How to be a high trust leader

I've just drafted the introduction to our chapter on high trust leadership for our new book, 'Choose Trust'. What do you think?

“Trust is like the air we breathe – when it’s present, nobody really notices; when it’s absent, everybody notices.”  Warren Buffett, investor.

Leadership is not just about a title. It’s about a role in a situation, and so anyone may find themselves in a position where they need or choose to lead.

There are many different types of leadership but they all have one thing in common: leaders are seeking to take a number of people on a journey and therefore in a direction. Assuming those people have choice, they need to trust the person they are following if this is to work well. Otherwise, they’ll jump off as soon as they can. That is why being a high trust leader is so critical to delivering sustained success – because the people being led have continual choice.

They can choose to leave your leadership, or simply stay and not put in discretionary effort. They can behave transactionally with each other and you. This leads to people working in parallel, not together, and functional rather than enthusiastic cooperation and teamwork (Chapter 9 looks at this in more detail).

Or they can enthusiastically remain, work collaboratively as a team and consistently put in the extra effort to achieve exceptional outcomes.

The difference is whether or not the leader has chosen trust. 

In 2015 the business consultancy McKinsey surveyed 189,000 people in 81 organisations about leadership. They studied all the academic literature on the subject. And they considered their own experience in the field.

 They decided that four kinds of behaviour accounted for almost all of the effectiveness of leaders.

·       Be supportive

·       Operate with strong results orientation

·       Seek different perspectives

·       Solve problems effectively

These behaviours might be surprising if you think of a leader in the more traditional way, as someone who commands and controls the people they lead, makes all the big decisions and demands people follow them. McKinsey’s findings suggested something very different was needed for the best leaders to be effective.

The overwhelming majority of leadership literature of the past 30 years has pointed in the same direction – away from control and towards consensus. In 2007 management adviser John Smythe asked in his book CEO: The Chief Engagement Officer – ‘are you god or guide’?

It’s a great question for anyone in a position of leadership. A guide has followers who can see where he or she is going and choose to follow. A god issues instructions and leaves those who follow to interpret what they mean. If they get it wrong, the consequences may be disgrace or punishment – though in business, not for eternity!

A guide, on the other hand, is taking people on a journey with them, and a good guide checks in, consults with those who follow, and often remains flexible on the route, but not the destination. The McKinsey leadership behaviours work well in this situation.

Leaders are not gods and in a world in which power is so dispersed it is an increasingly unsuccessful approach to leadership. Those who follow are rarely in a position where they have to remain. In a digital world they share information and question authority. The paragon of virtue that is a god will soon have feet of clay in the real world.

There are arguably some exceptions, such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, who led from the front with clear decisions and a powerful following within the company and well beyond. Leaders like Bill Gates when he ran Microsoft could be put into the same bracket. But the truth is such people are rare, and when you look more closely you discover just how much they actually extended trust to those who demonstrated they merited it, and of course were hugely trusted in return.

What’s more, such powerful leaders are trusted as long as they are proven right – and this is difficult if not impossible to sustain.

There are many different models of leadership. One of the most influential was developed by Simon Western, who divided leadership into four styles, or what he called ‘discourses. He described them as the Controller, the Therapist, the Messiah and the Eco-leader, and suggested that, although they all exist in parallel, they represent the trends in leadership over time, towards the acceptance of complexity and away from a simple command and control philosophy.

The latest, Eco-leadership, sees their organisation as an ecosystem within ecosystems, which means they see interdependencies beyond their own organisation or team and see their role as facilitating high performing networks. They are absolutely a guide. This contrasts with the Controller, who sees the organisation like a machine, with employees a functional parts of the whole, and the focus is on maximising efficiency and optimising productivity.

This aligns with the changing employee demographics. Generation z – those born between 1996 and 2010 – are rapidly becoming the majority of the workforce and all research suggests they seek purpose, continually assess their options and do not see any particular employer or business as being long term. They are digital natives who have been trained to know they have choice in every aspect of their lives and are open to many different possibilities and influences.

Think about that quote from Warren Buffett, the world’s greatest investor. When trust is absent, everybody notices, and the implication is that they act accordingly. Typically, instead of working for the bigger cause, they act for themselves, behave defensively and become sceptical of what they are being told. This is the exact opposite of what a good leader wants to achieve with those they lead, and so they have to work hard to be trusted and maintain that trust in order to be effective.

Research by the global accountancy firm Deloitte in May 2020 showed that nearly 80% of employees who highly trust their employer feel motivated to work.

Exercise: consider your leaders

A good thought experiment is for you to take a moment to consider people who have been your leaders. How much did you trust them? Please think just about this issue of trust, not about their competence in other areas.

And how did this impact your behaviour and actions as a result?

If you are in a position of leadership, those who follow you will be asking themselves the same question, consciously or unconsciously. Be honest: what will be their answer?

If you are unsure about this, find a way to ask them when you’re next having a conversation. Ask for honesty and openness, and use this as a way of exploring what you do and say that builds or destroys trust. It can be a very revealing process.

If this article resonates, and you feel you would like to explore how to be a high trust leader, or develop your colleagues to be stronger in this area, please get in touch at stuartm@mutual-value.com.

And do listen to our podcast Choose Trust where we discuss these and other trust issues.