CHAPTER 2

Vic Meets Reliable Reggie

Several days had passed and e-mail after e-mail, I was having difficulty getting a positive response or at least the one I was expecting from my staff.

I would get responses but they seemed to lack the overall energy and commitment I expected I would see from the people who reported directly to me. After all, I was making myself available to them and finding ways at all hours to reach out to them and make sure they knew I was available around the clock to help them with any issue that might be getting in the way of their work.

Trust was a huge goal for me. I wanted to make sure I established trusting relationships with my staff and I was wondering if I had already failed in doing that. It was a strange feeling for me even after a very short time I was already experiencing the human perception of trust. Was that the reason I was not getting the expected responses? I knew in today’s business world trust was needed more than ever. The landscape of business was ever changing and with the introduction of the VWE (virtual work environment) trust would be paramount. I told myself, and I knew that business was conducted through relationships, trust was the foundation to establishing those relationships; without this the work could not get done and the business was fail. I also knew that without trust people would just go through the motions and not really feel the commitment to working with each other and making their work environment a productive environment.

I thought about the first weekend I was on the job and that I knew one of my staff was struggling with a report. This employee had sent me several e-mails telling me they couldn’t get the report to me as they were struggling with the aspects I needed in the report. I called the individual on the weekend and was able to catch them on the phone early on Saturday morning. I spent about two hours working with this individual going over the aspects of the report and shared my ideas by drafting up a few reports and sending them to the individual while we talked. I figured this was a big help to the individual but when we met on Monday no more progress was made on the reports. When I questioned the individual why no more progress was made, the individual explained that they had personal plans for the weekend and wasn’t able to give any more time than the two hours on that Saturday morning.

I was puzzled because on the phone call the individual seemed to be engaged and committed to getting the report done so we could discuss it on Monday. I thought how this was an odd response since I had made myself available. I just couldn’t understand why the commitment wasn’t mutual. I counseled the individual that these reports needed to be completed and I had relied on the fact that they would get them done. I was frustrated by this lack of reciprocal commitment.

I thought to myself this was getting to be common problem when it came to the reliability of my staff. I thought I am making myself available, so why is it so difficult for my staff to do the same? I felt that this broken commitment was a big trust issue for me now related to this employee. As they left my office I had a feeling like I couldn’t trust them.

I started to conclude that the aspect of reliability comes from the concept of the ability to be trusted. I thought I was expressing trust to my staff but often felt my staff didn’t trust me.

During my stay at the hotel, I came to meet Reliable Reggie, as I called him. I assumed he was another guest at the hotel where I was staying while I settled into my new location. This individual seemed very confident in the way he carried himself. He was a somewhat older gentleman but had the appearance of youth by his actions and mannerisms. He appeared to be either still in the military or to have recently left the military. I often saw this individual at the hotel gym. When I would come back from work I would see Reggie at the hotel gym working out on a regular basis. I began to view this person as the one constant in my day. I wondered to myself how this individual could always be in the gym. How could he be so committed and show such dedication to his workouts?

After one particularly hard day at work for me I came through the hotel lobby and passed the hotel gym. Once again, I saw him working out and having an overall persona as he normally did. He was dedicated and interfaced with the other people working out. He seemed to have an approach to life that regardless of what the day brought in terms of challenges, he was in the gym working out. On this day I decided that I had seen enough and was determined to go meet this individual. I went to my room, changed into my workout clothes, and decided I was going down to the gym and see if I could have a conversation with him. I wanted to meet him since he appeared to be so reliable and had a sense of trustworthiness.

I went to the gym, and as predicted, he was still there. The gym was a smaller room but large enough for multiple people to get a workout. I started to do some stretching and noticed that he was doing his workout like I had observed many times before. I observed him talking with others in the gym and overheard him introduce himself to another guest of the hotel working out. He introduced himself as Reggie. After a few awkward minutes I approached Reggie and said, “Hi.” Reggie stopped his workout and acknowledged the introduction.

