Truth 34. Trust is your strongest persuasion tool

If you’ve been in the work world long enough to be managing people, chances are excellent that you’ve been subjected to that classic trust exercise—you know the one—where you fall backward like a board, with every expectation that the person standing behind you will break your fall. Of course, that person is going to catch you. Everyone is watching.

Here’s the real trust question: Would you depend on that same person to tell you the whole truth—even if that truth threatens careers? Or embarrasses your company? Or might cause key talent to quit? If you say no, you have a trust issue. If your people say no to the same question about you, you’ve got a big corporate culture, engagement problem.

Withholding critical muscle power and back-stoppage is frowned upon in those trust-building exercises. But withholding high-level information is too often tolerated in a larger cultural context. If it’s okay culturally for you to keep critical information to yourself and not share it with your employees, can you really expect to persuade them to give the company their best efforts? Why should they? They’re not trusting the business they work for, nor, by extension, are they trusting you.

To lead a team of individuals truly committed to giving their best and beyond to the organization, you must first answer this question: “What are my own priorities?” Too often, we see evidence of leaders putting themselves first over the company and their employees. This, says Tim Garrett, former CHRO of Honda America Manufacturing (which remains the oldest nonunion auto manufacturer in North America), is the first breach of trust in the cultural fabric of the company.

“There are three priorities of leadership, in this order: the organization, your people, and then you,” he says. “What this really requires of you is that you have the courage to stand up for what you know is right, even if your position might directly hurt you politically.

“If you want to build a workforce that is truly committed and dedicated, they have to believe that you as a leader are someone who they know they can trust and that you will have their backs,” he says. “You have to hold people accountable to the expectations of the organization. In return, you’re obligated to provide your people with the needs and expectations they have: respect, honesty, dignity, fairness, equality. Which one of those elements is at odds with a company’s best interests? None of them.”

There are three priorities of leadership, in this order: the organization, your people, and then you.

Don’t protect your people from the hard truths of your company’s realities. They already know what’s going on—in some ways probably better than you do, from a different perspective. They come to work, they talk to each other; those departmental silos that the executive team has worked so hard to soften and even dissolve have become efficient communications conduits.

Now what your people need to know is how much are you going to tell them? If you leave anything out—essential information that they already know—they’re going to wonder what else you’re not telling them. And can you blame them for imagining the worst?

“One of the biggest mistakes that leaders make is that they fail to realize that individuals are smart people,” says Garrett. “This is their livelihood that we’re talking about. They can look around and figure out what’s going on—good and bad. When we fail to be upfront and honest with them (even if it’s because we don’t want them to be worried or upset), we’re not being honest. And consequently, they’re not going to trust us.”

Full disclosure doesn’t mean reckless indiscretion. “I can’t talk about that” is also the truth. Employees know that there are just some things you can’t discuss with your team (their own salaries, for instance). But they may not be fully aware of the limitations of what you can say and what you can’t say. So, they might innocently ask you a question that’s out of line. They probably don’t mean to invade the boundaries of propriety. They just want to know what’s going on.

By saying “I can’t talk about that,” you’re communicating volumes. You’re telling your people that you have limitations embedded in your own role in the company, that you are committed to giving them all the information you can talk about. And they can trust you—to not only share what you know to help them make smart decisions about their careers and the way they can help the company but also to keep their secrets.