Do you want candor from your employees?
If you REALLY want your people to offer their best ideas, you’d better show them you mean it. I’ve seen devastating examples of leaders losing trust in less than 30 seconds. Candor? Gone. All it took was a short “moment of truth” that spiraled down and previous high aspirations went “poof” – up in smoke.
Hopefully, this story will inspire you to never need to re-build trust – a steep climb indeed. Instead build trust from the beginning in everything you do.
Here’s the scene. I’m at a Wisconsin aluminum mill, tasked with helping them figure out how to reduce their manufacturing costs by 20% to keep a major customer.
My duty was to observe employees doing their work, ask questions, and imagine ways to improve the process. For employees this is nerve-wracking. But my “subjects” had surprisingly good humor about being observed, joking in good fun.
Our group was facilitated by two engineers from Quality; both analytical and introverted. At the end of the second day, we were all gathered together on the factory floor for an update. In a large circle of 15 people we had 9 factory workers, four observers, and the two engineers. The senior Quality engineer was doing all the talking, though this was clearly not his strength.
One of the machine operators – a woman in her 50s – raised her hand with a question. I knew her to be meticulous and conscientious. (She brought in scotch tape from home, the better to mark aluminum lengths, saving the company time and material.) The engineer called on her and she asked her question. In answering, the engineer was condescending and dismissive. Ten seconds later, she turned her head slightly towards her co-worker on the left and said a short sentence, inaudible to everyone else. The co-worker nodded her head slightly once. Then there was eye-contact among the workers.
And that’s when I knew. We were done. We had three more days, but the moment of truth had come and gone. Leadership had failed. The engineer – representing the company – demonstrated that the company didn’t really want to listen.
In that one exchange, lasting under 30 seconds, trust was lost. And all the hopes for this event were torched.
Did he do it on purpose? No, of course not. More likely, he wanted to appear decisive, smart or simply not nervous.
It didn’t have to be this way. There are great tools available that provide insights to emotional intelligence that enable all of us to be so much better. Genos International, for example, has a wonderful assessment and an easily-used guide for improving our interactions with others. In this case, greater awareness of his team members would have been life changing.
The Quality engineer failed to understand this situation. He was there to encourage, to elicit, to build up. But he didn’t know that. All he would have needed to know can be said in two words: appreciate and acknowledge.
Appreciate:
“Marilyn, thank you for speaking up. I know this is nerve wracking. It’s brave of you and I appreciate that.”
Acknowledge:
Reflection: “Let me make sure I understand. You want to know more about this? Correct? OR
Clarify: “Are you suggesting that we should _______?” OR
Acknowledge and open up: “That’s very interesting. Let’s start a list. What other questions can we add to it?”
Any statement that wasn’t a disaster would have been vastly superior to losing trust in 30 seconds.
Building trust is not complicated:
Be open and honest.
People have superb B-S meters, so they’ll smell it if it stinks. Plus, they’ll likely find out anyway.Actively listen, acknowledge, and prove you heard them.
Show appreciation.
Or if all else fails, read my article from November 2023! 😂 Great leaders do three things:
They do what they say they’ll do;
They treat others with respect (like being honest, listening well, and showing appreciation); and
They admit their mistakes.
Losing trust takes an instant. Building trust is a constant necessity of life. Re-building trust takes years. Wherever you are, the time to start is now.