Chapter 18
Trust Hell
On November 2, 1999, one of those
increasingly frequent events took place – a man with a pistol walked into a
building and began firing.
What made this instance
relevant to us is that the seven people the man shot and killed were not
randomly selected; they were his work team at Xerox Corp. Within ninety seconds
Byron Uesugi, an employee at Xerox’s technical services division, slaughtered
everyone he had been meeting with for the previous 36 months.
Every year about 1,500 people are
killed in workplace violence, and about 250,000 non-fatal physical attacks
occur. Typically they are no random; attacks are typically peer-on-peer or
against supervisors. The attackers are the ultimate dark angels, bringing
bloodshed to their team instead of team spirit.
What these attacks illustrate to us
is just how bleak teams can become when the fundamental element of trust is no
longer there. We don't know what the dynamics of Uesugi's team were, or what
his complaint was. But something had to be drastically wrong, a perceived
betrayal deeper and darker than a well, for Uesugi to snatch his teammate's
lives.
We struggled to come up with a
suitable metaphor for the importance of trust. We tried food – "Trust is the food that nourishes a team." Good,
but not great. We tried fuel and gasoline – explosive, but still not
strong enough. We tried oxygen, and
we knew we were getting closer.
Then we hit on the perfect metaphor
– blood. Trust is the blood of teams.
The river that carries it along, that pulses with life, that brings thought and
power to everything the team attempts.
And a team trying to operate
without trust – trust from the larger organization, trust in the larger
organization, trust in one another – is like a body thinking it can go about
its business after all the blood has been drained from it.
Now that we have a metaphor, we
can describe what we hate. Do you know what we hate? We hate the Dilbert comic
strip.
Not that it isn’t funny – it is
funny, savagely so. Mark Twain would take off his hat to Scott Adams' brilliant
barbs.
What we hate is that we live and
work in an environment so accustomed to betrayal that we pin funny examples of
it on our cubicle walls, and celebrate its dark wretchedness.
Although it is healthy on our
part to find humor in the bitterness, it is appalling that such bitterness
fills every cup. A team without trust is team hell. No truth is heard there,
only cynical laughter when someone new shows signs of caring.
We've been living with teams for
the past two decades, and it breaks our hearts that the common coin for every
kind of team, after all this time, remains disappointment. Become invisible, go
into any organization, and watch people, and the same patterns emerges:
ü People
don’t tell one another what they really think, for fear they will face
recriminations.
ü Team
leaders pursue incremental, safe courses of action, because it is safer than
trying something new.
ü No
one talks about what the real problems, because all agree that no one really
wants to solve them.
ü Their
work lives are instead a charade, going uncritically about pointless behaviors
because pointlessness is the status quo, and fear has cemented it in place.
We're going to go on and on in
this chapter about how to create an environment of trust, and some of it will
sound Boy Scoutish. Against the harsh rigors of the workplace,
"trust" seems weak and without substance, like dandelion fluff that
blows away with the first puff of air.
And that is the tragic truth
about trust. It is extremely fragile.
In the chapter about team
leaders, we described what happens when leaders lose credibility with team
members. A single act of betrayal, and an otherwise well-meaning leader is hung
out like a stinking corpse -- out of the loop, ineffective, unable to perform.
What is true of team leaders is
true of all team members. A slender thread binds dissimilar people into a team
-- the willingness to keep listening to one another. It does not take much in
the way of betrayal -- a false statement, a misunderstanding not cleared up,
evidence of self-serving above team-serving -- to snip that thread.
Distrust is really a very
rational thing. It can described as the psychological dynamic of closure:
When we lack information about someone
or something, it is human nature for us to fill in the gap with negative
information of our own making.
When I don't know you or your
intentions, and your behaviors don't seem quite right to me, I assume the
worst. If I don't know that you are telling me the truth, then, in my mind, you
probably aren't. This xenophobic reflex or suspiciousness is a survival
mechanism created by human beings to maintain their sanity -- and to prolong
our existence in the face of what is unknown and frightening.