Reggie took the time to engage with me and I asked how he was doing. I politely said that I was fine but was having one of those days. Reggie acknowledged and told me that he had observed me being at the hotel lately and that he often saw me rushing through the hotel like I had a lot on my mind. He commented that even though he had seen me in the gym before I lacked the real commitment of working out and it appeared I was going through the motions of working out but not really getting the benefit of working out.

After that comment, I thought, do I really share with this stranger all the trouble I was carrying around the trust issue I was having with my employees in my new job or just simply let it pass? After all, there was something intriguing about Reggie that made me want to meet him. So, instead of just saying everything was fine, I decided to take the chance and share with him my feelings related to the trust issue. He seemed very trustworthy, and I thought what is there to lose. Trust is about exposing yourself to others. Talk about trusting someone I didn’t even know with my personal feelings. Trust is not only about the reliability to do what is expected of the person you give trust to, but also about the ability to do what is asked of them. So, I took a big chance with Reggie and made myself vulnerable and thought he could be reliable in what I was about to ask of him. I also had to believe he had the ability to handle what I was going to confide in him. We have all met people who by the way they carry themselves and handle their environment indicate that they can be trusted. The opposite is true where we have met someone and by the way they carry themselves or communicate they don’t establish a level of trust right from the beginning. I had to take the opportunity to find out what made Reggie always seem so committed and reliable in terms of his workouts. I wondered if he was so dedicated to his workouts as he dedicated this to all aspects of his life. What drives a person to be dedicated and committed?

I told Reggie I had recently moved to the area to start a new job.

Reggie asked me whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.

I responded by saying it was a good thing but that my expectations were not matching up to what reality was providing.

Reggie asked why this was the case.

I said that I had come to take this new job as a senior executive but was struggling getting my staff to respond in a positive way. I felt there was level of trust that was not being established. It almost seemed the harder I tried the less trust was established. I wasn’t getting a reaction out of my staff by asking them to respond to me by way of my e-mails and off-hour texts.

Reggie told me that trust was one of the fundamental aspects that all relationships need to have in order to be productive. After all, without trust there is little chance for a strong relationship to form. This is where I was confused. I was giving my staff space and freedom to do what they needed without trying to control their actions or call meetings to discuss things I wanted to emphasize the departments focus and forward direction.

I knew that business was conducted through relationships and trust is a big part of relationships. My staff would need a positive relationship not only with me but with each other. It appeared the staff had trust toward each other but it was not developing with me. When trust was part of the workplace and present at all levels, people would be excited about what they do. It was clear that my department was not excited about what we were doing, and therefore, trust must be missing. The connection that trust would create was missing.

We both laughed but there was a surreal aspect about that comment that made me want to ask more about it.

So, after taking a deep breath, I asked Reggie if he could expound on his comment about trust being a foundational aspect that relationships needed to be productive.

Reggie told me that without trust it is very hard to establish a relationship that can be relied upon and that the relationship would be only superficial without a deep level of trust. He said that recent studies showed that the level of trust between employees and managers was on the decline. He told me to only look around at some of the major events that had occurred in the business world. He mentioned the Enron scandal, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, and how banks had lost so much trust from people with the banking crisis that occurred. These were major events that directly addressed how trust was lost. He mentioned these large public dealings as examples but then said it is not just these big events that erode trust but many smaller actions have the same effect on trust as well.

Still intrigued by where this conversation was going, I pressed the conversation.

“Reggie, can you tell me more?”

Reggie said that maybe the best way to explain this concept was to tell me a little about his background.

Reggie was a retired military officer and had led many troops into some very hard missions. He told me that during his military training the aspect of trust was second to none. He explained that there was no time to question the level of trust that had to be established between the members of his unit when they were performing life and death maneuvers. He explained that trust wasn’t something that could happen at the time it was needed but had to be established long before the real need for it.

I was now fully involved in the conversation and asked Reggie if he could tell me what he thought was happening to me and my staff. I wanted to see if Reggie could offer some ideas to help me with my trust issue.

