, doesn’t mean there aren’t very real costs to not trusting enough, such as lost opportunities and lessthan-optimum team performance. Imagine all the synergies that might have been created if we hadn’t peeled ourselves away too soon, then imagine some more. Then imagine more again. That’s not even close to what is lost when we don’t trust enough.

How can we learn to trust “just right,” then, when severe consequences and harsh feedback are the results of trusting too much and minimal, indirect feedback is the result of trusting too little? It’s pretty easy, really. Start with small agreements and dare to extend trust beyond your habitual comfort zone. When you follow the formula for building trust described in the previous section, you will seldom—if ever—get over-extended.

Personal Challenge

Examine your current team experiences and identify a situation in which you are withholding trust from your team because you might be shown to be “wrong.” Calculate the lost opportunities and other real costs to withholding your trust. With this tangible information in hand, design a different approach. Begin making agreements that give you a chance to practice trusting “just right.”

Team Challenge

Discuss with your team what happens when team members trust too much. What happens when they trust too little? What is keeping team members from trusting “just right”? 119

Talking about Violations of Trust

If I have persuaded you to try trusting just a little too much in order to trust just right, I can already hear your next question. What am I supposed to do, you ask, on those rare occasions when others do let me down, that is, leave me holding the bag?

The way I see it, the first order of business is a careful assessment of the relationship’s value to you. One thing you can do is absorb the violation of trust and chart a new course for the relationship. But there are at least two other choices available to you: You can live with the relationship in its damaged state, or you can remove yourself from the relationship completely. If the relationship is important to you, however, you must engage the people involved in a conversation about the broken agreement. Prepare yourself for such a conversation by studying the seven-step process described below:

Step 1: Acknowledge your own feelings about calling someone on a broken agreement. Doing so is confrontational, and 120confrontation is only successful when done “cleanly,” or, that is to say, done without judgment about the other person. If you are anything like me, you may be feeling fear, doubt, commitment, and courage at such times.

Step 2: Be invited. Conventional wisdom tells us we can’t tell other people anything they are not yet ready to hear. Since this is the case, it’s our personal responsibility to prepare others to receive our feedback. You can start with something like, “Friend, I want to talk with you about how we are working together. Is this a good time?”

Step 3: Be explicit. Describe the actions that have caused you concern. Be specific in your description of behaviors and deliverables. Tell the individuals who have violated your trust you thought you had an agreement with them for a specific action to take place (by a certain time), and that it appears they didn’t follow through.

Step 4: Use cause-and-effect language. Report the consequences to you (and to your team) of the broken agreement. “When you didn’t deliver on your promise,” you might tell them, “I was unable to complete my task and the entire team’s deliverable fell behind schedule.”

Step 5: Tell how the broken agreement affected you personally. If you have made judgments about the person—and you probably have—this is the place to say them. Not before. Start with words like, “I assumed…” or “I interpreted.…” The point is to take responsibility for your judgments and your feelings. You might tell the person, “I decided that your promise is not as important to you as it is to me.” You might tell the person, “I felt betrayed.”

Step 6: Stop talking and listen. If your words have been compassionate, accurate, and nonjudgmental, you are likely to have tapped into the other person’s integrity, and he will be pre- 121 pared to make amends. If the other person begins blaming or attempting to justify his behavior, simply invite him to examine his own behavior with you.

Step 7: Make a new agreement. Only when you reach this last step is it a good idea to talk about the future. This is the time to tell the other person what you want, how the relationship will be different this time around. You might describe what should happen if trusting becomes difficult. “If you discover you can’t keep a promise made to me,” you might tell the other person, “I want you to call me the minute you discover it yourself, so we can figure out what to do.”

This seven-step process for talking about trust or the lack of trust has been developed out of my own personal experience and years of consulting businesses on how to set up and maintain successful teams. It works for me.

Personal Challenge

It is much easier to practice feedback skills by giving good news instead of bad. Identify someone who has recently kept an important agreement with you or helped you in some other way and initiate a feedback conversation where you work through the seven-step process described above. Make sure to give plenty of positive reinforcement. Then do the same thing in a relationship that could be improved by focusing attention on broken agreements.

Team Challenge

Spend 30–45 minutes in your team giving each other positive feedback. Ensure that every member is comfortable using the seven-step process. 122

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“Calling” Others on Broken Agreements

Do you ever feel compelled (or even forced) to work with people who have let you down by breaking agreements? Do you know what to do when you still desire to operate in a trusting relationship with people who haven’t kept their agreements? You will have to “call” them on it (the way an umpire “calls” a foul or a strike). You have to tell them that you noticed they did not keep their agreement and that it is not okay with you. Then ask them to do their part to ensure integrity in your relationship. I call this “making an agreement-about-agreements” and it’s the best way I know to responsibly repair broken agreements.

Triage for broken agreements is a three-part formula:

1. Summon your courage and in a direct non-demeaning way, tell the other(s) how important agreements are to you.
2. Ask how important agreements are to them.
3. Make a new agreement together about how you will treat your agreements.

