The Trusted Leader
Trust is a vital ingredient in organizations since they represent a type of ongoing relationship. In their book The Trusted Leader, Robert Galford and Anne Seibold Drapeau analyze this important aspect of leadership and offer models for understanding trust and how to build it.
Galford and Drapeau identified three categories of trust within an organization:
· Strategic trust - trust in the organization's mission, strategy, and ability to succeed.
· Organizational trust - trust that the organization's policies will be fairly administered and implemented as stated.
· Personal trust - trust that subordinates place in their manager to be fair and to look out for their interests.
In The Trusted Leader, Galford and Drapeau focus primarily on building personal and organizational trust.
Trust reduces unproductive rumors and second guessing that distracts employees from their work. It motivates, stimulates creativity, and helps the organization to attract and retain great employees.
Modeling Trust
Galford and Drapeau offer the following equation to model trust:
| Trustworthiness | = | C + R + I |
where
C = credibility
R = reliability
I = intimacy
S = self-orientation
These characteristics are described as follows:
· Credibility is earned by expertise, by the ability to obtain the required expertise, and by being up-front about one's limitations.
· Reliability is consistency and dependability. Reliable leaders provide a sense of comfort to their subordinates.
· Intimacy is not about revealing personal details, but rather, making the business of the organization personal and understanding the sensitivities of others.
· Self-orientation is the degree to which one focuses on one's own concerns when interacting with others. Self-orientation decreases trustworthiness. Those who are motivated by duty or achievement tend to be more self-oriented than those motivated by meaning or who gain pleasure from the work itself.
Enemies of Trust
While the above formula provides some insight, building trust is not an endeavor performed in isolation. Rather, building trust is an effort of defending trust from its enemies. A lone trusted leader cannot succeed in an untrustworthy environment because such a leader will become a target and eventually be brought down.
Galford and Drapeau identified 22 enemies of trust, each of which can be classified in one of the following categories:
- Inadequate communication
- Misbehavior
- Unremedied situations
Building Personal Trust
To build personal trust, Galford and Drapeau present a five stage process:
1. Engaging - finding common ground and relating to other people, for example, by appreciating the key challenges that employees face in their jobs.
2. Listening - builds trust by showing that one cares enough to invest the time to listen. Asking thoughtful questions, getting clarification when necessary, and giving one's complete attention to the conversation all send the message that one cares about the other person.
3. Framing - making sure that one understands the core of what the other person is conveying, and letting him or her know it.
4. Envisioning - looking to the future and identifying an optimistic and achievable outcome, and helping the other person to visualize the benefits of that outcome.
5. Committing - both parties agree and commit to moving toward the envisioned future.
Building Organizational Trust
Organizational trust is based on belief in the way things are done in the organization. While organizational trust requires personal trust in the organization's leaders on an aggregate basis, it is possible to have an untrustworthy supervisor and still believe in the organization.
Galford and Drapeau identified five variables on which organizational trust depends, as shown in the following equation:
| Organizational Trustworthiness | = | (A1 + A2 + A3) x (A4 + A5) |
where
A1 = Aspirations
A2 = Abilities
A3 = Actions
A4 = Alignment
A5 = Articulation
R = Resistance
These variables are described as follows:
· Aspirations - aspirations provide the incentive for people in the organization to want to trust each other. Aspirations is another term for business vision.
· Abilities - are the resources and capabilities required to fulfill the aspirations.
· Actions - actually getting to the task and doing what is needed to reach the organizational goals rather than losing focus to the distractions that inevitably will arise.
· Alignment - having consistency between aspirations, abilities, and actions.
· Articulation - communicating the aspirations, abilities, actions, and alignment so that everybody in the organization knows them and is able to articulate them.
· Resistance - building a trusting organization is likely to be met with resistance in the form of skepticism, fear, frustration, and a "we-they" mindset.
In the organizational trust formula, resistance is unique because it stands alone in the denominator; thus it is crucial to minimize it. Galford and Drapeau propose that resistance is best conquered by long-term action designed to directly address the issues behind the resistance.
