“Mind the Gap” —the Secret Source of the Great Resignation

No, not that gap. For those of you that have not traveled to London “mind the gap” is heard thousands of times each day on the automated warning announcement at every stop of the subway system or “Tube” as Londoners say. 

I am however, warning you to mind another significant gap. The perception gap between how we judge ourselves and how we judge others. Most of us judge ourselves by our good intentions and others by their observable behavior. My empathic wife Annie exemplifies this as we drive and I judge other drivers on their behavior and assume they deliberately cut me off she comes to their defense that maybe that was not their intent—perhaps they had a sick child to get to the clinic or they didn’t see me. 

On a more mega scale I have, throughout my career, been repeatedly surprised at the enormous gap of perception between organizational executive teams and the perception of their workforce. By a large margin the executives tend to give themselves very high if not 100% marks on the question to rate themselves on how much they genuinely care about their employees, yet, when employees are asked, “Does senior leadership care about you?” the answer typically reveals a 50% or more gap in perception. This gap between the executives intent and their cultures perception is, as they say, statistically significant. They also tend to have significant gaps on how they perceive themselves contrasted with how their peers perceive them. My limited personal anecdotal experience is validated by tens of thousands of trust assessments we have administered over many years.

The trust gap has grown so prevalent that just before the pandemic the top 100 Glassdoor CEO’s voted Stephen M R Covey’s Speed of Trust book the #1 book everyone should read.  Zoom CEO @Eric Yuan called The Speed of Trust his favorite book. Is it any wonder the great workforce resignation is happening? Workers have just experienced an existential opportunity to re-evaluate their priorities and search for meaningful work more in line with their values and workplaces where they feel valued and trusted. They are coming out of a 2 year “private victory” as we say in 7 Habits jargon, empowered by their new found independence.

It is now a sellers market for talent and workers have much more leverage to reject and flee from historic command and control bosses where they feel over managed and under led. 

It is the workplace validation of Maya Angelo’s profound observation: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” People’s greatest longing is to be heard. Oprah says that after doing over 37,000 interviews from Presidents to prisoners to performers—all ask her one thing: how’d I do? She observes that every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire, they wanna know, do you see me?, do you hear me?, does what I say mean anything to you?

Today's workforce is voting with their collective feet, fleeing command and control bosses and demanding respect for their contributions. They want to be trusted. The profound irony today is that leadership is going to have to trust them as this enlightened, dispersed workforce is overwhelmingly choosing autonomy and flexibility and rejecting micromanagement.  

How do we define this trust they are seeking? As Jack Welch retired GE CEO famously defined trust: “I can give you a dictionary definition but you know it when you feel it.”

Test it for yourself. Imagine a person with whom you have a high trust relationship. Got it? What words come to mind to describe how that relationship feels? 

Now imagine a person with whom you have a low trust relationship. What words come to mind to describe how relationship feels? (watch your tongue)

People may come up with varying descriptors but the difference and distinction of the feelings in the contrasting relationships are palpable. Fortunately most of us refuse to tolerate low trust relationships for very long. Unfortunately, if this tension of low trust relationships is collectivized in an organization, team, or family culture it can amplify, become toxic and figuratively suck the air out of the room. We have all been in those meetings—Zoom or live. The point is, don’t take my word for it test it from your own experience. The distinctions are not just palpable they are also as Maya Angelo said: memorable. 

Dr. Stephen R. Covey used to like to say there is no such thing as organizational behavior—only individual behavior collectivized. He made a visceral observation when he wrote the foreword for his son’s Speed Of Trust book speaking of his son’s performance as CEO of The Covey Leadership Center: “because of his character and competence, Stephen was trusted. Also, he extended trust to others. The synergistic effect of being trusted and giving trust unleashed a level of performance we had never experienced before, and almost everyone associated with those events looked on the transformation as the supreme, most exhilarating, and inspiring experience of their business careers.” So true, I still get goosebumps reading it and having experienced it I definitely will never forget how he made me feel. 

Again, test this from your own experience. Bring to mind the most exciting or even exhilarating work team or organization you ever experienced. Memorable yes? 

A high trust culture is a product of our individual high trust relationships collectivized. A high trust culture narrows the gap—the chasm between low trust and high trust. In our Smart Trust book we reported that Nordstroms had achieved such a high trust culture that their entire employee handbook consisted of a single postcard. On the front it said welcome to Nordstrom’s we have just one rule, on the back it said “Use good judgment in all situations” This extraordinary extension of trust from leaders to workers was reciprocated to each other and most significantly to customers. 

This brings to light another gap—between potential and performance. Stephen R Covey said that trust unleashed a new level of performance at Covey Leadership Center. Extending trust unleashes untapped performance and innovation in people. Organizations with a reputation for such trusting cultures in this renewed war for talent have a distinct competitive advantage—a magnet for the best and brightest talent. Innovation expert Robert Porter Lynch asserts that “innovation flourishes where there’s a collision of differences in an environment of trust.” Research on high trust cultures provides overwhelming proof. People in high trust cultures are thirty-two times more likely to take a responsible risk than in a low trust culture. They are eleven times more likely to innovate and six times more likely to achieve higher performance. As Tim Cook CEO of Apple says “We take risks knowing that risks will sometimes result in failure, but without the possibility of failure there is no possibility of success.”