In a team situation, loss of
trust means instant banishment to a realm outside the inner team circle where
no one pays you any attention. Worse, when what we are told conflicts with what
we see, our belief dies. In the movies and in life, there is nothing more
profoundly insulting than calling someone a liar. Being called a liar negates
your existence and negates any hope of a relationship. With the belief dies
confidence, rapport, the team relationship.
Stephen Covey, in 7 Habits of Effective People, describes
trust as a kind of bank account. In a new relationship, each side begins with
an automatic amount deposited -- let's say $100. That amount in your account
will grow immeasurably if you behave in a consistently reliable and trustworthy
way. Or you can fritter away your $100 with minor acts of dishonesty and
betrayal -- before you know it, your promises and explanations come back marked
NSF.
Restoring trust once you allow
the account to deplete itself is a tall order. Like the boy who cried wolf, you
have no basis upon which to rebuild trust, and you will be penalized -- it will
seem unfair to you -- for a long time, no matter how honest your intentions.
Several movies (Clockwork Orange comes quickly to mind)
have been made showing how a reformed individual will continue to be
disbelieved and even abused after he has "gone straight." A single
act of trustworthiness does not outweigh a single act of untrustworthiness --
not by a long shot. You can't undo the harm of betrayal with a single act of
heroism or generosity that will make everything else you said or did go away.
Nine strategies for creating trust
The very best way to repair a
broken bond of trust is to not let it be broken in the first place. If that is
no longer an option, you have a long road ahead of you, winning people back to
your confidence. The only way we know is to keep slogging. Tell the truth. Keep
your promises. Be reliable. Rebuild your account using regular, small deposits.
It may takes years of faithful, timely payments.
When you can't be perfect on any
of these scores -- and who can? -- acknowledge it. Explain it. Ask for
forgiveness. And promise to work to keep it from ever happening again.
As a prerequisite for building
trust, team leaders and team members must:
1.
Have clear, consistent goals
We said way back in Chapter 5
(Misplaced Goals, Confused Objectives), that a clear, acknowledged sense of
where the team is going is essential not only in giving a clear sense of
direction, but a foundation for trust: If you don't know where you're going,
that's probably exactly where you'll end up.
If I don't know what we're
supposed to be doing and where we're heading as a team, my tendency is to be
guarded and defensive for my own self-interest and survival. I will find it
difficult to buy in to the team purpose and commit to other team members when I
feel left adrift and uncertain. As a result, my trust level will be low.
Having goals that are both
clearly stated and consistently supported helps me establish a foundation of
trust that will strengthen over time as the team moves in a predictable
direction towards agreed-upon outcomes.
Many teams are plagued by a
series of ever-changing priorities and direction that leave team members
bewildered and disillusioned. Many team members will find this inconsistency
intolerable -- and will resort in their frustration to self-indulgent,
team-indifferent behaviors.
When this happens, it is
important to step up communication drastically, to reassert the purpose of the
team. Think of communication and trust as being yoked together. They rise
together, they fall together. The less the communication during times of change,
the lower the trust and commitment level of team members.
2.
Be open, fair, and willing to listen
For many centuries, the Chinese
had stringent guidelines regarding who got into heaven and who didn't. First,
the gates to heaven were only open to Chinese leaders and royalty (peasants
spent eternity in rice paddies). Before leaders could enter, they had to obtain
a "mandate to heaven" -- sort of like a Get Out of Jail card. One of
the key requirements for obtaining this mandate was to be open, fair, and
willing to listen to their people. This explains why, even today, senior
Communist geezers nearing death have a tendency to loosen the reins of tyranny
a bit (a wee bit -- they are only hedging their bets, after all).
The same principle applies today
in terms of building a sense of trust:
The more open, fair, and willing to
listen individuals are, the more they are likely to receive the trust of others
(both on and off their team).