Reggie said that he would be happy to help if he could but cautioned me that there was no one-size-fits-all approach for the establishment of trust. He went on to say that trust was a human perception that had to be shared by both individuals involved in the relationship. Just because one person has a high level of trust doesn’t mean the other individual will share the same level of trust. Trust was something that had many facets to it. It could take a long time to earn it but only seconds to lose it. He told me that just because I wanted it doesn’t mean that I was going to get it. Trust is a very personal human perception. He mentioned that it had to be worked on by the people trying to have a relationship and emphasized that just because one person was doing things that they thought was trustworthy others might not see it that way.

After a few more minutes Reggie suggested that I take the rest of the evening and try and define what trust meant to me and how I portrayed trust to my staff. If I were willing to do this, we should meet at the gym again and talk about that first.

I agreed and we finished our respective workouts and bid each other a good night. I left the gym noting to myself that I was encouraged about the action Reggie had given me and I looked forward to our next meeting.

I went to my room and began thinking about the questions Reggie had asked me.

At first, I started to look for a definition of trust. I concluded that trust was mutual and that both individuals who wanted a trusting relationship had to give to each other to establish trust. I went on to define the aspect of trust by saying that there had to be a commitment associated with each individual. If one person didn’t live up to their side of the commitment, trust would be damaged. I also started to think about how I started to feel a lack of trust toward my staff because they were not living up to their commitments. I recalled the first day when I sent out an e-mail to my staff and how some individuals didn’t respond right away to my e-mail. I laughed to myself about how that one individual had not responded all day to my e-mail and I thought, what could this individual be working on that was so important that they couldn’t respond? You will recall this was the HR director.

I thought more on the definition and what I was doing to establish trust with my staff. I concluded again that I was living up to my commitment and thought about how I had called one individual on that Saturday morning about the reports and was disappointed on Monday when the reports weren’t done.

I finished thinking about my definition and was ready to talk to Reggie the next day. I concluded that the definition I would share with Reggie was going to be, trust had to be a shared perception and there had to be a reliance on and vulnerability toward each other. It has to do with a confident belief in the other person or an entity. It implies a reliability, dependability, and capability.

I went to work the next day and was excited for the day to be over so I could go talk to Reggie about the definition I had developed related to trust. When the day was over I rushed to the hotel and quickly changed and went to the gym to find that Reggie was not at the gym. How can this be? Reggie was always there. We had talked about following up on the conversation and I felt the level of disappointment I had experienced with my staff. I did my workout but it lacked the excitement and commitment that I had hoped the new definition of trust was going to give me. This time my workout was even less productive because I was focused on dealing with the disappointment of Reggie not being there as planned. My feelings really seemed to be related to the feeling I was having with Reggie not being, the disappointment was a big deal. How could he break the commitment we had talked about the day before?

The next day was the same in terms of work and I started to lose interest in talking to Reggie. I was still intrigued by the concept of trust and the definition Reggie had asked me to come up with, yet I started to feel more disengaged with Reggie. It was a strange feeling since I had met Reggie only 2 days earlier, yet the disappointment in the missed meeting left me feeling somewhat empty. I thought how this was a feeling I had when others had not lived up to their commitments. I reflected on my definition and found that many of the aspects I thought defined the aspect of trust were challenged when Reggie didn’t show up.

I arrived at the hotel the next day and walked through the lobby and saw that Reggie was again in the gym. I quickly changed and went to the gym. When I entered the gym I immediately walked up to Reggie and confronted him about not being there yesterday. I said that I was at the gym yesterday and was there ready to discuss the definition but was disappointed that Reggie did not show up as planned.

After a long pause Reggie asked me if I had set a time for them to finish their talk or if I had made an assumption that Reggie would be available when I was ready. This took me aback and made me think about our conversation. Reggie was right. I never asked Reggie if he would be at the gym the next day; rather, I just assumed that Reggie would be available. I had made this assumption on the fact that I had always seen him at the gym and since we had talked about talking again he would be there.