Stephen M. R. Covey has now captured the gestalt of this inspiring next level of leadership in his new book Trust and Inspire—How truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others. He eloquently enlightens us on how to create and harness the magic momentum of a what he calls a Trust and Inspire culture in sharp contrast to historic command and control. He asks “Is there a level beyond being fully engaged? Yes—it’s being inspired. In fact, I believe that inspiration is the new engagement. A recent study from the consulting firm Bain & Company showed that inspired employees are the most productive employees by far—a remarkable 56 percent more productive than engaged employees, and a whopping 125 percent more productive than satisfied employees.” 

Forbes magazine in their article introducing his new Trust and Inspire book cut to an insightful observation: “In The Speed of Trust, Stephen focused on trust as a noun. In this latest offering, he shows the value of trust as a verb. It’s a distinction and combination well worth pondering.”

Covey says the reason that more leaders have not embraced high trust leadership is that they think they already have. Truth is they are merely leading with what he calls enlightened command and control—still command and control. He cites research that estimates that 92% of organizations today are still led with some form of command and control. 

In Trust and Inspire Covey gives many compelling examples including @Satya Naddella’s extraordinary feat of shifting a corporate behemoth of over 100,000 people from a command and control culture to one of Trust and Inspire as Stephen describes it: 

“Changing Microsoft’s culture was Nadella’s number one goal as CEO. Why? Because as a Trust & Inspire leader, he understood the first epic imperative of our time: to succeed, you must win in the workplace by attracting, retaining, engaging, and inspiring the best people. 

Nadella came in quietly and thoughtfully, with little to no swagger or hubris, and right away modeled a Trust & Inspire leadership style that ultimately transformed the company culture. His leadership paradigm was one of trusting and inspiring others—manifest by adopting a “growth mindset,” not only for himself but also for others, unleashing them to become the driving force of Microsoft’s success. 

He successfully revitalized the company’s cutthroat culture, completely changing the trajectory of Microsoft. 

The result? Nadella has inspired the care and admiration of the people he serves. An employee survey showed a 92 percent CEO approval rating. For a company of more than a hundred thousand employees, that’s remarkable. 

Above all, Microsoft again became perceived as a relevant and exciting place to work. The results speak for themselves: when Nadella became CEO, Microsoft’s market value was around $300 billion. It now exceeds $2 trillion, the second company in history to pull off that high a valuation. It was a turnaround few would have believed possible. 

Considered a has-been story just a few years ago, Microsoft became the world’s cloud powerhouse. It was nothing short of a grand reinvention. And at its roots that was fundamentally due to the inspiring leadership style of their new leader—a style that unleashed people’s potential and that enabled everything else.”

"Being a leader is a privilege you have. Your job is about being able to help people realize their best potential. That’s what, in fact, is expected of you." —Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft

In conclusion I suggest that Trust and Inspire is the antidote for the great resignation. Canceling command and control once and for all. It teaches us how to move from the independence the workforce is embracing to the synergistic interdependence of a Trust and Inspire culture. An energized culture where crowd sourced level collaboration and asynchronous cross departmental teamwork is modeled and celebrated. Zoom CEO @Eric Yuan now says: "For years, I have told people that my favorite book is the Speed of Trust. After reading Trust and Inspire, I now have to say I have two favorite books."

I promise as you read Trust and Inspire Covey will spark in you a desire to seek to find or create an awe inspiring place to work reminiscent of the previous exhilarating work experience you brought to mind earlier. For those of you in a leadership role able to create such a workplace I trust you will feel the pull of that stewardship. This is an important paradigm shifting book that will change the trajectory of leadership from obsolete command and control to enlightened Trust and Inspire. It will unleash untapped energy and joy as workers embrace the freedom and inspiration of being trusted. They will passionately align with meaningful purposes and volunteer their full hearts and minds. It is the future of leadership. But I am biased—Greg McKeown however is not. He is the author of one of my recent favorite books, Essentialism, and he so aptly puts it this way: 

 “For fifty years we have heard that we need to move away from Command & Control leadership. But nobody has named what we should do instead! That’s what Stephen M. R. Covey boldly and brilliantly does in the words, and the book, Trust & Inspire. Isn’t that what we want? Fifty years from now nobody will speak of Command & Control without saying ‘Trust & Inspire.’ It’s going to become a part of our language, a part of what management itself means. As a great leader himself, Stephen will, through this book, unleash the greatness within you.” 

Recently in a podcast interview I recalled an experience in early 1989 with the late Stephen R. Covey in a meeting we were having with the then President and his executive team of our publisher Simon and Schuster in New York. We were discussing how large of a first print run they were going to do for The 7 Habits book. This was significant because authors don’t want to do exhausting publicity only to have book stores run out of books and publishers don’t want to print more books than they can sell. Stephen R. prophetically proceeded to tell them he expected to sell 10 million 7 Habits books in the decade of the 90’s. I sat across the table and watched the collective eye rolls of these stunned executives. You could have heard a pin drop. None of them wanted to be the one to tell this clueless professor that he was naive and that was impossible.

As I reflect on that experience I now realize it was the equivalent of U.S. baseball's Babe Ruth pointing to the left field fence in the 1932 world series and hitting a home run—Covey sold over 12 million 7 Habits books in the 90’s at the turn of this century. 

Likewise, I predict that Trust and Inspire—How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others--is going to be the leadership book of this decade and sell millions of books.

I invite you to read it and let me know what you think. 

Simply tap on book below to go to directly to Amazon:

Sedona Az, USA April 7, 2022