"Fairness" must be
built into the conversation; people need to hear the word "fair" come
out of your mouth: "I'd like the outcome to be fair to everyone." or
"It's important to me that people feel the process is fair."
Show a genuine interest in what
the other person is saying by learning and practicing active empathic listening
skills. Set up ways of making yourself accessible to others -- an open door
policy. These are all ways of starting the trust building process.
The injunction to be open, fair,
and willing to listen is obviously valid for team leaders, but it is equally
legitimate for team members. On a team of true collaborators, there can be no
outsiders, secret-keepers, or (apparent) conspirators.
Being open means, in large part,
letting go. The history of management is the chronicle of a few individuals
exercising control over the rest. It does not take a Ph.D. in psychology to see
that there is an inverse relationship between control and credibility. Those
with the tightest grip on the information at their disposal are the least
trusted -- again, the mind filling in what it does not know with negative
assumptions.
To have credibility, you must
relax your grip of control over others.
3.
Be decisive -- and how
Nothing sucks the air out of a
team faster than having outcomes that need to be achieved and no one making any
decisions to draw nearer to those outcomes. Particularly the person or persons
"supposed" to be making those decisions.
Are you a fan of frightening
truisms? Try this on for size:
When it comes to building trust, even a
bad decision is better than no decision
People just don't trust people
who are indecisive (see "closure" below). Sometimes, trust dissolves
not because decisions are being neglected, but because the team objects to the
way the decision was made.
Let's say a team arrives at a
decision point in a project. One team member expects consensus. Another expects
the boss to decide. A third another expects some sort of sub-committee
recommendation. What is this team in? Deep weeds. Team members' expectations
are thwarted. They become frustrated. Then angry. Motives come into question.
Trust is last seen taking the expressway out of town.
This may seem overly cautious but
it is not:
Before teams can make important
decisions,
they must decide how to make those decisions.
4.
Support all other team members
Loyalty is a linchpin of building
team trust. The concept comes from family life. If you've come from a large
family (say, three or more siblings), you know everything there is to know
about sibling rivalry. You occasionally beat up on your brothers or sisters.
You also, we are sure, protected these same siblings from others who wanted to
beat them up. That (the latter, not the former) is what support is all about.
A team is a family.
Fights will occur, but you keep
them inside the team. You don't broadcast your dirty laundry to others. You
protect team members from becoming victims of non-team member abuse. Given the
opportunity to agree with someone else about a team member's errant ways, you
stick up for that member instead. (Think about it: how much would that person
trust you if you badmouthed your fellow teammates behind their backs? Not
very.)
5.
Take responsibility for team actions
This is a hard one for some team
members to get. If something goes wrong, you don't point fingers; you take
personal responsibility for the actions of the team as a whole. This is true
whether you are team leader or not.
We know of one organization whose
teams had a crest which represented their lack of trust. It was arms crossed in
front of their chest with fingers pointing in opposite directions.
Finger pointing destroys the very fiber
of teamwork.
Blaming convolutes the team
process. Who will speak freely, offer ideas freely, and provide honest
critiques knowing someone on the team is going to come down on them with a
sledgehammer?
It is much better from a trust
standpoint for someone to see you as a "stand up and be counted" type
of person, not blaming others on the team for failures. Not, "our team
doesn't make mistakes," but "our mistakes are team mistakes, and we
learn from them and move on."
6.
Give credit to team members
Albert Einstein offered this
choice piece of wisdom:
"Nothing is yours until you give it
away."
Meaning, if it's acknowledgment
you want, be generous with what you have done.
Maybe the germ of an idea was
yours, but didn't it require the whole team to nurture and expand and apply the
idea to the task at hand? The prima donna who insists on mopping up all team
applause is probably a very valuable member -- but in his very talent lies the
seed of team destruction.
