Trust Creates Efficiency: 3 Ways To Speed Things Up Now
Efficient work is happy work. Efficient teams are happy teams.
Well-oiled squads who can count on each other to fulfill individual roles for the group’s benefit. These teams may not ever socialize outside of work, may not be comprised of “friends” and everyone may not even like each other, but they are top performers because they respect and can count on each other.
Efficient teams trust each other, and work to retain that trust over time.
In my experience inefficiency at work is a direct result of the feelings that emerge from misunderstandings, assumptions based on false “facts,” and not trusting colleagues to pull their weight or honor other people.
Misunderstandings can and should be cleared up quickly – do not let any misunderstanding fester. At Double Forte we use a “Communication Wheel” based on work at Georgetown that our executive coach Lori Ogden Moore trained us to use to bring misunderstandings and misalignments to the fore quickly and respectfully. The unusual times conflict arises, I ask “have you circled it?” which sends the people involved to use this tool to resolve their issues. It is incredibly powerful.
I call assumptions “false facts” – things we count on the other person to know, understand or have agreed to that are not any of the above. As the saying goes “assumptions just make and ass out of you and me;” get it? ass – us – me. We can kill assumptions by regularly calibrating our work with each other by taking 15 to 30 minutes before we start a project or a busy day to review goals, roles and deadlines. This muscle memory is particularly critical to develop among intergenerational teams whose members may have different definitions or interpretations of the same word or concept. I wrote a whole book about that.
Trust, on the other hand, is something that needs to be constantly earned and can be killed in an instant. Trust is built on personal experience with another person or organization – that reputation the beholder would convey about you to another person. As Warren Buffet says, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
In my constant quest to improve my own leadership capacity, I read – a lot — and seek input from other CEOs and entrepreneurs who are deep in the day-to-day of building and running great organizations. I just re-read “The Speed of Trust” by Stephen M. R. Covey (the son of Stephen Covey of 7 Habits fame) on the recommendation of Robert Glazer, the Founder and Managing Director of Acceleration Partners, a fellow EO member. As Bob says, “the more trust we establish, the more we can accomplish.”
Low Trust Creates Inefficiency
When we don’t trust our colleagues, we develop muscle memory that drives inefficiency up – preparing for others to drop the ball, spending time to cover our asses before we’ve actually done anything, and spinning in the frustration we feel when we find ourselves in distrustful relationships and work environments.
When you don’t have confidence in someone you have suspicion. Suspicion raises the hair on the back of our necks, drives up the self-preservation reflex and slows everything down. As Covey articulates “Trust always affects two outcomes – speed and cost.” When trust goes down, speed goes down and cost goes up. Conversely, when trust is high, speed goes up and cost goes down.
Covey breaks down trust as function of “character and competence.” Character – your integrity, motive, and intent with people. Competence – your capabilities, skills, results and track record. Character and Competence are both required to create trust.
Think about the person with good intentions, good heart, helpful tendencies but who doesn’t deliver results, makes mistakes, is often late, and drops the ball so you have to pick it up. You may like him, but you don’t trust him to deliver. Conversely the person who is super talented or smart, has a great track record and makes things happen who isn’t honest, is disrespectful or talks badly about everyone behind their backs. You may like her results you don’t trust her as “far as you could throw her” either. As Covey says, “While it may come more naturally for us to think of trust in terms of character, it’s equally important that we also learn to think in terms of competence.”
3 Things You Can Do Right Now To Build Trust
In The Speed of Trust, Covey puts forth a really pragmatic framework of what he calls the Five Waves Of Trust. He has provided lots of evaluators in the book that help you understand your own position against these waves.
First things first though: 3 Things You Can Do Now
Do what you way you’re going to do. If you’ve committed to a certain task by a certain time, do whatever you can to deliver your work in the most complete fashion possible. If you can’t, inform the people counting on you as early as you know your deadline is in question so that they can help you accomplish your goal so that it doesn’t impact their own work.
Be on time. 5 minutes early is on time. This gives you the time to gather, organize your thoughts and breathe before the task. At the start time be ready to roll, stay on task, and end early. Time is a valuable currency; every time you “give some back” you create value for everyone.
Listen Loudly. Stop talking and listen to others. Be known for being open to hearing other points of view.
I highly recommend this book for people in all roles in any organization. Applying Covey’s guidelines about how to create authentic trust and his insights into the significant personal and business implications of not investing in integrity and competence will make us all better… better colleagues, partners, friends, team mates, and parents – better people.
The best companies are full of the best people, where trust is a dividend reaped by individuals and organizations.