Reggie said that this was the first lesson in establishing trust. Do not assume that the other person understands the unspoken commitment. One individual cannot assume the commitment is clear and understood by all. He went on to say that just because you are ready and available doesn’t mean that everyone else is. When trust is truly established there is no doubt as to the expectations and the outcome.

I thought how simple that was but how easily that was taken for granted. I apologized for making the assumption that Reggie would be available. Wow, I thought, making assumptions really can set things off course. Even when there is an assumption, which might be wrong, the feelings associated with trust are compromised. Trust turns to distrust in a matter of seconds when the perceived commitment is broken.

Lesson two was now clear. Communicate well-defined expectations and established goals that are understood by all. Reggie told me that if I would have asked his availability I would have known that Reggie was not going to be at the gym the day before. He told me that he had other commitments that would not allow him to be at the gym. If I had asked him about meeting again this would have been clearly understood that the next day was not going to work. I briefly thought that he could have told me but realized what was important to me, meeting the next day, which was my priority, was not his. I owned this aspect and it was not right to simply think since it was a critical issue and the meeting was important to me he shared the same sense of urgency. It was very reasonable for him to think we would talk the next time we saw each other and even though my time frame was the next day his time frame was different.

This encounter made me begin to think that maybe the way I was showing trust to my staff was not appropriate. After all, I thought, since I was the manager all my staff should be ready to do what I had asked. However, just because I thought I was holding up my end of the commitment didn’t mean my staff were sure about what they were supposed to do. It dawned on me that even though I was trying to be trustworthy, trust wasn’t really being established as much as I thought. Maybe I wasn’t clear and my staff hadn’t understood my expectations.

I decided I needed more time to be able to have a more productive conversation with Reggie and I would need to spend more time thinking about the definition of trust and get back to Reggie with a modified definition. Based upon this I asked Reggie if I could take the night to think about it more and talk to him the next day. I made it clear to Reggie that I wanted to meet him at the gym the next day at 6 p.m. to continue the conversation and before Reggie could answer I quickly asked if he would be available. With a slight smile on his face Reggie said that he would be available and looked forward to talking again.

I left and thought how I felt better about being clear and reflected on the level of trust I now felt toward Reggie and compared it with the day before when my trust was waning. I thought if I could establish this feeling with my staff, things would start to match my expectations.

I concluded that my original definition of trust was not wrong, as there was no real true definition of trust because it had to have a personal interpretation. Rather, the definition needed to include the concept I had read in a book called The Trust Edge written by David Horsager, who wrote about trust in this way: “Trust is more like a forest—a long time growing, but easily burned down.”¹ This was like the comment Reggie had made about trust taking time to be established but it could be lost very quickly. This concept was odd because even though I had not grown a long-term relationship with Reggie, in one moment, I was willing to burn it down when the meeting was missed. If trust was this fragile in long-term relationships, look how fast it was disrupted in short-term relationships. My relationships with my staff were all but a few days old; had I already disrupted them by my actions?

I thought and thought about how trust was indeed a two-way street and I needed to do a better job in laying out clear expectations and defining goals associated with the commitments and I needed to really work on establishing trust with my staff. After a few more thoughts I concluded that trust was defined by me as the expectations of the behaviors of others, and the perceived motives and intentions in situations entailing risk of the relationship of others. There was a clear reliance on each other to develop trust in all relationships and more importantly to me I needed to work harder to establish these clear lines of communications since some of my staff were remote while others where physically present. This mix of staff could cause confusion among my staff. I wanted to be careful that my actions would not burn the feeling of trust for any of my staff. Would the staff who were physically located with me have a different interpretation associated with the expectations than those who worked remotely?

I went to work the next day and noted to myself that those who were remote often questioned me more than those who were colocated with me. I reflected on the fact that I often spoke to them in the exact same way and now realized that might have an adverse effect on some of my staff. Why were there so many more questions being asked by those who were remote? I concluded that it must be that they lack the level of trust because they are missing something in my communication. The more I thought about it, it became clear that those who were not present lacked the other aspects of my communication. They lacked the body language and the nonverbal signs when I spoke to them. They only had my voice or my written words. They did not benefit from the nonverbal cues not only from me but from others who were present and they could react to the others who were present.

