#331: The less trust you have, the more compelling your why must be
Trust is the variable that determines how much you need to explain to your team
When you want something accomplished by your team, a good leader follows the simple rules of delegating and empowering them. You communicate what the expected outcome is, provide timing, get commitments, and off they go. A good team gets it done in time, and all is well.
If it were only that easy.
At one of the first companies I worked for, I was initially dumbfounded by the lack of respect the sales team gave the boss. I was diligently writing out my call reports and delivering them each week on time. FYI, before Salesforce & Microsoft Word, we handwrote those things. We would gather in the sales room, and the manager would scold the team for not completing them on time. The scolding went on for a few weeks, and things changed.
What changed? The manager told them it didn’t matter anymore and that we needed to start filling out a different report. This one was simple. It was much easier to do for all of us and read for the boss. The team didn’t do that one either. The weekly report had changed a dozen times in as many months. And for the record, this one also changed a few weeks later.
What did the root cause analysis find?
Was it insubordination or poor management? A little bit of both, but this manager was not considered a leader. Most likely he never became one. The team’s lack of trust kept this manager from doing so. Every staff member knew that he wouldn’t stick to the plan. They had no idea what information to gather weekly or what it would be used for. They all felt that they would be wasting their time.
After a few months, I also stopped writing these reports. The only time I produced anything for him would be when the request was compelling.
“Hey, team, we need you to all talk to your furniture manufacturers and ask them these specific questions. We need this in our manufacturing area to improve the efficiency of a process, and it could lower the cost of goods sold by as much as 5%. If you have this information to me by next Friday, we’ll have results the following week.”
The only way we would get this information and complete that task is with 100% transparency. We needed to see the benefits for us and our customers. We didn’t just trust that the answers to these questions would result in anything.
Time to question yourself
Do you find that tasks are not being completed on time or at all? Is your project list growing with more things you want to do, but nothing ever going into action? If so, it is time to question yourself before you apply pressure on the team.
If you find yourself in any of these situations, you may have a problem. If two or more of them are true, you are the problem.
Are you often selling your teams on the tasks after you have delegated them?
Have you changed course more than once on a priority project?
Do you have to go lower on the organizational ladder to find out what is going on for these projects?
Are you surprised that the results you expected were not met?
Is your organization’s growth flat or below industry benchmarks?
Have you ever heard one of the team members say, ‘It doesn’t matter, they will change their minds anyway?’
Without trust, your why must be compelling
That is the focus of this article. As a new leader or someone growing into a leadership role, just telling people to do things is not enough. The why must be attached to the project or tasks at hand. Why do you have to have this done on a specific date? What are the implications or benefits of a completed project?
You build this trust each day. As you deliver the results you promise time and time again, you may get into a position where your team charges that hill without knowing where the enemy even is. They will believe in you and know you wouldn’t send them up a hill without a good reason.
We want to get to the point where, as leaders, we point and the team reacts. You may not always have the luxury of time to explain in detail what the why is. Transparency is a goal, but it can be opaque if you are on solid ground with your team, and the job will still get done.
If you have been in a leadership position for quite some time, and see productivity slipping or project timelines being extended, question yourself. Building and maintaining trust is not just something you do once; it is a lifestyle change. Yes, you know the rest; it’s hard work today but will lead to better tomorrows.
At the Kole Performance Group, we can dig into your teams and discover the root cause. We often get called into ‘training a team’ when the leaders are causing the issues. If you want to talk about this, schedule a 30-minute free consultation so we can help identify these issues.