Shine a light on others on your
team. But shine it sincerely. If it's done in a superficial or artificial or
unctuous way (think: Oscar thank-you speeches) you'll kill, not cultivate,
trust. But if done with genuine recognition for teammate accomplishments, trust
will grow.
Can you be sincere? Can you
share? Most of us are pretty selfish and self-protecting, so giving credit to
others does not come naturally. It's something to work on.
While you're working on it, be
very clear on something: one of the worst things you can do is horn in on
another team member's glory. There is nothing more aggravating that to have
someone else (like the team leader) take credit for your (or another's) work.
(Think: political campaign speeches.) A team member who steals another team
member's thunder -- what can you say?
Smart guy, Einstein.
7.
Be sensitive to the needs of team members
Work is hard. Tiring,
frustrating, often painful. So we appreciate it when teammates indicate that
they understand the pressures, and sympathize. We're not talking about pity, or
playing the tragic violin, or treating one another like children. We are
talking about fellow feeling -- giving one another the occasional human sign
that we understand and appreciate.
The best way to build up a strong trust
bank account
is by showing awareness of and sensitivity to the needs
of other team members
Showing fellow workers that you
are genuinely concerned about their struggles -- at work or home -- allows them
to feel comfortable with you, and increases the likelihood of reciprocal
understanding.
On a less intimate level, it
means being sensitive to people's practical preferences. For example, there is
a best way to communicate with every person: face to face, in writing, e-mail,
voice-mail, with a lot of details or not, with recommendations or not, etc.
Let the other person know you are
trying to relate to them within their comfort zone, not yours. It takes
flexibility and thought on your part -- but with a handsome payoff in their
willingness to hear and act on your thoughts.
8.
Respect the opinions of others
Not everyone sees the world the
same way; in fact, no one does. When five people witness an auto accident,
police compile five different reports. Each opinion is based upon an individual
viewpoint. That's why there are 5 billion people in the world, not one very big
person.
Other team members may come up
with ideas that you think are the craziest things you've every heard uttered by
another human being. That doesn't make them crazy or deserving of disrespect
because their opinion differs from yours. The best teams are made up of people
with the biggest diversity of perceptions who first learn to understand and
value the opinions and views of others.
Trust without respect is like a sandwich
without bread.
If you don't or can't respect
someone, especially on your team, you will never trust them. People do not come
equipped with RESPECT buttons they can push, and be flooded with respect for
others. Indeed, we are stingy with respect -- "I can't give it; they have
to earn it."
If you feel swamped by your own
stinginess, what can you do? First, acknowledge the fact, and concede that it
is as least partially your problem. Everyone deserves a basic level of respect,
after all; if your nature makes you contemptuous of even that basic level, you
may be all of the problem.
Hint: people who lack respect for
others don't always have the abundance of self-esteem that they think they
have.
To learn respect, return to the
fundamentals of goals and roles. Focus on the task, not the personnel. Try to
build a narrow basis for trust on what a person commits to and does -- being a
good soldier. Set aside past bad behaviors or personality quirks.
Gossip kills respect. Often you
will get advance word from the grapevine to "watch out for Charlie."
Charlie's reputation isn't Charlie. Form your opinions about him by working
with him, not from the vague rumblings of the lunchroom.
9.
Empower team members to act
Team members cannot be empowered
to act; they must empower themselves. As a team member, however, you can help
create an atmosphere where other team members feel free to take risks and take
action towards the completion of tasks.
In an organization where people
are afraid to take action or risks without first checking with some higher
authority, they will resist any attempts to "empower" them. Where
team members do feel comfortable initiating action and letting their boss know
what's going on (so the boss doesn't wind up with a face full of egg), trust
starts to grow.
Trust given results in trust,
support, and loyalty in return.
A few paragraphs ago -- in #8,
"Respect the opinions of others" -- we talked about how different
people can view the same situation in different ways, and arrive at conflicting
interpretations. Obviously, when people are seeing the same thing in different
ways, they start to wonder about one another. "Is he crazy?"