I went to the gym that night and was anxious to tell Reggie how I had modified the definition of trust. I explained my new view of trust and shared the story about the forest with Reggie. Reggie smiled and confirmed I was now seeing how fragile and important the aspect of trust was. Reggie told me about his experience in the military when there was no doubt that trust was shared by all. He said that without the reliance on each other’s behavior could result in a loss of life for him or others during his experience in the military. He jokingly said that there was no room for burning down the forest in the time of war.

Reggie asked me what I had learned by working on the definition of trust.

I responded by saying I had learned that I could not assume any aspect of my communication. I had to be very clear and make sure that the goals and expectations were shared and understood by all. Reggie nodded with approval and then said that the third lesson of trust was now ready to be told.

The third lesson about trust is that it has to be worked on all the time. He went on to say that once trust is established it must be maintained and that it required consistent diligence to ensure that trust remains strong. I cannot forget this and must always look for ways to check the level of trust among my staff. I cannot let the ugly stepbrother of trust creep into the workplace and that ugly stepbrother is distrust. Broken promises, poor communication, and ignoring the signs of confusion will result in distrust, which will ruin all of the hard work in establishing trust.

I was committed to working on this aspect with my staff. Reggie reminded me that there was no one right answer and that the human perception of trust was different for each person. It was different because everyone had different life experiences and as a leader I was responsible for learning those aspects that could relate to each individual in terms of establishing trust.

I said I understood and thanked Reggie for his time and the lessons he had given me.

I left the gym that evening more committed to establishing trust with my staff and realized I was in large part in control of how much trust could be created by my actions.

I thought long and hard about the way I had treated my staff in terms of laying out expectations and how I might not have effectively communicated to my staff. I thought again about how I had concluded that those who had not responded to me related to my first e-mail because I was not clear in expressing that I wanted a response. I thought I could have done that differently and saved a lot of frustration on my part as well as theirs.

I went to work the next several days with a desire to be clear in my communication to my staff. I took time to make sure that my expectations were defined and sought to get agreement from those I was working with. I also started to interface with my staff with face-to-face interactions and called those who were remote rather than sending out e-mails. I found the face-to-face interactions were much richer in a sense of communicating and I was able to read the body language as I spoke to the staff located with me. I started to use Skype meetings with my remote staff and found that even though it wasn’t exactly like being in the room together, seeing their faces through the use of technology was yielding better results.

A few weeks had passed when I ran into Reggie again.

Reggie asked how things were going and I responded by saying that the level of trust I was feeling was on the rise and that there was less confusion with my staff in terms of expectations. I told Reggie that my staff seemed to open up to me more and they shared with me in their discussions their level of vulnerability was apparent and that made the relationship feel more trustworthy. Reggie nodded with approval and told me I appeared to be well on my way to gaining one of the cornerstones of leadership—creating a high level of trust.

Not everything was perfect but things appeared to be headed in the right direction. I still wondered why all my staff were not responding as well to this new level of trust.

I soon realized I was struggling with different types of staff. Those who were remote were still slower in establishing trust than those who were colocated with me. I noticed that those who relied more heavily on electronic versus face-to-face communication had more trouble with trust.

Maybe there were other things I could be working on like I did with trust. Even though I was working hard on my communication skills and my commitments there still might be some differences with the remote staff compared with the colocated staff.

I promised myself I would continue to work on effective communication daily with all of my staff and I would look for other aspects that might be making the difference. It was then that I realized it might not just be the aspect of trust that was a challenge with the remote staff but it might be that they are perceiving a sense of distance.

I would take some time to reflect on this and hoped that I could find a solution to this sense of distance as I did with the aspect of trust.

¹D. Horsager. 2009. The Trust Edge. (New York, NY: Free Press), p. 10.