CHAPTER 4

Build Trust

There can be no debate about the importance of trust in any relationship, particularly one where developing another person is the central concern. But trust is one of those words that (trust me!) gets a lot of lip service without much thought for its true meaning. There are actually many types of trust.

We may trust someone—an airline pilot, for example, simply because of his qualifications. This may also be true of professionals such as doctors, police officers, or firefighters, but media revelations have had the effect of diluting that trust to some degree in Western societies. Increasingly, it seems to me, our trust is on a shorter and shorter leash.

We are going to focus on the building of trust between two people in a relationship where one is trying to develop the other.

Without trust and a sense of safety and security, it’s impossible to create an environment that encourages the full disclosure and engagement necessary for developing another person. The Third Factor grows best in an environment of trust. Coaches and leaders who have a strong developmental bias really get this, and one of the first things they do is build a trusting relationship with the other person.

Garry Watanabe, one of our corporate trainers, told me a story about a facilities manager in a municipality. It had come to light that a certain mechanic was available to fill a vacant position. The downside was that this otherwise qualified person had a bad reputation as a malcontent and troublemaker. The manager remembered sitting in on the interview when this person was hired by the city and being impressed by the individual’s desire to make a positive impact on families and communities.

Because he had an opening, and partly out of curiosity, the manager considered bringing this person over. But when he thought about what it would take to make it work, he realized it was not up to just him, so he called a meeting of his team. He told them what he was thinking of doing and why, and he asked the team if they felt they would be able to create the kind of environment where people have a fair opportunity to redeem themselves. He said the decision to bring the person on would have to be unanimous, and he allowed them to decide via anonymous ballot.

With the team in agreement, the manager brought the individual on board. He realized he needed to set a tone of honesty with this person right off the bat, so in his first conversation he acknowledged the negative rumors but let him know he would have a chance to prove himself based upon his performance and his ability to get along with the other facility workers. He gave the individual his cell number and said that he believed in his ability to get the job done, but that he was also aware that occasionally “questions would arise” that he might need help with. He told the individual that if he ever found himself needing information he was not able to get easily from a coworker or his supervisor, he was to use the number. The manager also made it clear that if he was ever in doubt as to whether to use the number or not, he was expected to call.

Within a few months, the reviews from coworkers were unanimously positive: the new employee was quiet and not easy to get to know, but he was a skilled, dedicated worker who was not afraid of hard work and was eager to help out his teammates.

This manager demonstrated the sort of building of trust that is of paramount importance at the start or restart of a relationship. He also demonstrated trust in his entire work group.

I don’t need to build a case for the necessity of trust between coach and trainee. Would you want someone you didn’t trust to be your mentor? How open would you be with such a person in describing the fears and feelings that were getting in the way of your moving to the next level? How much would you even trust this person to have your best interests at heart? Right … about as much as you’d trust Jack the Ripper with your new Cutco knives!

Clearly, you won’t succeed in igniting the Third Factor in a performer unless and until that person feels assured that you are in his or her corner—you’re there for the person. The person can be sure his or her trust in you isn’t misplaced. Without trust, you won’t get to first base developmentally. Your role will be vastly diminished, from the high ground of a developer of people to, at best, a supervisor, a checker who makes sure things are being done right and corners aren’t being cut. Which means much less opportunity to build a meaningful connection with that person, and a mutual sense of purpose. Build trust and wonderful things are possible—for both of you.

There are other reasons, performance reasons, why trust is so important. Simply put, trust leads to commitment, and committed people outperform others. Olympic coaches understand that exceptional performance occurs only in a safe environment where athletes can develop self-awareness and confidence.

In his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni points out that without trust, one cannot confront key issues required to turn an organization or team around. To deal with difficult and challenging issues, people need to know they are safe. They need to know that they can trust their leader and their team members.

Of course this is also true at the individual level. When someone is blocked or not moving forward, the obstacle that’s in the way often must be confronted. Confronting is much more effective when trust is present. In one of our leadership programs at Queen’s University, a manager in the pharmaceutical industry talked about conducting a touchy performance appraisal with a technically strong performer. In the formal review, she indicated to the employee that technically, her performance had been above standard in every category and that this had also been the case the previous year. She then put away all her notes and said to the employee, “That’s my formal appraisal. Now, would you like my informal one so you can understand what’s holding you back?”

