Trust? You Want Me to Fix It? Part 2
A few weeks ago, my newsletter was called “What? You Don’t Trust Me?”, and I explored some of the data around the lack of trust within organisations and the impact it is having.
I also introduced the Trust Matrix created by Richard Barrett, founder of the Barrett Values Centre (BVC) and the Founder and Director of the Academy for the Advancement of Human Values, and how you can use it to measure the components of trust within your team(s) and where to focus on improvement.
It is based on the four cores of credibility that Stephen M.R. Covey writes about in his book, “Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything.”
A few weeks ago, I explored the 6 components in the matrix associated with Character. This week I will look at Competence.
Trust matrix
Let me introduce the Trust Matrix once again.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/building-trust-your-team-matrix-richard-barrett/
Character reflects how you are on the inside, your intent, and the level of integrity you display in your relationship with others. These depend primarily on the level of development of your emotional intelligence and social intelligence. Intent is demonstrated by caring, transparency, and openness; integrity is demonstrated by honesty, fairness, and authenticity.
Competence reflects how you are on the outside, your capability, and the results you deliver. These depend primarily on the level of development of your mental intelligence, your education, and what you have learned during your professional career. Capability is demonstrated by skills, knowledge, and experience. Results are demonstrated by reputation, credibility, and performance.
Competence
Competence is important because you might think a person has character meaning they are sincere, even honest, but you won't trust that person fully if he or she doesn't get results.
Capability
Capabilities are increasingly important when the speed of change is eliminating the need for certain skill sets and introducing the need for new ones at a rate never known before. Capability is demonstrated by skills, knowledge, and experience.
Skills
Skills are the proficiencies – the things we can do well. A leader may have good integrity and intent but unless they have the right leadership skills to be a good leader, they will not have credibility. They will not be trusted.
You must continually evaluate your skills and determine new skills you may need to acquire. Many leaders have recently had to acquire new skills to lead a distributed team. Many have refused to do this and want the skills they possessed pre-pandemic to work today. They will not be trusted as they are not prepared to acquire the skills they need to be a good leader today. When you are prepared to acknowledge that you need new skills, and work hard to learn and develop them for the benefit of others, you will establish trust.
You must be skilled at building and maintaining good relationships with other people. You must have good conflict-resolution skills. You must be able to give feedback in a manner that is helpful to the recipient. Developing the leadership skills to help your team be the best they can be will build trust.
Knowledge
Knowledge is our learning, insight, knowledge, and awareness.
Just like skills, you must continually work to increase your knowledge. You must have a growth mindset. This means that you believe intelligence, skills, and knowledge are learnable and capable of improvement through effort. When you have this mindset, you see opportunities instead of obstacles and you are prepared to step outside your comfort zone to grow and develop.
A leader's knowledge must be contemporary. Knowledge, like food, has a shelf life. What was relevant 5 years ago, is no longer relevant today. And expired knowledge, like expired food, is dangerous. The wrong knowledge can lead to you making the wrong decisions, bad judgements, and big mistakes.
When you are prepared to learn-unlearn-relearn, you will have the trust of others.
American businessman and futurist Alvin Toffler made this prediction more than 50 years ago in his 1970 book, Future Shock. He knew that the challenges ahead of us could not be met by a linear approach to learning and skills.
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
You must be ready to respond and adapt through the acquisition of new knowledge as the world changes.
Experience
People will trust you when you can demonstrate a depth of experience. You must possess more than just skills and knowledge about how to use the skills. You must be able to demonstrate a successful track record in applying those skills and knowledge.
When you have a depth of experience, other people will trust your ideas and opinions. They trust that your experience will mean you can use good judgment when making decisions.
When you share your experiences, both the good and the bad, you are being transparent and have the courage to be vulnerable. When you are prepared to talk about an experience where you didn’t get it right the first time, where you made a mistake, you will establish trust. People want to trust people who are prepared to be honest and authentic.
When you share your experience and expertise with others, you are seen as enabling and developing others. You are not threatened by other people having more knowledge than you. You will be trusted.
Results
Results matter to your credibility. You could have great capabilities but without results they mean nothing. You must be able to show that you use your capabilities to create results for others, otherwise, there is no trust. Results are demonstrated by reputation, credibility, and performance.
Reputation
Reputation means being trustworthy, but reputation is also a tool for building more trust. Reputation is the result of everything you do - what you say, how you behave, what you deliver, and your values and beliefs. Reputation is your way of being. It is your authenticity.
Just like trust when reputation gets damaged it can take a long time to repair. Therefore, we must work to build and maintain a good reputation.
At the foundation of a good reputation is competence – you must be good at what you do, and character – you must do the right things.
You can share how you are delivering great results for others without sounding arrogant.
Your results also need to be delivered consistently to solidify your reputation. Reputation is based on your track record, not a one-off win.
Credibility
Credibility is built up over time. When you are credible, your employees will trust you. They will listen to your ideas and respect your expertise and experience. They will take you seriously.
Credibility is earned when you can back up your words with underlying knowledge and experience.
Your employees will judge your credibility based on your character, competence, and caring.
Competence - They will have confidence in your ability to lead effectively and this confidence disseminates throughout the team.
Character – They believe you are authentic, trustworthy, and operate with integrity.
Caring – You care about others and are genuinely empathetic.
You can increase your credibility by increasing your knowledge and experience and demonstrating your competence in utilising it effectively.
Performance
Your employees will assess your performance based on past, current, and future performance. Once again this is a track record that requires consistency in the achievement of results.
Your past performance is your reputation and track record for delivering results, not just actions. Your current performance is the results you are delivering now and just resting on past performance. Your future performance is how others anticipate you will perform, based on past and current results.
Conclusion
The title of Stephen M. R. Covey’s 2008 book said it all:
“The Speed of Trust - The One Thing That Changes Everything
It is the “most overlooked, misunderstood, underutilized asset to enable performance. It’s something you can’t escape.
By developing your character with intent and integrity, and building your competence with capability and trust, you will develop the trust you need to be a high performer leading a high-performing team.