In a team, when you let another person break an agreement and don’t call them on it, you are just as responsible for the 124 blow to group performance as the person who let the agreement slide. You can build far greater trust, confidence, and velocity through:

• Making only agreements you intend to keep.
• Keeping all agreements, no matter how small.
• Cleaning up broken agreements when you (inevitably) break them.
• Calling yourself and others on broken agreements when they happen.

Personal Challenge

Identify one relationship where the other party has recently broken a small agreement with you. “Call it” in a clear and non-demeaning way and ask for a new understanding about how you will treat each other’s agreements in the future.

Team Challenge

Discuss “calling it” in your team and make a team agreement around cleaning up broken agreements. When, where, and how will “calling it” occur?

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Clean Up Broken Agreements

Don’t sweep your broken agreements under the rug. Clean them up immediately.

As discussed in previous sections, you build trust by making and keeping incrementally larger agreements. Although most of your relationships will develop positively if you follow the formula, broken agreements do happen, and there is always fallout after the event. What happens if you break an agreement? Your partner can lose confidence in you and may withhold trust. You can avoid this by responding immediately and cleaning up the relationship mess you created.

By applying the following four-step clean-up process, you can resuscitate any relationship:

Step One: Acknowledge you broke the agreement. Make no excuses, simply acknowledge that you blew it. When you are responsible enough to call attention to your mistake, your partner doesn’t have to pretend to ignore it, pretend to make it okay, or confront you about it.

Notice that there is a real and valuable difference between explaining and making excuses. Explaining that you did not return someone’s call within thirty minutes as promised because 127 your child broke her arm and you were rushing her to the emergency room is an appropriate way to address a broken agreement. Expecting the other party to accept the costs created by this unfortunate circumstance, or explaining all broken agreements with similar stories is another matter.

Step Two: Apologize for breaking the agreement. Tell your partners they didn’t deserve to be treated that way by you. (Hint: “I apologize to you” often sounds better than “I am sorry.”)

Step Three: Ask your partner what you can do to correct the situation. You may know what you need to do to correct a broken agreement, but asking the other party what you can do places the emphasis on repairing the relationship. Besides, it’s a chance to make a new agreement and demonstrate trust.

Step Four: Recommit to the relationship. Tell your partner how important the future of your relationship is to you and what you intend to do to ensure that you keep agreements from now on.

Cleaning up broken agreements is vital to maintaining a productive working relationship with your partners. The fourstep process just described is so important that the last four sections of this chapter are devoted to examining each step in greater detail.

Personal Challenge

Think of at least one relatively minor broken agreement (such as forgetting to call someone back) and one relatively major broken agreement (… yes, that one) and clean them both up before the end of the week.

Team Challenge

Ask your teammates what agreements you have broken and ignored, rather than cleaned up. Use the four-step clean-up process to set things right. 128

Acknowledge Mistakes

The first step of the four-step process for cleaning up broken agreements is to acknowledge that you made a mistake. It’s simple enough, once you have decided to take the ego hit. Without acknowledgment, however, you won’t be able to move the relationship forward to resolution. For this reason, acknowledgment is actually more important than apology.

Think of how upsetting it is to you when other people don’t acknowledge their errors. If it happens too many times or if it goes on for too long, it can feel like they are refusing to acknowledge your existence. How frequently do you cause these kinds of problems yourself? How long do you go on denying before you recognize your mistake? This is the kind of behavior that can cause you and your organization lost productivity. When we refuse to acknowledge mistakes, we get to stay stuck—no learning, no moving forward, no gain, only loss.

How you acknowledge a relationship mistake makes a big difference. Be careful about the language you use, and make 129 sure the other party knows you are sincere. Here are some different phrases you can try:

• I blew it.
• I made a mistake.
• I let you down.
• I screwed up.
• I said I would do something and I didn’t.
• I failed to keep an agreement.

Personal Challenge

Recognize where you have made a mistake in a relationship. Acknowledge it now. Pay attention to what happens.

Team Challenge

Mistakes are bound to happen, they are inherent to the learning process. Talk with your teammates about how to admit and accept mistakes. Make agreements about how admitting and accepting mistakes should be accomplished within the group.

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Apologize Effectively

The second step of the four-step process for cleaning up broken agreements and other relationship mistakes is to apologize. Do you know how to apologize so the person you are apologizing 131 to will get it the first time? Apologize so you are done and both you and the other party are ready to move to resolution? From my observation, not many of us do.

Most of us apologize with an attitude. We are either reluctant or overly humble. The reluctant apologizer frequently can’t help being sarcastic and might say something like this: “What? Are you waiting for me to say something? Oh, all right then, I’m s-o-o-r-r-r-y. Do you feel better now?” The overly humble apologizer frequently exhibits shame and might say something like this: “I’m sorry, it was my fault. I should’ve known better. If you give me another chance, I’ll try to do better.…”

The trouble with both of these situations is that they mask the critical issue of responsibility, instead of highlighting it. If the other party also needs to be right—requiring us to grovel and blame ourselves—unskilled apology can seem to make a situation worse instead of better.

