In my last post I answered the question How do Leaders Build Trust? If you haven’t read it yet, I suggest that you head over there and read that first. While I’ll touch a little further on how to build trust, that isn’t the focus. I’ll also share what happens when you lose someone’s trust.
When I was a brand new people leader I didn’t think about building trust at all. As I mentioned in the last post I come from the school of thought that I give trust until it is broken. I also had the naive thought that I was now the Manager and the team would do what I asked them to, just because of my fancy new title. I now know that is not a good way to think and while some will do as asked by the manager, most won’t over time if they don’t trust the manager.
It was 2009 when I was given my first chance to be the Manager of a team, my first formal role as a people leader. This was well before I read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni (as mentioned in How do Leaders Build Trust?) seriously go read that book if you haven’t picked it up yet. My team of ten Solutions Architects was based half in the US and half in Bangalore, India. I knew most, if not all, of the US based team members, however I didn’t know any of the team based in India.
Fortunately, I was able to plan a trip to India just before I was going to officially start my role as the team’s Manager. The trip was critical for me to get off to a good start with the team members in India. I didn’t know that or understand why until after I went. I was able to spend about two weeks working with the team side by side in the office in Bangalore. We were also able to go out for lunch, and because I was there for more than a week, we were also able to spend time together over the weekend. One team member and I walked up the 763 steps together, shoeless btw, to see the statue of Bahubali, the world’s largest monolithic statue.
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| 763 stairs to reach the statue of Bahubali |
When I left, all of the team members told me how happy they were that I had come to India and spent time getting to know them and that they got to know me. Before the trip, they were all very anxious about a new manager, something I wasn’t aware of, nor did I give much thought to it. And they were especially concerned that the new manager was going to be based in the US as their current manager was based in Bangalore, sitting right beside them. Being new to management and not fully understanding how to truly lead people (ok I was flat out clueless), I didn’t think about these issues. Thankfully I was able to start to build trust, even though I didn’t realize I needed to. These five people were key to my early and long term success.
Because of the relationship building that started on this trip and that we grew through one on one meetings, future visits to India, and lots of other interactions, I could count on them and in turn they knew that I had their backs. Some say you can judge a leader’s success in developing talent by seeing what their team members go on to accomplish after they move on to new teams. These five Solutions Architects went on to become a Senior Architect, a Manager, and three of them became Enterprise Architects. Pretty successful for half of my first team if you ask me.
I wish I could tell you that I was always so lucky to get it right, whether on purpose or by accident as in the case of the team in India. If I told you that would you believe it? I hope not because then I wouldn’t be a human. And as humans we all have flaws, which I prefer to think of as areas for development and we all make mistakes. Let me tell you about two different times where losing people’s trust resulted in problems and challenges. Both of these instances happened within a few months of each other. At the time I was leading a team of about 100 with several managers reporting to me.
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| Business photo created by pressfoto – www.freepik.com |
One of the managers reporting to me came to talk about applying for a role in a newly forming team. The reason they gave me for wanting to land the role was that they enjoyed building teams. This person had recently played a key role in an office that we had recently opened. They were responsible for hiring and building the team, however that assignment had come to an end. I did what I thought any good manager would do and I asked them how I could help them prepare for the interviews. It didn’t even cross my mind that something else was going on. And while I wasn’t happy to see this person move on from the team, I was happy to help them achieve their goal. I saw it as my job to help them succeed despite the fact that it meant that they would be leaving my team.
They were successful in landing the job and I was under the impression that all was good and that I helped them achieve a new level of success. As it turned out, that wasn’t the whole story. Rumors started to swirl and my own manager asked me what had happened in the situation. What I began to piece together was that this person thought that they had lost my trust and therefore they stopped trusting me.
What I learned in the end was that this person wanted to be the best and wanted to be the person I counted on the most, sort of a go to person to solve the toughest problems. And the irony is that is exactly how I saw this person. My mistake was that I didn’t make that clear with them, I never said it to them. And this person misinterpreted a decision I had made, taking some responsibility away from them, as lost trust and status in the team. They wrongly assumed that the manager for the new office was replacing them as the go to manager on the team. They were wrong, however I don’t fault them for coming to this assumption as I wasn’t giving clear feedback. It’s unfortunate that they no longer trusted me enough to discuss this with me and that the perceived loss of my trust made them feel they needed to change to another team.
In the second situation another one of the managers on the same team had a perception that I played favorites and that others got better opportunities than they did as a result. Feeling slighted they also lost trust in me. This all came to light when this person was speaking to my manager and raised concerns.
By the time the feedback reached me, it was too late, the trust was gone and beyond repair. When I tried to discuss the issues with them, they weren’t interested in repairing the relationship. In fact their attitude was that my attempt to fix things was insincere and that once things were better I’d ignore them again. It was one of the most difficult situations I faced, not only because I felt like I had failed but also because this person had no interest in fixing things. At least in this case, the person was willing to explain why they felt there were favorites. In their eyes I had given better assignments and attention to their peers. This is a part I really struggled with because this manager had been given a lot of responsibility, good projects, and a ton of exposure that no other manager reporting to me had been given. In some ways, that doesn’t matter if they didn’t see it.
In the end, I see these two situations as a loss of trust rooted in the same mistake. I didn’t tell them where they stood. Had I been clearer with what they were doing well, how I valued them, and in the case of the second manager highlighted the exposure and responsibility they were given, then maybe they both wouldn’t have lost trust in me. And maybe they would have stayed with the team and things would have gone a different way.
I was recently reminded of this as I nearly made the same mistake. I was talking with one of my current direct reports, and I shared with them where I saw them going in the future. In my mind this was something I thought was clear and it turned out not to be clear to them at all. Learning that I hadn’t been clear, reminded me of these two situations. Thankfully, I shared it at a good time and I believe it strengthened this person’s trust in me, though time will tell.
As a leader, having your team’s trust is critical. Even though I didn’t realize that early on, earning the trust of the team helped propel me to early success as a leader. And when my team members lost trust in me, they chose to move on. If people trust you, if they know that you have the team’s best interest, and more importantly their best interest at heart they will follow you and drive the overall team to success. And when you lose that trust, you lose the people, quite literally.
Nice read Scott, thanks for sharing
Great! I enjoyed your reading, and it helped me to reflect myself as well, not just with peers, but also customers.
Thanks for sharing. It's never an easy thing to speak about failure, but that is where we learn the most. I can also relate to the team building in India. I was able to go to India right before Covid and take the team out for lunch and bowling. I spent more time getting to know the team than actually "working". I believe that has been key in our success this past year.