The Problem Is Probably Trust
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In a post-mortem for a failed project, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever hear someone say, “We missed the deadline because we didn’t trust each other.” But 9 times out of 10, trust is the unspoken root cause lurking at the bottom of your 5 why’s (or maybe 10 why’s?).
Why do we waste time in pointless meetings or mire our work in layers of process? We don’t trust our leaders and co-workers to come through for us, or read our emails, or understand why what we are working on matters.
Why do we miss deadlines? It usually comes down to lack of trust. We feel like if we speak up about blockers in our way or the unrealistic timeline that our concerns would be brushed off, or we would be told to just work harder. Or maybe we think a team member isn’t pulling their weight, but we don’t trust that this is a conversation that can be had.
Why do some of us just prefer small companies? It’s much easier to have deep levels of trust in small teams (not that a small team will guarantee trust by any means).
Office politics? Lack of trust.
Overwhelming stress at work? It can often be traced back to simply not feeling safe at work…that’s a lack of trust.
It’s why we love working with our closest colleagues. We trust them. We know they have our best interests at heart. They get us.
It’s why cross-team collaboration, while great in theory, is often so difficult in reality. Each little team has its own mini-culture and workflows. They have their team’s best interests at heart, there’s just not the same level of trust.
Without trust, work is slow and stressful. With trust, even challenging work is enjoyable, meaningful, and gets done exponentially faster.
Trust is a part of my career I underinvested in for years. I put on my game face, carefully maintaining the line between “work me” and “real me,” and wasvalways cautious about asking for help or admitting failure. You can read the end result of that story here:
Today, that’s just not how I prefer to work.
I don’t have any advice on how to build trust at scale, that’s a whole other topic, but I have picked up a few things about how to build trust on a more personal level.
1.Talk about how you’re feeling. If you’re frustrated and overwhelmed, ask for help. If something in your personal life is stressing you out, talk about it. If you need to cry at work, go for it. If you want people to trust you, you need to reveal yourself. I’m an introvert and a naturally private person, I keep waiting for this to get easier…so far it hasn’t, but it’s still worth it :)
2.Admit when you don’t know something. I think the tech community as a whole is so over-confident. It was such a relief for me when I started to admit out loud that I was confused, or something was hard for me, or I felt very unconfident in my abilities. And then I realized that nobody cared. I started to say, “I don’t think I’ll be good at that, here’s why…” and instead of doors closing, they opened wider.
In a post addressed specifically to women, but relevant for anyone looking to lean into big career aspirations, Nataly Kelly writes:
Move forward with conviction in your own ability to stretch and grow. Work hard, look for areas that need some help, and pitch in without waiting to be asked, but most importantly, believe that you can do it. You’re more likely to succeed than not.
In other words, it’s totally normal to feel uncertain about your abilities, but that’s no excuse for not moving forward. If you’re worried, admit it. Then go get it.
3. Break down the separation between work life and personal life. Anita G Andrews has been a huge inspiration to me on this, and I was lucky to work with her for a few years and see her in action. Anita is an executive and a mother and never apologizes for the moments when her “personal life” interrupts work…it’s all just life after all. And this isn’t relevant advice only for parents. Life inevitably interrupts work and needs more from us. Let’s talk about these things. We all have them. There’s no shame.
4.Assume good intent. In every interaction you have with your co-workers, assume they care as much about your customers and the company as you do. Assume they are competent, caring, wonderful people. Then, working on that assumption, put in in the time to understand their perspective and end goals.
One of my favorite books on organizational change is Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. There’s a mantra repeated throughout the book that I often come back to when I have moments of feeling frustrated with co-workers:
“What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.”
HubSpot’s CMO, Kipp Bodnar shared a story a few months ago about a time in HubSpot history when a person responsible for mid-funnel conversion rates rented a mini-van, hired a freelance videographer, and drove to Maryland (HubSpot is based in Boston) to get a customer case study on camera. The reason? The video team had its own priorities and couldn’t prioritize the customer video. Kipp writes:
“Let me be clear, this story doesn’t implicate any parties involved. Leaders, and the org structures we create, cause these scenarios.”
In other words, it wasn’t a people problem, it was a situation problem.
5. Practice radical candor. Kim Scott has been preaching the importance of radical candor between manager and direct reports for several years, but this concept isn’t just for bosses giving feedback. We could all do with more candor in our conversations. Kim Scott quotes an Apple colleague who once asked her:
“How long do you spend making sure you have all the facts right before you criticize somebody? How long do you spend making sure you have all the facts right before you praise somebody?”
This is huge. I personally have a tendency to obsess over the “awkward conversations.” But you know what makes an awkward conversation awkward? Someone coming in with a prepared speech and preconceived notions about what’s really going on. Today, I try to surface an issue right away. I ask why, try to understand motivations, and seek to understand the situation. Funny thing? I’m having fewer conversations today that feel painfully awkward.
So, why bother with all this?
The truth is you can get away with not having trust at work for a long time. You can be a successful leader without a team that trusts you, you can achieve individual success without opening up to and trusting your co-workers. But eventually something will happen — a big launch will be missed, a campaign will flop, a key player will quit unexpectedly, you will say something unforgivably thoughtless, your personal life will implode and you’ll need some extra help.
In moments of tension and high stress, recovery is dependent on trust.
Business is personal. Work is personal. And it’s so much for fun when we trust the people we work with.
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Are you a leader that has found a way to model trust for your team? Have you discovered the magic formula for scaling trust as your team grows? Do you have a story about how lack of trust ruined a project? I would love to hear it in the comments.
