In addition to being a knowledgeable achiever, then - a person who excels at finance, accounting, marketing - a good manager must be able to command and grant trust and respect as a member of a team. A manager who cannot command and grant trust and respect will be incapable of resolving the conflicts that inevitably arise in working in a complementary team.
Please note that I am talking about two separate abilities: The ability to command trust and respect and the ability to grant it. They are not the same, and they do not always go together. Some people command trust and respect but don’t grant it. Some people grant trust and respect but don’t command it. What is needed is a person who can both command and grant mutual trust and respect.
- Ichak Adizes
...those are innate characteristics: Either you've got them or you haven't. More interesting, therefore, are the mechanics of acquiring not-yet-deserved trust. Here I see one pattern common to all the winners. The one mechanical practice they all have in common is this: They acquire trust by giving trust.
Leadership and the Giving of Trust
Arriving in Sydney one morning after an endless night flight from L.A., I waited for the crowd to pass before standing up into the aisle. One other person who had decided to wait was a mother with her two little girls, a few rows ahead of me. Since I had only one shoulder bag on that flight, I paused beside her and asked if I could help with some of her gear (it's always amazing to me how much stuff mothers need to carry with them). "I've got an arm free," I said. "Could I carry something for you?"
"You sure could," the woman answered. And she plunked an angelic blond-haired girl into my arm. I went off the flight as high as a kite. The mother had brought along a two-kid stroller, which she unfolded just inside the terminal. I put the little girl into her side of the stroller and said good-bye. The entire incident took up three minutes of my life and it was nineteen years ago. But I haven't forgotten it and I never will.
The giving of trust is an enormously powerful gesture. The recipient gives back loyalty as an almost autonomous response. Gifted leaders know in their bones how to entrust. It is something they do on a daily basis. They give responsibility well before it's been completely earned. They know when to turn their backs and take their chances.
...
I've written about the giving of trust as though it were a simple formula for building loyalty. But it isn't simple at all. The talent that is an essential ingredient of leadership tells the leader whom to trust and how much to trust and when to trust. The rule is (as with children) that trust be given slightly in advance of demonstrated trustworthiness. But not too much in advance. You have to have an unerring sense of how much the person is ready for. Setting people up for failure doesn't make them loyal to you; you have to set them up for success.
Each time you trust in advance of demonstrated trustworthiness, you flirt with danger. If you're risk-averse, you won't do it. And that's a shame, because the most effective way to gain the trust and loyalty of those beneath you is to give the same in equal measure.
- Tom DeMarco, Slack