When the employee agreed, she proceeded to outline with precision the interpersonal behaviors with teammates that were holding her back from reaching the next level. A year earlier, the manager told me, this conversation could not have taken place; she didn’t yet have a relationship built on trust with this particular employee. She had spent the year developing rapport and a sense of trust with this individual and was now able to give her the feedback she needed to move forward.

When trust is present, people being asked to do something exceedingly difficult or challenging or risky, in an environment of continuous or rapid change, exhibit a much greater reach. When Olympic coaches expose their athletes to high-risk elements, the athletes must trust that the coach knows what they are capable of and will not put them in situations where they will fail.

This is equally true in the nonathletic world. When people embark on risky moves or deal with rapid change, for example, they’re often, to quote my wife Sandra Stark, “between trapezes.” In such circumstances you need a safety net, and that safety net is trust—in the coach, manager, parents, or other team members.

We sometimes naïvely think that trust is about being nice and well liked, but you will not be trusted if you are not perceived as being competent. Your employees’ trust in you as their coach will be connected to their perception of you as a competent leader secure in your abilities. This is one of the reasons developmental coaches are lifetime learners. They never cease trying to get better, to expand their knowledge, and to fine-tune their repertoire of techniques and skills. Coach Mel Davidson says, “It’s important that the players perceive you striving to be better and learn at a higher level. I feel a lot of time we as coaches get caught up in the coaching world (in sport) and forget about what we can learn outside of it, whether it’s professional development or hanging out with somebody else.” Do your people see you trying to improve your own performance?

Stephen M. R. Covey, author of The SPEED of Trust, points out that when there’s a decrease in trust, there’s an increase in cost and time. He cites 9/11 and airport security as an example. This is certainly true at the office/team level as well. If people are uncertain about whether they trust their teammates or colleagues, things take a lot longer to move forward and people are less open, less disclosing, and less willing to share.

What Can You Do to Develop Trust?

Before we dive into the three key ways that you develop trust, I want to make a point concerning the deliberateness with which coaches with a strong developmental bias approach the building of trust. The coaches I interviewed and those I have observed over the years don’t assume that trust will occur automatically, even for a team that has been together for a long time. Coaches are very intentional in their development of trust. They build it through precise, clear communication of a repetitive nature related to drills, skill development, performance goals, end goals, values, and vision. Coaches are the first to extend trust; they understand progression and they involve the performer.

Be the First to Extend Trust

“The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.”

—HENRY STIMSON

Trust is a two-way street. In order to receive it, you first must give it. The more of it you give away, the more you will get in return. It can be extended in the simple act of tossing the keys to your car to your young son, or in the more complex commitment of standing by performers when they have difficulty, or even when they fail.

Several years ago I spent some time watching figure skating coach Doug Leigh working with a seventeen-year-old senior-level skater. She had gone home for the summer as a young girl and returned in September as a woman. Her whole body had changed. Her new physical dimensions and the change in her center of mass were causing her great difficulty with jumps she had mastered easily in the spring. In the fifteen minutes I watched her practice, she had many, many falls and was getting thoroughly frustrated. Doug called her over, looked her in the eye, and, pointing to his feet, said, “You see these feet? They aren’t going anywhere. You are working hard, you’re pushing yourself—you’re doing everything you can.”

What a marvelous way to communicate the reassurance that you understand someone’s struggle and that you’re solidly there for them. It’s this kind of presence and reassurance that builds trust. It confirms that you can be relied on, that you’re not going to bail at the first sign of difficulty.

“To gain trust, you have to be trustworthy,” says coach David Hemery, stressing that it’s important for a coach to be consistent—“walking the walk; saying what you mean and meaning what you say.” Over time, as this pattern of behavior is continually reinforced, trust develops. “A lot of people talk a good game and then act differently,” he says. “That would lose my trust if I were an athlete.”

