Trust-Based Leadership

I was once offered the following words of advice: change happens at the speed of trust. Admittedly, I like things to happen fast. I remember in elementary school being asked “if I was a kitchen item, what kind would I be.” I said a microwave for that very reason. Having promised radical changes at the organization I led, I decided ‘radical trust’ was the shortest path forward.

We centered women and girls over our bureaucracies. We overhauled grantmaking so that partners could operate with autonomy and authority. We removed burdensome rules and reporting requirements that scored organizational development points but had, in fact, suffocated many of the best organizers, while doing little to help with non-performance.

We ‘right-sized’ operational systems. We committed ourselves to being lean, reducing overhead costs and administrative oversight, so more resources reached more partners more quickly. We believed the best quality assurance was to have the best people and focused on retaining and attracting talent that held itself accountable.

We aimed to be open. Open-minded. Open to all. Open about what we were planning and doing. We eliminated barriers to affiliation. We created an advisory board with unlimited participation. Staff and members were invited to join leadership team meetings and given unfettered access to the Board of Directors.

These changes attracted new leaders, new groups, and new ideas. Changes also accelerated and increased the impact we were making together. What the changes didn’t do—much to my chagrin—was necessarily engender trust in me. Something I only realized on the precipice of making the biggest change of all—the US team stepping back.

At a loss, a friend and mentor, who knew many people involved, suggested that while I did the right things, I did them too fast. This did not make me either a bad person or a bad leader, but if I learned from it, I would only become better as both. Their words struck a chord—and a nerve.

It harkened back not just to the microwave, but to something an executive coach long ago described as a “conflict of cadence,” explaining to me and another colleague that we always reached the same place, but for whatever reason, at separate times and tempos.

Still, I chafed at the idea of my speediness being a limiting factor of trust in me. In part because changes had been debated and discussed for years. My worry when I became CEO was losing the trust of frustrated colleagues if I didn’t move fast enough. Not the other way around. ‘What do we want? Change! When do we want it? Now!’

I went back through reams of documentation. Presentations, minutes, emails, FAQs, call logs, recordings—you name it. Proof! I did what I always said I was going to do; what we said we were going to do. If transparency and follow through aren’t the hallmarks of trust, what are? The question haunted me, until I came across the following definition of trust.

Trust is choosing to risk making what you most value vulnerable to another person’s actions. Conversely, distrust is deciding that what is most important to you is not safe with someone else.[1]  

Forgotten conversations suddenly moved to the forefront of my mind. Like how when I first joined the organization, and again when I became CEO, I was told we were—and were to remain—a family. And later, after letting a long-time colleague and then a grantee go, hearing we don’t do that here.

I think now comments like these contained more truth in feeling than all the consultations, focus groups, interviews, surveys, or town halls combined. Yet, I brushed them aside. I wanted us to be kind and to care about each other’s larger lives. I wanted us to be colleagues, and friends, but not family. No surprise, given my relationship with my actual family is rather fraught.

I left home when I was kid. And as a result, I don’t believe that the health of an institution—family or organization—comes above the collective well-being of the individuals that are a part of it—me included. Looking back from the distance of time and new perspective, I can admit that if the tie that binds is what many of my colleagues valued most, it wasn’t, in fact, safe with me.

I’ve participated in organizational value exercises aplenty. Even led a few. Usually, the identified values are less embedded in approaches or daily behaviors so much as they are nice-sounding words on websites, supported and reinforced to varying degrees. The truth is plenty of us hold values that internally conflict with one another. We also suppress or disguise our values—particularly at work—under the assumption that others don’t or won’t share them.

Sometime these hidden values—such as family—are our biggest drivers and deciders; coming out to play when our other ideologies and identities internally bump up against one another. Unwittingly or not, they supersede our other values and guide us to—and through—the choices, compromises, and consequences we are most willing to face.

Talking change and experiencing it are completely different beasts. When ‘change’ intersects with our lives in a very direct way—our jobs, our security, our loved ones—it can be surprising what comes up for us. We tend to over assign and over presume values—even our own—whether big or small, if this, then that. But if we are paying attention, our behavior leaks traces of a hierarchy of priorities far beyond anything we ever say in a meeting. That or they suddenly explode out of us.

I’ve always loved the lyric “I have no need for anger with intimate strangers” by the Indigo Girls.[2] ‘Intimate strangers’ is such an apt, artful way to describe how I feel about some family and colleagues. Unfortunately, though, anger is still sometimes present. Even if pushed down—be it from desire not to offend or to keep the peace and people somewhat together.

But it never holds, and when pent up grievances are finally unleashed, I am always stunned by the assumptions of facts not in evidence about intention or character. Our values may be at the heart of trust, but related actions and words, their meanings and motivation are subject to interpretation. The accuracy of which usually comes down to how well we know someone, including ourselves.