Trust is Based on Actions, not Just Words

I have advocated the move to a collaborative economy for the last decade, and while many seem to like the idea, the move has stalled a bit. However, our rapidly changing world continues to force businesses and organizations to take a new approach to what they do, i.e., collaborate.

This change is essential for sustainable growth. Recent history has shown that value is being created daily through complex, technology-enabled architectures of interconnection that link people and ideas across all types of interfaces. This is not just a trend but a fundamental shift that businesses and organizations must adapt to thrive in the future.

Hoping on Board the Collaborative Economy!

Recognize: The first step of the collaborative approach is for authentic leaders to recognize the untapped potential in every team member. When engaged, every person in your organization can be a source of vital ideas, observations, and risk watchdogs when trusted. This realization can inspire and motivate your team to step up and lead.

We all have severe limits in our ability to process information. None of us know everything that we want to know. However, we don’t need to know everything if we know people who know what we don’t know. This allows us to collaborate with others by connecting with them to help us find better solutions.

Organizations can be wildly effective when they are open to using the expanded information sets that their collective membership commands — especially if they can tap and use that information when it is critical. When this light bulb turns on, the organization can be bathed in a great light of encouragement and empowerment.

Know your People: The second step of the collaborative approach is that everyone in the organization must know as much as possible about each other’s skills and limitations without judgment. This is also where great leaders come into play because they must have this knowledge.

However, many leaders don’t always know how to ask the right questions. Leaders can learn an enormous amount about their team members by asking and asking and asking. This interpersonal knowledge is beneficial; the mere process of asking questions also helps build trust.

Trust: is the third step of the collaborative approach and one of the most challenging concepts for many leaders. A leader must make the first move and trust people more than they might expect and more than they might be comfortable with. Leaders gain trust primarily by giving trust. This underscores the crucial role of leaders in fostering a culture of trust, making them responsible and accountable for the trust within their teams.

Today, far too many leaders are risk averse, not just financially. More importantly, they often don’t trust their team members enough, leading to a broken culture. Think about how you have responded when someone trusted you more than you expected. If your organization members are like you, they will also step up when you trust them more than expected.

Empower: The fourth step of the collaborative approach is to check out people’s reputations and do as much as possible to ensure they are trustworthy before you risk too much. Do they keep their commitments? Make sure your data is accurate and not based on hearsay. Then, trust them more than they expect. Knowing their strengths can go a long way toward allowing you to empower and encourage them to step out. Research suggests that true professionals always want to show you they are trustworthy; they inevitably step up and reciprocate.

As part of empowerment, I recommend you provide tools that encourage and make communicating and rewarding completed commitments easy. As a result, you will need to reach out to other teams of all kinds — customers, competitors, suppliers, superiors, and knowledge brokers. Unlock the potential that these networks can provide your business.

As a leader, you want your people to use their connections to bring in new ideas, advance your team’s ideas, and become more efficient. Thus, your team’s social network is becoming increasingly important — and the good news is that we all have hundreds, if not thousands, of network ties.

Common sense tells us that we can’t always keep all our networks active; that would be overwhelming. But reconnecting dormant ties can be beneficial. Even if you have not been connected for some time, you have already established a strong basis of trust with people you have known for a long time. The exciting part is that not being in touch with them means they have been learning many things you didn’t know about, and you can now tap into them.

Takeaways:

To succeed as a leader in a collaborative economy, you should:

• Recognize that every organization member should be able to step up and lead!

• Create an exchange culture and encourage people to find out what they know and what they can and can’t do.

• Trust them to do what they can do.

• Empower them by letting them lead when they have key skill sets.

• Seek knowledge from your extensive supply of dormant networks.

The fast-paced, interconnected Collaboration Economy may seem daunting. However, building a solid organization will make this much more manageable.

Leadership Questions: How do you ensure that you and your leadership team are trust builders based on actions and that everyone is not just trust storytellers based on words?