He also believes it’s important for the performer to be able to take the coach’s intent into account, so that even in situations where there might be some question or even doubt in the performer’s mind about the methods being used, there’s none about the coach’s integrity and intentions. “If you trust that the coach is not trying to exploit you or manipulate you for his own glory, then it’s more likely you’ll give more,” he says.

Being in the senior position, it’s up to the coach, parent, or leader to initiate the building of trust. It can’t be left to occur by accident. Good coaches consciously work on developing trust, within the team and between the team and the coaching staff.

Prior to the 2006 Olympics in Torino, hockey coach Mel Davidson designed a month-long training camp. The sole purpose was to build trust between the players as well as with the coaching staff. She considered it a vital first step. Over the course of the month, players were placed in various groups in cabins and tents. She told me that sometimes players would come to her and tell her things were not going so well in their small group. Often it amounted to disagreements over trivial matters. She would listen to the complaints and then send the athletes back to work it out with their colleagues, trusting them to learn to rely on each other. When she speaks of the Torino Olympics in corporate seminars or public presentations, that month of trust building is what she focuses on. To her it was the foundation of all future success.

Synchronized swimming coach Debbie Muir also spoke with me about the importance of trust in her team. Here’s some of what she had to say:

When I look back I can see ways that I built trust through the years. I think intuitively I knew that had to happen, and that the best way to build trust is through role modeling. You become reliable. You are role modeling how you want them to be. When you let them know you, they start to trust you, so I always tried to model all the values and things I was trying to get them to do. Honesty was one, and often I was the first to extend it. I would say, “I’m really nervous, how about you?”

It’s important to demonstrate honesty by being honest, she says, so that athletes know beyond any doubt that you are not going to lie to them. It’s the only way to build trust.

If you stop and think for a moment about people you trust and why you trust them, you will get some ideas as to what you can do to build trust in your team or work group. Once you identify those behaviors that you want to encourage and reinforce, you need to take the initiative and act on them. This act of taking the initiative—of being the first to extend trust—is the first step in developing trust in those in your care.

Below is a questionnaire we use in our team workshop on developing trust. Take a moment to fill it out before you read on.

In our workshops we have another simple self-assessment exercise, “Establishing Rapport and Respect.” You can find the entire questionnaire on the website. The format uses numbers 1 to 5 (1= Never; 3 = Sometimes; 5 = Always) to indicate the degree to which the statements in each question represent the respondent’s behavior or actions.

My wife Sandra, a counselor, along with our colleague Peggy, developed the questionnaire, and I remember being one of the first to be asked to fill it out. When I’d completed it, thinking they wanted feedback, I commented that they had really taken the concepts of respect and rapport and fleshed them out nicely to include actions that people could perform to improve in those areas. Sandra asked me how I’d done on question six: “I make it easy for people to tell me they don’t know something.”

That immediately made me suspicious. My wife refers to me on occasion as a flaming optimist, so even though I had rated myself a 5 on the item, I downgraded it to a 4 (being an optimist, however, I couldn’t help adding, “but I might be a 5!”).

Sandra then informed me that Peggy had done an assessment of me with reference to the questionnaire and rated me a 2 on that question. She thought Peggy had been generous. “I, on the other hand, who know you much better, rated you a 1 because there is no zero on the scale.”

I was incredulous. “How could you do that?” I demanded.

Her response was a shock to me—but very revealing. She told me that my body language and tone of voice conveyed a high-handedness and dismissiveness that were completely off-putting. “You think you’re being funny when you say things like, ‘I can’t believe you don’t know that. Everybody knows that. Didn’t they teach you anything at university?’ We don’t want to hear that,” she said. “We just want the answer to our question, so often we will go elsewhere or take the time to figure it out ourselves.”

Difficult as this was to hear, it was great feedback. It was an unequivocal reminder that in order to build trust in others, you need a healthy dose of self-awareness, and one of the best ways to acquire this is to ask those in your charge how they view you. That will soon put you in tune with how effective you’re being! Synchronized swimming coach Debbie Muir made that point very well in our interview. She said that at a certain point she started to notice how she was acting at competitions and realized that her behavior might not be proving all that useful for her athletes, whom she really trusted. So she put it to them: “Okay, how can I be most effective? How do I make you crazy at meets?” The result was honest and open dialogue on both sides, which benefited both her and the athletes.