Recommended
Robert Galford and Anne Seibold Drapeau, The Trusted Leader
The book on which this article is based, The Trusted Leader covers the subject of trusted leadership in-depth with plenty of examples that bring theory to life.
After introducing the theory, the book presents practical advice for situations frequently encountered by senior leaders.
Table of Contents
| Part One: | An Overview of Trusted Leadership |
| 1. What is trusted leadership? | |
| Part Two: | Identifying and Applying the Tools of Trusted Leaders |
| 5. The Tools of Building Personal Trust | |
| Part Three: | How Trusted Leaders Work |
| 7. From the Top | |
| Part Four: | Defining Moments |
| 10. In Times of Change | |
| Part Five: | Building Trust in Perspective |
| 13. Trust Lost, Trust Rebuilt Afterword: The Trusted Leader Continues | |
Numerous theories have been put forth about the many aspects of leadership such as motivation, alignment, and empowerment. However, it is not obvious how these pieces fit together into a coherent model, if they do at all. As such, leadership has a reputation of being an art that is practiced by the lucky few who possess certain talents.
In his 1999 book, Be The Leader, Make The Difference, consultant Paul B. Thornton proposed an integrating framework that takes these various leadership ideas and transforms them into a model that quickly can be studied, understood, and implemented by managers in order to develop an effective leadership style and better lead their organizations. The model is based on the premise that leaders exist because individuals need guidance, without which they do not always know what they can accomplish, what they should accomplish, or how to accomplish it. To this end, leaders can provide challenge, confidence, and coaching.
3-C Leadership Model
This three vertex diagram illustrates the balanced relationship among the three 3-Cs of leadership: presenting a challenge, building confidence, and providing coaching.
Present a Challenge
Of the 3 aspects of leadership, challenge is the one that is practiced most widely by managers as they ask their employee's to set increasingly higher goals. Human nature is such that most people do not want to leave their comfort zone and therefore are inclined to suggest small, incremental improvements in their objectives. In today's competitive environment, such small improvements often are insufficient. Improvements of 30%, 50%, or even several hundred percent sometimes are required. There are many ways in which leaders can challenge their employees. They can:
- Share their vision, inspiring them to believe that more is possible.
- Set very high goals, forcing people to leave their comfort zones to find ways to achieve them.
- Ask challenging questions that lead people to reconsider their assumptions about what is possible.
- Use benchmarking to reveal the best practices of others and use these as a challenge.
- Provide a wide variety of assignments. Many firms make it a policy to expose their employees to a wide range of aspects of the firm. Each new position is a new challenge that develops the employee further.
Once success is achieved, it is important continue raising the bar in order to fight the temptation to rest on one's laurels.
Build Confidence
A challenge brings people out of their comfort zones, often resulting in a drop in their confidence level. Without confidence, the challenging goals that caused the drop in confidence in the first place become even more difficult to reach. Therefore, a major responsibility of a leader is to build confidence in his or her employees so that they will believe in their ability to reach their objectives.
Many motivation experts make the case for positive thinking and self-affirmation as a means of building confidence. Paul Thornton argues that simply thinking something does not make it reality, and that a person achieves genuine self-confidence not by repeating affirmations but by actually working and achieving something. In the process of achievement we expand our abilities, and these expanded abilities create a more genuine, lasting confidence.
With this philosophy in mind, leaders can instill real confidence in their employees by:
- Recognizing and rewarding positive accomplishments rather than focusing on deficiencies.
- Providing professional development in order to build confidence through competence.
- Empowering them by providing both responsibility and authority, thereby expressing confidence in them.
- Verbally expressing confidence in them.
- Reminding them of past successes that may have faded from their consciousness in the face of new challenges.
Provide Coaching
Coaching is the process of advising people in a way that facilitates their success. It may take various forms, from training to offering a broader perspective. Coaching can help employees to better understand how their efforts fit into the larger strategy, thereby allowing them to make better decisions.
Leaders may coach employees by:
- Providing feedback immediately after the employee performs some important task such as meeting with a client or delivering a presentation.