People with TeamWisdom apologize readily, with grace, and with integrity, because their apologies come from intentions of responsibility and contrition, not from reluctance or shame. A responsible apology might sound like this: “You didn’t deserve what you got from me.” Or, “I learned a lesson and am ready to demonstrate my growth in this relationship.” Skilled apologies hit their mark immediately. You know when you have received one.

What’s the secret of getting others to get it? As in many of the thorny problems discussed in this book, the secret is for you to get it first—and then signal that you have. We can only apologize from a position of responsibility when we have first processed our own errors and truly feel the other party received less than our best treatment.

When you get it, in other words, others will be hard-pressed to miss it.

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Personal Challenge

The next time you are in a position to apologize for a mistake you made, instead of chanting the same old, “I’m sorry,” try this instead: “I apologize to you. You didn’t deserve that from me.” Make sure you hold your head high and look the other person in the eye with confidence.

Team Challenge

Discuss with your teammates how you can best hear apologies from each other. Include words, phrases, tones, and actions that really demonstrate ownership and responsibility.

How to Make Amends

The third step in the four-step process for cleaning up broken agreements and other relationship mistakes is to ask the offended party what you can do to make amends. Once I have acknowledged my mistake and apologized for it, you might be thinking, why should I ask how to make amends? Maybe you are thinking this might open the door for the other party to 133 demand the most damaging penance. Hopefully not. In my experience, when my intention to make amends is clear, others don’t feel the need to shame me.

The best reason to ask the offended party how you can make amends is to obtain the target information that can get the relationship back on track, back to a place where you can resume building trust. Here are three practices people with TeamWisdom use when they are in the midst of cleaning up relationship mistakes:

1. Don’t assume you know what to do to get the relationship back into exchange. As responsible and introspective as you may be, it’s impossible to fully predict how the offended party is interpreting your broken agreement or relationship mistake. Besides, if you just mind read, you will miss an important opportunity to hear the other person’s request. Make a new agreement and keep it.
2. Avoid making amends in a way that encourages the offended party to say something like, “Oh, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” This could be perceived as attempting to slip off the hook. For example, if you borrowed and then broke or lost something of value, make sure the other person knows you are fully prepared to replace it before asking if that will make amends.
3. When others do try to penalize or shame you, don’t accept their response! Remember, you can negotiate the level of exchange in any relationship. You do it all the time. If the other party is unreasonable, you can always decide the relationship is not so important to you as your own integrity. Don’t let irresponsible people attempt to take advantage of your openness.

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Personal Challenge

Choose a relationship that needs mending. Depending on the situation, try out one of these statements on the other party once you have acknowledged and apologized for your part in a relationship mistake:

• How can I make amends?
• How can I make it right with you?
• How can I correct the mistake?
• What can I do to make amends?
• What will make it right with you?
• What can I do to correct the mistake?
• Is there any way I can make amends?
• Is there a way I can make it right with you?
• Is there a way I can correct the mistake?

Team Challenge

With your teammates, scan your collective interactions and results to date. Ask yourselves if you have made mistakes or broken agreements with customers, other teams, or managers. How can these broken agreements be mended?

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How to Recommit after Making Amends

The fourth and final step of the four-step process for cleaning up broken agreements and other relationship mistakes is to recommit to the relationship. Do this by telling the other party (who has already received your acknowledgment, apology, and negotiated amends) exactly how you intend to treat the relationship in the future.

What does this do? Well, if you are sincere in making this recommitment you will reduce the likelihood of repeating the past mistakes, or mistakes similar to them. Recommitment also allows your partners to restore their faith in you. Remember, the end result of the clean-up process is to continue to build trust. When you voluntarily recommit to a relationship, you start over with a blank slate. Make sure there isn’t any residual 137 bad feelings so that your new dealings with the individual can proceed with trust unencumbered by the past.

I would also recommend that your recommitment be stated out loud. When recommitment is stated out loud, the new standard for your own behavior becomes public, and you declare a willingness to be held to that standard by other people. Such public commitment is irrevocable. An expectation of responsibility is imbedded in your public statement, and everyone knows that every effort is going to be made.

So, recommit to your partners and signal you have “raised the bar” for how you intend to attend to the relationship.

Personal Challenge

Focus for ten minutes on a mistake you never want to make again. Scan your behavior to date. Have you acknowledged your mistake, apologized, and attempted to make amends? Yes? Great! Now finish the clean up. Tell the other party aloud what you will do to care for the relationship from now on.

If you want to make your new attitude really stick, tell the other party in the presence of teammates. This simple step will virtually guarantee you will never make the same mistake again!

Team Challenge

Acknowledge, apologize, make amends, and recommit. Discuss with your team the value of each of the four steps.

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