Let’s go back to our meeting as a model for applying the concepts we’ve been discussing. There are three Cs related to extending trust: Caring, Consistency, and Competence. When you filled out the questionnaire a few pages back, how did you fare? Meetings are a great place to show people that you have trust in them. Leaders with a developmental bias will be more facilitative in their meeting style, allowing others to take the lead and, at times, ownership of key issues and their resolution. Building a trusting environment where people feel safe to speak their truth all starts with you and how you manage any impulse to react when you may not agree or may consider thinking naïve. Progression is very important in this regard.

Understand Progression

Because self-esteem is critical, “progression” too is critical. Your performers need to know that you, as their coach or leader, truly understand their current level of performance, and that you’re fully aware of their level of competence. This requires you to be knowledgeable enough in your field to have a clear picture of the progression, or continuum, of their development. A gymnastics coach, for example, does not start by teaching a front handspring, but begins with a simpler skill such as a front somersault. A good coach doesn’t hesitate to say when an athlete is not yet ready for a particular progression, even though that athlete may appear to possess the physical skills. Only gradually will the coach introduce the performer to that level, to build confidence and ensure ultimate success. Eventually the athlete will have developed the ability to compete at the higher level.

Now this might appear, at first glance, to be a contradiction of what I said earlier on how inner turmoil, disappointment, and dissatisfaction are necessary to create the energy needed by the Third Factor to move forward. These things are the “match” that often ignites the Third Factor, creating the inevitable force that ensures change. Clearly, the igniting of the Third Factor can’t take place in environments that are overprotective; there needs to be some risk and challenge involved.

I’ve also talked about creating a safe environment and the need for progression and the avoidance of absolute failure—and yet there is also the need for risk and some uncertainty to help people improve their performance. I think of it as being like physical exercise. Too little stress produces little or no benefit, whereas too much can lead to overuse injuries and other long-term problems. The right level of stress—of challenge—is what is needed. You, the leader, really need to know your people and their capabilities and, most important, their level of confidence with a particular task. Confidence is very task-specific. In my case, for example, I am a confident public speaker but not at all confident singing karaoke.

As developers of people, we need to be forward-looking—to be able to visualize how other people will process the outcome of their actions. To what will they attribute success or failure? Will it be to something over which they have control and can develop, or will it be something outside their control, such as circumstance? In most situations you would like performers to attribute success to something they did—or, in the case of a poor performance, to something they should have done or could do to prepare for the next performance.

Good coaches do not put their performers into positions where they are going to fail. Again, that may seem contradictory to one of our main tenets: embrace adversity. But while recognizing that there’s a fine line, good coaches do not allow their young athletes, especially early on in their development, to experience a devastating failure. There will be mistakes—and lots of them—but they will be dealt with as lessons. Confidence—real confidence, not bravado—is hard to come by, so it’s important not to jeopardize it.

Progression and learning are inexorably linked. The developer’s role is to reinforce that link in the mind of a performer. The learner needs to understand and experience the connection between following a clear progression and being successful, whether it’s learning to use a computer program or completing a triple jump in figure skating.

And as a coach you need to know your people well to be able to adapt a path to fit each individual, his or her skill level, and perhaps most important, his or her level of confidence. A proper plan of progression helps ensure the building of confidence, which often leads the performer to greater reach—and exceptional performance.

Good coaches also understand that they may not be the perfect fit for every one of their performers in all aspects of their training. A coach who has always had a high level of confidence may not be able to relate to a performer who, though technically competent, doesn’t often display that competence because of a lack of confidence. And the performer, sensing the disconnect around this issue, may not really trust the coach. A perceptive coach will see that what is needed here is a mentor, someone who has “been there,” who has overcome low confidence. The very act of admitting you are not the best person to handle a particular situation and referring the performer to someone better suited can have a powerful impact. It can be a significant step in the building of trust.