- Showing them the best practices of others as examples of how tasks can be accomplished.
- Posing carefully formulated questions designed to improve their understanding by leading them to think through the situation.
- Setting an example, especially one of continual self-improvement.
Overcoaching should be avoided as it can create dependent employees, reduce their initiative, and cause them to feel micro-managed.
Relationship Among the 3-Cs
The triangle diagram is particularly appropriate for depicting the 3-C Leadership Model because there is no single "correct" order and because balance among the three vertices is important.
The 3-Cs do not need to occur in any specific order. For example, the leader may choose first to present a challenge, then to build the confidence needed to meet the challenge, followed by coaching. Alternatively, the leader first may build the team's confidence, then present the grand challenge.
A proper balance among the 3-Cs is important. Consider the balance between confidence and challenge. A significant challenge without enough confidence likely would result in failure. Conversely, high confidence with little challenge would result in under-utilization of one's abilities and boredom. In the case of insufficient confidence, coaching can be used to improve the employee's skills and thus build confidence. In the case of insufficient challenge, the employee may need to be offered an assignment that better utilizes his or her capabilities.
When the right balance is achieved, employees will experience a higher degree of effectiveness and satisfaction in their work.
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The effective management of people in an organization requires an understanding of motivation, job design, reward systems, and group influence.
Behavior Modification
Operant conditioning is the learning that takes place when the learner recognizes the connection between a behavior and its consequences.
· Positive reinforcement vs. punishment: rewarding desired behavior vs. punishing undesired behavior.
· Negative reinforcement: removing negative consequences from workers who perform the desired behavior.
· Extinction: removing whatever is currently reinforcing the undesirable behavior.
· Reinforcement schedules: variable, erratic reinforcement schemes are more effective than steady reinforcement schedules.
· Classical conditioning: if one gets sick after eating tacos, from that point forward one may get sick from the smell of tacos. People are genetically hard-wired to make certain associations. For example, sickness is associated with food.
Expectancy Theory
The expectancy theory of motivation models motivational force as the product of three factors perceived by the individual. There is research evidence to support the theory, and it has become relatively widely accepted.
Principal-Agent Problem
In a company, stockholders are principals and managers are agents. The goal of a compensation system is to align principals' and agents' interests.
Executives who are compensated based on financial performance may favor diversifying the company since it evens out their incomes. But shareholders can diversify their portfolios on their own if they want.
Promotion Tournaments
The purpose of high executive salaries is to motivate those at lower levels by giving them a goal or prize for which to strive. If eight people are competing for a position, only one of them has to be paid the big prize, but they all are motivated.
Job Design
Scientific management took all authority away from the workers – no thinking was needed. Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback all were missing.
Giving people choices provides more job satisfaction. One way of doing this is to propose an alternative or two that is inferior, and ask for the employee's opinion. An exaggerated example that illustrates this point: in selecting the foundation of a building, the manager, knowing concrete is better, can propose wood. The employee proposes concrete and gains satisfaction from "convincing" the manager of the right decision.
Equity Theory
People care about fairness and are willing to give up money to avoid unfair treatment.
An example of this idea is a game in which one person is handed 100 dollars, and this person must propose to give part of the money to a second person. The first person must propose the amount that he or she will give to the second person, and the second person can accept or reject the offer. If the second person accepts the offer, then it stands as proposed. If the second person rejects the offer, neither of the two people get to keep any of the money. Assuming that the two people never will deal with each other again, the rational decision of the second person is to accept any amount that the first person offers. However, if the first person offers only one dollar, the second person may refuse this low offer simply to punish the first person who is not offering a "fair" split.
Reward Systems
Employees like performance rating distributions in which almost everyone is at the top, but in which a few really get punished. Employees hate systems in which only a few get top ratings.
When people are given higher rewards than what they deserve, at first their performance improves, but then they start reasoning that they really are worthy and begin to slack off.