"She is really deluding herself!" "Do I dare share my opinions
with people who can't see the nose in front of their own faces?"
Perceptual differences between
team members are a major cause of trust breakdown. To reverse this breakdown,
we must first understand that our perceptions of the world differ for good
reasons. We all select, organize, and interpret information differently. Let's talk about each one in
turn.
Perceptions are selected. We are all of us constantly
surrounded and bombarded by activity. Lights, noise, talking, wind, and even
our own thinking are sources of stimulation that we can perceive.
To make sense out of all this
stuff, we become selective in our perceptions. We edit. We block out the
buzzing lights, the air conditioner hum, the noisy conversations, and the child
asking for our help -- and concentrate on what we are reading. When the child
finally does get our attention, we re-focus, block out the rest, swivel toward
the child like Robocop and say, "Sorry, I didn't hear you."
We select the stimulation that we
wish to perceive, based on our expectations,
our needs, and our wants. If our first impression of
someone is negative ("She sure dresses like a slob"), we tend to pick
out those actions that support those first impressions ("Get a load of
that desk"). We expect certain things to be true and sure enough, we find
them.
If we need more office space, we
notice all the vacant space in the building -- space we never noticed before.
If we want a new boat, all of a sudden we become aware of all the boats for
sale along the road on our way home from work.
The most powerful word in the English
language is the word NOTICE. If you don't notice your environment, you can't
interact effectively with it.
Once we've selected information,
we organize it via two very
interesting methods. One is called "figure-ground." That is, one set
of information becomes the figure we focus on and everything else becomes the
ignored background. Figure-ground occurs when two people think they're talking
about the same thing, but actually are talking about two different things.
Maybe it's happened to you. You're
in a conversation with someone; the conversaton ends; you think you have
agreement; then fifteen minutes later, you stop, slap youself on the forehead
and ask yourself, "Were we even talking about the same thing?"
Perhaps you noticed the other
person doing something totally different from what you thought you had agreed
to. In reality, you both heard different things from the same conversation
based upon each person's pre-determined focus or priority. Each was listening
to their "inner ear" rather than what the other person was saying.
The conversation founders on the shoals of each side's self-fascination. The
conversation is nothing but a "dual-monologue." It cannot progress to
true communication.
What's important to us may not be what's
important to someone else.
That's where many
misunderstandings begin. To stop this sort of misunderstanding, never end a
conversation without first clarifying who
is responsible for what by when, and how are you going to check with each other to make sure you're on track.
The second way we organize
information is through closure.
Closure is based on the principle that where there's smoke, there's fire. If we
have incomplete information about something, we tend to fill in the blanks
using what we already do know. (Smoke, therefore fire.)
The problem is, we have a natural
tendency to fill in the blanks with negatives,
not positives. So if we get left out of a meeting or off a memo we feel we
should have received, we feel the sender intentionally tried to do us harm. Sound
familiar? The higher the trust levels, the less likely negative closure will
occur.
Many times we see only a part of
what is going on, but will organize it by filling in what is missing. The parts
we fill in are as real to us as that which we have actually observed. This is
why rumors are so easy to start, so powerful once they have started, and so
hard to put an end to. The best way to overcome this tendency is to check out
the facts or ask for the other person's intentions the next time you start feeling
upset about what someone is communicating to you.
When we assume negative intentions on
others' part, we react by "getting even."
The next step, after we have
selected and organized information, is to interpret
it. Our interpretations are affected by the ambiguity of the situation, our
attitude, our orientation, and the psychological context of the situation.
v
Ambiguity
A man dashes into
an airport bar in an obvious hurry. Orders a drink, slams it down, throws a $5
bill on the bar, and runs out. The bartender slowly walks up to the bar, picks
up the money, turns to another patron and says, "Isn't that interesting.
He was in such a hurry, he forgot to pay for his drink ... but he left me a $5
tip."