In summary, progression involves planning and modifying a developmental path to suit the needs of each performer. Understand that it is the whole person who performs, and that a person may appear to be ready at one level but may not be at another. Getting that person “game ready” involves working on all the skills in the continuum.

What’s Regression?

Several years ago at a workshop at Queen’s University, a participant who was a manager at a large medical supply company told me about a young woman she had hired who had graduated in the sciences with excellent marks. In just six months, this young woman had rocketed into the top 20 percent of the company’s sales producers, chiefly by overcoming some of the barriers orthopedic surgeons commonly employed to “protect” themselves from salespeople. A most impressive track record, given her age and inexperience.

On the strength of her performance, someone above her manager in the organization decided that the young star should be sent in to tackle their most difficult challenge: a senior U.S.-based orthopedic surgeon whose behavior they described as “abusive.” This man, in his seventies and from the era of “doctor as God,” directed a large hip-replacement clinic the company had so far been unable to penetrate.

The result of the sales meeting? He chewed her up and spat her out. She was devastated.

The manager’s comment was telling: “That happened months ago,” she said, “and we still haven’t got her back to where she was when we hired her.” And unhappily, without proper coaching they may never get her back to where she was—but worse, she may never reach her potential.

There are several troubling aspects to this story, not the least being the impact on the young woman and her self-esteem. It turns out that there was no real coaching available to prepare her mentally for a challenge that was so much more difficult than anything she had previously faced in her budding career.

I also learned that they had not sent anyone in with her, so there was no proper way to debrief her performance and ensure that her lack of success was attributed not to her, but to the doctor. If, as soon as possible after the sales call, there had been a debriefing with someone who witnessed what took place, perhaps this young woman could have been spared the upset she experienced. Someone who saw and heard what was said could have pointed out to her, for example, that her opening was exactly the one that had been so successful with many other doctors, and that the reason it wasn’t with him had to do with him, not with her approach. Without proper debriefing there was no way to effectively diminish the impact he had on her.

In summary, this young woman was sent in far too early in her learning curve to deal with such a difficult person. There was no witness to what took place. The company was no further ahead with this particular client, and one of their top salespeople was no longer performing at a high level. But by far the worst outcome was that the whole enterprise resulted in devastation, not development, for the young woman.

Focus on Performance Goals to Achieve
Exceptional End Goals

Progression is also about reach: what is this person capable of at this moment? How far should this person be stretched so he or she can develop and build the self-confidence to go even further, and not be hobbled in the attempt? Often the best way to determine the reach of another person is simply to ask the person. Or let the person show you by way of how he or she handles an open challenge, one in which the person demonstrates his or her capability.

Part of progression, for elite coaches, is to focus on performance goals, not end goals, to keep the performer’s attention focused on what he or she needs to do in the moment, not what the performer wants to achieve ultimately. John Wooden rarely, if ever, mentioned winning. He did not overload his athletes with the burden of the end goal but instead had them focus on the steps that would help them achieve that goal. This is a vital point. The press and public sometimes get upset with athletes or performers who decline to state publicly that they will win the gold medal, the World Series, or the Stanley Cup. There is a common belief that this is somehow connected to the performer’s weakness, fear, or lack of will. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Think of performance goals as the steps in a staircase and the end goal as the final landing at the top flight of stairs. The goal of the coach, manager, or teacher is to keep the focus of the performer on his or her current step. But in the workplace, for example, it is not uncommon for people to be badgered about where they are in relation to quarterly or year-end results, in the belief that this will motivate them to achieve the desired outcome. In reality, it simply overloads them and robs them of some of their focus.

Hammering people over the head with the end goal leads to even more devastating results when the gap between current performance and end goal widens. Competition is a motivating force only when you feel you have a chance to succeed. You only have to watch children at play to grasp this concept. The minute the game they are playing gets one-sided, half the children—those on the losing side—make noises that they are about to quit. Fortunately, children usually have the wisdom to reselect the teams or modify the game to keep everybody motivated and interested.