Efficiency Wages
For lower-level workers, performance increases with increased wages. Efficiency wages are wages set at a higher-than-market clearing wage, set by employers to:
- discourage shirking by raising the cost of being fired
- encourage worker loyalty
- raise group output norms
- improve the applicant pool
- raise morale
Rationalizing Behavior
Cognitive dissonance is the state of conflict that one faces when one's attitudes are contradicted by the situation that one is experiencing. In this situation, people often rationalize anything that is inconsistent in their minds. For example, one may come to love the things for which he or she is poorly compensated in order to resolve the inconsistency of doing something that one does not want to do for below average pay.
Characteristics of Jobs and Work that Substitute for Formal Leadership
In flat organizations, there are fewer opportunities to formally manage the work of others. In this situation, people may become de-motivated because they feel that they are not advancing. However, some environments have characteristics that can substitute for more formal leadership opportunities. These characteristics are:
- Professional orientation
- Performance feedback provided by work itself
- Cohesive, interdependent work groups and advisory panel
- Written goals and rigid procedures
Groupthink
Concurrence-seeking may become so dominant in a group that it overrides objective appraisal. In a cohesive group, individuals truly may believe that a bad proposal is a good one without scrutinizing it.
Managing Individual and Group Performance
When one person excels, the others do not look as good. Furthermore, good performance is often "rewarded" with increased quotas.
Expectancy Theory
The expectancy theory of motivation has become a commonly accepted theory for explaining how individuals make decisions regarding various behavioral alternatives. Expectancy theory offers the following propositions:
A. When deciding among behavioral options, individuals select the option with the greatest motivation forces (MF).
B. The motivational force for a behavior, action, or task is a function of three distinct perceptions: Expectancy, Instrumentality, and Valance. The motivational force is the product of the three perceptions:
MF = Expectancy x Instrumentality x
1. Expectancy probability: based on the perceived effort-performance relationship. It is the expectancy that one's effort will lead to the desired performance and is based on past experience, self-confidence, and the perceived difficulty of the performance goal. Example: If I work harder than everyone else in the plant will I produce more?
2. Instrumentality probability: based on the perceived performance-reward relationship. The instrumentality is the belief that if one does meet performance expectations, he or she will receive a greater reward. Example: If I produce more than anyone else in the plant, will I get a bigger raise or a faster promotion?
3.
Because the motivational force is the product of the three perceptions, if any one of their values is zero, the whole equation becomes zero.
Expectancy theory generally is supported by empirical evidence and is one of the more widely accepted theories of motivation.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
In his #1 bestseller, Stephen R. Covey presented a framework for personal effectiveness. The following is a summary of the first part of his book, concluding with a list of the seven habits.
Inside-Out: The Change Starts from Within
While working on his doctorate in the 1970's, Stephen R. Covey reviewed 200 years of literature on success. He noticed that since the 1920's, success writings have focused on solutions to specific problems. In some cases such tactical advice may have been effective, but only for immediate issues and not for the long-term, underlying ones. The success literature of the last half of the 20th century largely attributed success to personality traits, skills, techniques, maintaining a positive attitude, etc. This philosophy can be referred to as the Personality Ethic.
However, during the 150 years or so that preceded that period, the literature on success was more character oriented. It emphasized the deeper principles and foundations of success. This philosophy is known as the Character Ethic, under which success is attributed more to underlying characteristics such as integrity, courage, justice, patience, etc.
The elements of the Character Ethic are primary traits while those of the Personality Ethic are secondary. While secondary traits may help one to play the game to succeed in some specific circumstances, for long-term success both are necessary. One's character is what is most visible in long-term relationships. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say."
