222: Trust Is Earned

<p>Leaders gain automatic trust by dint of their position power.  Title and authority ensure people will toe the line, laugh at our jokes, tell us “Yes”.  This type of trust only goes so far though in gaining the willing cooperation of the team members.  In a busy life however, with so many demands on our time, we mentally merge automatic trust with earned trust and confuse the two.  Earned trust differs from automatic trust because it is based on the reality of our interactions and communication with our team.  This is the “walk” as opposed to the “talk”.  We imagine we have established a trust relationship with the team and therefore are getting their full support for our efforts to progress the business.  As Yogi Berra once noted, " Leading is easy. It is getting people to follow you that is the hard part".</p> <p> </p> <p>Time management is closely related to trust.  The ability to leverage ourself as a leader and get others to work on projects for us, means we can concentrate on high level tasks that only we can do.  However, if the trust is not there, the person receiving the task feels unmotivated and lacking in commitment to do what needs to be done.</p> <p> </p> <p>If we are not able to trust our team we are afraid to delegate, because we a concerned they will not be reliable and we will suffer later, when things go wrong.  The flip side of this scenario is we don't delegate and therefore kill ourselves twice. Once by not developing our people, by giving them a chance to grow through taking accountability and responsibility for higher level tasks. Secondly, because we murder our own time management abilities, by heaping too much work on our own shoulders, ensuring we are doing mainly lower and medium value tasks for the most part.</p> <p> </p> <p>Discretionary effort is that jewel whereby our team want to go beyond, to innovate, create, think ahead and step up.  They get paid for their services of course, but this is  a much higher degree of commitment. It goes far beyond the basic expectations of labor