Involve the Performer

As a developer of others, ultimately your job is to put yourself out of work, or at least dramatically reduce the need for your services. In developing trust with others, it’s crucial to involve them extensively in their own development. In the sporting world, coaches with a strong developmental bias know that as a performer matures, there is a dramatic shift from the coach’s input to the performer’s own. This shift occurs not only because of the coach’s desire to develop an independent, freestanding performer but also because the coach recognizes that there is more wisdom in two people than in one. Put simply, it means making the most out of what you both know.

This section concerns itself with engaging with the performer, and once again those with a well-honed developmental bias will be very good at two skills we introduced in Chapter 2: asking effective questions and engaging in active listening.

From years of working with executives and managers, not only in executive development programs at Queen’s but also within organizations, I have seen numerous examples of employees’ ideas and input being highly valued. I have witnessed firsthand not only the trust that develops as a result but also the increased commitment among employees. Where people are highly engaged, trust increases, and so does commitment. One of my favorite expressions is, “People do not save up well for other people’s vacations.” If you were not involved in the process, you’re not likely to have a high level of commitment or trust.

Coach Gary Winckler told me about how he decides on workouts for his performers. Through the use of key questions and observations, he carefully monitors each athlete as he or she comes to practice. How energized is the performer? Has the person had a late night due to an exam? I asked him if this helps him decide whether he’s going to use plan A, plan B, or plan C.

“Exactly. And that is fundamental to building trust. When you make the right decisions about what plan to follow and the athlete realizes later, yes, that was the best plan to use today, then they really start to gain confidence in you, and … when I know an athlete has confidence in me, I feel even more responsible. It’s like now I have a really big responsibility to make sure I make the right decisions, and that makes me a better coach. It makes me think doubly about what I’m going to do tomorrow because I don’t want to lose that trust.”

People want to feel valued and to know that their talents and skills are being put to good use. Quite frankly, if the people actually doing the job can’t come up with better, more efficient ways of doing it, then who can? When Roger Enrico was hired as CEO of Pepsi Co., he said he was going to spend 50 percent of his time coaching his four vice presidents, and then get them to do that with their reports, and so on down the line. He figured that at best, people were using 30 to 40 percent of their capabilities in the workplace and then going home and using many of their other capabilities to coach soccer, lead a Girl Guides troop, or raise money for the United Way. It is often in learning what people do outside the work world that we begin to understand their real reach and what they are capable of.

When you look back over your employment history, is there a correlation between how involved you felt and your level of trust? Where might you begin now to involve the people who report to you? Are there areas where you could extend their influence or give them a say?

I think business meetings are the perfect starting point for building trust and involving the performer. Progression reminds us that we need to know the level of competence and confidence of each performer and not put performers in places where they might fail and embarrass themselves. Taking a little time before the meeting to review—not micromanage—to ensure that the performer is ready is time well spent for both of you. Your developmental intentions will be clear in your words and actions, and your intent will likely be well received, building trust. Once you see they’ve “got it,” back off and give them the forum to shine in. In meetings everyone present witnesses this extension of trust. And with trust comes reach and better results for all.

Consider this story from my editor:

I realize, in looking back to my university days and to when I first got involved in the book business, that I had some very good teachers and managers with a clear sense of progression. This will surprise you, but I have a fair level of defensiveness, so new environments were difficult for me. My first manager was great at extending trust and therefore put me at ease. This was critical for my development because I really wasn’t going to learn anything until I had some level of security. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You need to take care of the basic needs before people will be interested in the high-level ones.

The manager I’m speaking of would usually meet with me in my office, where I felt more comfortable. He asked me how I like to receive my work: one project at a time or in a bundle of many projects at once. He also talked to me about when he first came on board and how uncomfortable he was. He extended trust in many ways. I’d have gone through a wall for him. Because we both trusted each other there was really no downtime wasted on uncertainty or wondering. We worked incredibly efficiently together. It was a very sad day for me when he left. My next manager was okay, but she was uncertain of herself and tended to micromanage me too much. We spent too much time on performance and not enough on process.

That last sentence is very interesting. The first manager spent a fair amount of time on process, extending trust up front that secured exceptional performance down the line. Isn’t it interesting that all the so-called soft skills are the ones that lead to hard results?