To illustrate the difference between primary and secondary traits, Covey offers the following example. Suppose you are in
The problem with relying on the Personality Ethic is that unless the basic underlying paradigms are right, simply changing outward behavior is not effective. We see the world based on our perspective, which can have a dramatic impact on the way we perceive things. For example, many experiments have been conducted in which two groups of people are shown two different drawings. One group is shown, for instance, a drawing of a young, beautiful woman and the other group is shown a drawing of an old, frail woman. After the initial exposure to the pictures, both groups are shown one picture of a more abstract drawing. This drawing actually contains the elements of both the young and the old woman. Almost invariably, everybody in the group that was first shown the young woman sees a young woman in the abstract drawing, and those who were shown the old woman see an old woman. Each group was convinced that it had objectively evaluated the drawing. The point is that we see things not as they are, but as we are conditioned to see them. Once we understand the importance of our past conditioning, we can experience a paradigm shift in the way we see things. To make large changes in our lives, we must work on the basic paradigms through which we see the world.
The Character Ethic assumes that there are some absolute principles that exist in all human beings. Some examples of such principles are fairness, honesty, integrity, human dignity, quality, potential, and growth. Principles contrast with practices in that practices are for specific situations whereas principles have universal application.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People presents an "inside-out" approach to effectiveness that is centered on principles and character. Inside-out means that the change starts within oneself. For many people, this approach represents a paradigm shift away from the Personality Ethic and toward the Character Ethic.
The Seven Habits - An Overview
Our character is a collection of our habits, and habits have a powerful role in our lives. Habits consist of knowledge, skill, and desire. Knowledge allows us to know what to do, skill gives us the ability to know how to do it, and desire is the motivation to do it.
The Seven Habits move us through the following stages:
- Dependence: the paradigm under which we are born, relying upon others to take care of us.
- Interdependence: the paradigm under which we cooperate to achieve something that cannot be achieved independently.
Much of the success literature today tends to value independence, encouraging people to become liberated and do their own thing. The reality is that we are interdependent, and the independent model is not optimal for use in an interdependent environment that requires leaders and team players.
To make the choice to become interdependent, one first must be independent, since dependent people have not yet developed the character for interdependence. Therefore, the first three habits focus on self-mastery, that is, achieving the private victories required to move from dependence to independence. The first three habits are:
- Habit 1: Be Proactive
- Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
- Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habits 4, 5, and 6 then address interdependence:
- Habit 4: Think Win/Win
- Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
- Habit 6: Synergize
Finally, the seventh habit is one of renewal and continual improvement, that is, of building one's personal production capability. To be effective, one must find the proper balance between actually producing and improving one's capability to produce. Covey illustrates this point with the fable of the goose and the golden egg.
In the fable, a poor farmer's goose began laying a solid gold egg every day, and the farmer soon became rich. He also became greedy and figured that the goose must have many golden eggs within her. In order to obtain all of the eggs immediately, he killed the goose. Upon cutting it open he discovered that it was not full of golden eggs. The lesson is that if one attempts to maximize immediate production with no regard to the production capability, the capability will be lost. Effectiveness is a function of both production and the capacity to produce.
The need for balance between production and production capability applies to physical, financial, and human assets. For example, in an organization the person in charge of a particular machine may increase the machine's immediate production by postponing scheduled maintenance. As a result of the increased output, this person may be rewarded with a promotion. However, the increased immediate output comes at the expense of future production since more maintenance will have to be performed on the machine later. The person who inherits the mess may even be blamed for the inevitable downtime and high maintenance expense.
Customer loyalty also is an asset to which the production and production capability balance applies. A restaurant may have a reputation for serving great food, but the owner may decide to cut costs and lower the quality of the food. Immediately, profits will soar, but soon the restaurant's reputation will be tarnished, the customer's trust will be lost, and profits will decline.
This does not mean that only production capacity is important. If one builds capacity but never uses it, there will be no production. There is a balance between building production capacity and actually producing. Finding the right tradeoff is central to one's effectiveness.
The above has been an introduction and overview of the 7 Habits. The following introduces the first habit in Covey's framework.
FROM DEPENDENCE TO
Habit 1: Be Proactive
A unique ability that sets humans apart from animals is self-awareness and the ability to choose how we respond to any stimulus. While conditioning can have a strong impact on our lives, we are not determined by it. There are three widely accepted theories of determinism: genetic, psychic, and environmental. Genetic determinism says that our nature is coded into our DNA, and that our personality traits are inherited from our grandparents. Psychic determinism says that our upbringing determines our personal tendencies, and that emotional pain that we felt at a young age is remembered and affects the way we behave today. Environmental determinism states that factors in our present environment are responsible for our situation, such as relatives, the national economy, etc. These theories of determinism each assume a model in which the stimulus determines the response.
Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who survived the death camps of Nazi Germany. While in the death camps, Frankl realized that he alone had the power to determine his response to the horror of the situation. He exercised the only freedom he had in that environment by envisioning himself teaching students after his release. He became an inspiration for others around him. He realized that in the middle of the stimulus-response model, humans have the freedom to choose.
Animals do not have this independent will. They respond to a stimulus like a computer responds to its program. They are not aware of their programming and do not have the ability to change it. The model of determinism was developed based on experiments with animals and neurotic people. Such a model neglects our ability to choose how we will respond to stimuli.
We can choose to be reactive to our environment. For example, if the weather is good, we will be happy. If the weather is bad, we will be unhappy. If people treat us well, we will feel well; if they don't, we will feel bad and become defensive. We also can choose to be proactive and not let our situation determine how we will feel. Reactive behavior can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. By accepting that there is nothing we can do about our situation, we in fact become passive and do nothing.
The first habit of highly effective people is proactivity. Proactive people are driven by values that are independent of the weather or how people treat them. Gandhi said, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them." Our response to what happened to us affects us more than what actually happened. We can choose to use difficult situations to build our character and develop the ability to better handle such situations in the future.
Proactive people use their resourcefulness and initiative to find solutions rather than just reporting problems and waiting for other people to solve them.
Being proactive means assessing the situation and developing a positive response for it. Organizations can be proactive rather than be at the mercy of their environment. For example, a company operating in an industry that is experiencing a downturn can develop a plan to cut costs and actually use the downturn to increase market share.
Once we decide to be proactive, exactly where we focus our efforts becomes important. There are many concerns in our lives, but we do not always have control over them. One can draw a circle that represents areas of concern, and a smaller circle within the first that represents areas of control. Proactive people focus their efforts on the things over which they have influence, and in the process often expand their area of influence. Reactive people often focus their efforts on areas of concern over which they have no control. Their complaining and negative energy tend to shrink their circle of influence.
In our area of concern, we may have direct control, indirect control, or no control at all. We have direct control over problems caused by our own behavior. We can solve these problems by changing our habits. We have indirect control over problems related to other people's behavior. We can solve these problems by using various methods of human influence, such as empathy, confrontation, example, and persuasion. Many people have only a few basic methods such as fight or flight. For problems over which we have no control, first we must recognize that we have no control, and then gracefully accept that fact and make the best of the situation.
SUMMARY OF THE SEVEN HABITS
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Change starts from within, and highly effective people make the decision to improve their lives through the things that they can influence rather than by simply reacting to external forces.
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Develop a principle-centered personal mission statement. Extend the mission statement into long-term goals based on personal principles.
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Spend time doing what fits into your personal mission, observing the proper balance between production and building production capacity. Identify the key roles that you take on in life, and make time for each of them.
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Seek agreements and relationships that are mutually beneficial. In cases where a "win/win" deal cannot be achieved, accept the fact that agreeing to make "no deal" may be the best alternative. In developing an organizational culture, be sure to reward win/win behavior among employees and avoid inadvertantly rewarding win/lose behavior.
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
First seek to understand the other person, and only then try to be understood. Stephen Covey presents this habit as the most important principle of interpersonal relations. Effective listening is not simply echoing what the other person has said through the lens of one's own experience. Rather, it is putting oneself in the perspective of the other person, listening empathically for both feeling and meaning.
Habit 6: Synergize
Through trustful communication, find ways to leverage individual differences to create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Through mutual trust and understanding, one often can solve conflicts and find a better solution than would have been obtained through either person's own solution.
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
Take time out from production to build production capacity through personal renewal of the physical, mental, social/emotional, and spiritual dimensions. Maintain a balance among these dimensions.
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