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Leadership Skill: Trust Depleted
By harveyrobbins | November 18, 2002
Trust depleted may never be regained. It is a tough business - two strikes and you’re out. When trust is gone, it must be replaced by control: rules, regulations, structure, three-ringed notebooks. The team spends as much time policing itself as doing its job.
A world without trust is a world full of . . . lawyers. Lawyers are how our society imposes control in the absence of trust. They weigh us down with structure and penalties. They create language that is frightfully clear, and frighteningly uncreative. The irony is that control ultimately fails to control - for who can really understand the clarity of legalese? A team that comes up empty in the trust department will start to think like a lawyer - not what works, or what is best, or what meets the customer’s needs, but what technically complies with what is asked of us.
A final disturbing thought: While a team leader can take heroic measures to regain trust - submitting to a public whipping is one promising avenue, apologizing is another - there is precious little that rank and file team members can do. But here and there, even in the darkest organizations, there are always good people who speak the truth, and devil take the hindmost. Find them and listen.
Topics: Leadership Skill |