Do members of organizations, either private or not for profit trust each other enough?
How many opportunities to achieve important goals are wasted or lost because people do not trust each other?
Do not get me wrong: it is not that partnerships, collaborations are not happening across the sectors but there are instances where I have a strong impression that in most of the cases, words like cooperation, partnerships and so on are just “buzz” words frequently used but actually deprived of any real meaning.
At the stake, a real risk of missing out transformational changes possible only through strong and real partnerships and collaborations.
Think of incredible challenges faced by the societies in developing countries within the economic or social realms.
How munch could be achieved to bring better services/provisions to the populations if there were more coordination, cooperation and partnerships among actors.
There are different levels and a high variety of ways of working together. With genuine intention, commitment and willpower, two parties can, step by step, enhance their understanding of each other and progressively raise the bar of mutual collaboration.
For example, an occasional or sporadic joint initiative can lead to stronger forms of cooperation with a progressive increase in the level of involvement expressed in terms of time, money and energies that can bring significant improvements at grass roots levels.
First you collaborate, then you cooperate and eventually you partner together. It is a crescendo possible only if an indispensible ingredient is present: trust.
Without setting up trust, no great achievements can be possible. For some, trust is an indispensible trait of leadership.
Stephen M.R. Covey, the author of the best seller “The Speed of Trust” came to define leadership based on trust: “Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust. It is maximizing both your current contributions and your ability to contribute in the future by establishing the trust that makes it possible”
Trust ended up being a key factor in establishing organizations whose successes rely upon a shared sense of the mission and spread leadership embraced at all the levels, no matter your job description.
Even the smartest persons on earth, the real genius, know that long lasting game changing solutions require a high level of team work that necessarily involves trusting relationships.
Think of Stave Jobs, Bill Gates or Bezos: three incredible minds, with uncommon talents, sheer determination, incredible intuitions that created, all from scratches, some of the most successful companies.
Could Apple, Microsoft and Amazon be what they are now without a group, now in thousands of people, all aligned to the same mission and vision of their founders?
And what could have brought all these people to rally behind their super amazing bosses if not having absolute trust in their vision and sense of purpose that they were all into something really transformational?
Do not forget that back at the beginning Microsoft, Apple and Amazon were just small workshops.
Yet despite the adversities, the challenges, Jobs, Gates and Bezos managed to involve in their then start ups few folks, in many case friends and university mates that were persuaded to get into something that at the time few might have believed it could have work out
Jobs, Gates, Bezos had to let their incredible egos go to make space for indispensible persons, without which their start up might have turned into a failure.
In short they had to trust a small circle of persons whose contributions were essential in turning small ventures in the biggest multinationals.
The levels of trust were reciprocal as the first generation of “disciples” had confidence on where their bosses were heading to.
Jack Trout, a marketing guru shares “At the end of the day people follow those who know where they are going.”
You trust someone because she knows where to go, because through her actions she is accountable, she walks the talk but also, very crucial, because she has the skills, the expertise and determination to get things done.
Indeed character and competence with each feeding into each other, are indispensible key traits to set up trust based leading organizations.
When we talk about character, here we refer to the inner qualities of a person, defined as moral leadership even if persons like Jobs and Bezos defy this concept as should be included in the so called Jerks Leaders’ list.
But a moral leadership without skills and expertise and right insights does not go that far though and here comes the importance of mastering the second dimension of the trust: competence.
The capacity to have an ethical way of leading together with strong skills generates credibility, the capacity of having other persons believing in you, a catalyst for spreading trust at all levels, therefore generating leadership within the members of an organization.
By being credible, persons like Gates, Bezos and Jobs managed to create stellar enterprises.
How to generate new leaders with sound character and strong competencies? How to encourage existing leaders in genuinely working to strengthen their characters and competencies?
Openness, transparency, a willingness to listen others even by risking passing as a naïve that are outsmarted by others should be the main traits of Leaders in both private and not for profit sector.
Executives could start by admitting their limitations (after all no human being is perfect and we can always learn from others) and starting trusting more those who know more.
By admitting their knowledge gaps, they will increase their level of credibility among colleagues.
As a consequence trust will be slowly taking place and a culture nourishing collaborations rather than suspicions and mistrust will flourish for achieving the greater good.
For Covey this represents the “fifth wave” of trust, the so called Societal Trust that is “about creating value for others and for the society at large”.
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