Ambiguity. If you
don't tell another person how you want them to interpret your information,
they're free to interpret it based on what ever happens to be rumbling around
in their brain at the time.
v
Attitude
If you're like most
normal people, your mood changes during the day based upon your interactions
with other people or information. You may know what your attitude is at the
time, but others don't. In order to enhance your communications with others,
since they are interpreting your messages based upon both your verbal and
non-verbal behaviors, you need to let them know what your attitude is at the
time of your conversation. Some people have taken a 4"X4" piece of
cardboard and drawn a "mister happy" face on one side, a "mister
yuk" face on the other, and hung it outside their work space. As their
mood changes during the day, they flip the card back and forth. This helps
those coming in to talk to better interpret their information based upon the
mood of the person.
How things look on the outside of us
depends
a lot on how things are on the inside of us.
v
Orientation
We all have
orientations or comfort zones in which we operate. These orientations may be
made up of our experiences from where we grew up (example: All New Yorkers
think and act alike, but differently than Midwesterners), our
religious/philosophical backgrounds (Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, Humanist,
Moslem, Atheist, etc.), our education (MBA's, Ph.D.'s, engineers, writers,
salespeople, etc.), our cultural heritage (Italian-American, African-American,
Latin-American, Native-American, etc.), our color charts (black, white, brown,
red, yellow, green, puce, etc.), sexual preferences (heterosexual, homosexual,
both, neither, etc.). Our orientation is unique and makes us who we are. It
also requires us to be sensitive to the orientations of others if we are to
communicate more effectively with them.
v
Psychological Context
This is a natural human trap in
which we often get caught. Basically, we all interpret information we hear
based on the last piece of information we happened to be thinking about. For example,
if a salesperson is thinking she knows what a customer needs ("blue
coat"), she may unthinkingly ring up the blue coat -- even though the
customer only bought a pair of red socks. The salesperson wrote the order based
on what she was thinking, not what she actually heard.
In factories there is a storage
space set aside at the end of the assembly line. It's called the redo line,
because it's where everying that has to be redone is put. It has been estimated
that 40 percent of the cost of redoing work, across all industries, is the
result of mistakes incurred because of psychological context -- people
misperceiving, seeing false patterns, unthinkingly turning a screw to the left
instead of the right. We slap ourselves on the forehead when we make these
completely avoidable mistakes -- then proceed to make them again.
The lesson here is that team
members must be very vigilant about their own attitudes. Suspicions that would
have saved us from treachery and defenestration in another era become our
workaday enemy in the team era. We must learn to identify when our instincts
about one another are serving us well, and when they are doing us a disservice.
It's OK to trust your senses. It's your
brain you have to keep an eye on.
Trust depleted may never be regained.
It is a tough business -- two strikes and you're out. When trust is gone, it
must be replaced by control -- rules, regulation, structure, 3-ring notebooks.
The team spends as much time policing itself as doing its job.
A world without trust is a world
full of -- lawyers. Lawyers are how our society imposes control in the absence
of trust. They weigh us down with structure and penalties. They create language
that is frightfully clear, and frighteningly uncreative. The irony is that
control ultimately fails to control -- for who can really understand the
clarity of legalese? A team that comes up empty in the trust department will
start to think like a lawyer -- not what works, or what is best, or what meets
the customer's needs, but what technically complies with what is asked of us.
A final disturbing thought. While
a team leader can take heroic measures to regain trust – submitting to a public
whipping is one promising avenue; apologizing is another --there is precious
little that rank and file team members can do. Here and there, even in the
darkest organizations, there are always good people who speak the truth, and
devil take the hindmost.
Even hell has its beloved
trustees – old cons who have done hard time, who know the ropes, and retain a
measure of grizzled humanity. Their humanity is expressed as a Dilbert cartoon
on the cubicle wall. They are saying, all you can do when you know you are in
hell, is laugh about it.
![[IMAGE]](http://mfinley.com/gif/new-teams-cover.jpg)
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