Last week, 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 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.”

I promised I would explore each of the 12 components in the matrix, and how to improve each one.

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.

Character includes your integrity, motive, and intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, skills, results, and track record. Both dimensions are vital.

This week I am exploring the core competency of Character.

Character

Character is important because a person may be competent with great skills and capabilities, and delivers consistently, if he or she is not honest, you're not going to trust that person either.

Intent

What is your motive and agenda, and how does that play out in your behaviour?

Caring

Your prime intent should be caring for others.  You must lead with empathy. We all live in a constantly changing, uncertain, and disruptive world. We all have different experiences and perspectives, different needs and aspirations, different values and beliefs. As a leader, you must genuinely care about each one of your team and look out for their physical and mental well-being.

In March this year, EY released the findings of the 2023 Empathy in Business Survey which studied more than 1,000 employed US workers. It found that many employees saw corporate efforts to foster empathy to be disingenuous or inconsistent.

The 2022 State of Workplace Empathy report from Businesssolver found that whilst 69% of CEOs believe it’s their job to build empathy in the workplace, 79% say they struggle to be empathetic.

77% of CEOs worry they will lose respect if they’re too empathetic, a nine-point increase compared to the previous year's findings. That is a frightening statistic.

When you care, you try and see situations through the eyes of others. You can put yourself in another person’s shoes. The challenge for you is not to think about how you feel in someone else’s shoes but how the other person feels in their own shoes. 

You must continually ask ‘Are you ok?’ or ‘Is everything ok?’ You must be a good listener, impartial, and possess emotional intelligence. You allow another person to speak without constant interruption. You focus on what the person is saying and avoid distractions. You are impartial and non-judgemental; you put aside the fact that you may believe what is being discussed is right or wrong.

You will possess emotional intelligence. You can rise above the emotion in the conversation and put aside your feelings and the feelings of the other person to view the situation subjectively. The emotions in the conversation do not control the outcome.

Empathy (caring) is key to building trust. When employees know that you will listen to them and take their thoughts and feelings into consideration, even if you don't initially agree with them, they will trust you. 

Transparency

Fostering trust means there is transparency in what you say and do. You must share information. You need to be open and honest. Doing so tells employees that they are trusted with the truth. People often intuitively know when information is being kept from them, which translates to you don't trust me.

With transparency comes trust and respect. 

Being transparent is perhaps one of the most difficult areas for many leaders. When leaders learn to be transparent i.e., tell the truth, they must trust their employees with the truth. For many, this can be a big leap of faith. If you are truly transparent, you are telling employees that you trust them with the truth even in the most difficult circumstances.

Transparency also means you share your own mistakes and challenges with your employees. This is when you have the courage to be vulnerable and admit that you messed up or got it wrong. This is when you are prepared to say, “I don’t know the answer to that right now.”

When you are transparent and prepared to be vulnerable you are open about your strengths and weakness, areas in which you excel and those that need improvement.

The magic about transparency is that when you are prepared to do it, others will follow suit. They will share shortcomings, mistakes, and setbacks. That is far more powerful than them being hidden.

Transparency equals integrity, honesty, vulnerability, humility, and trust.

Openness

When you are open, you are more approachable as a leader. Employees are more likely to share information with you. This also requires an environment of psychological safety where employees feel safe to speak up, ask questions, challenge decisions, or raise concerns. When you actively listen to what they say, without judgement or bias, your employees will know that you are genuinely open to hearing their thoughts.

If there is fear of speaking up, then employees will not give you honest answers to your questions which could be extremely dangerous. You will not be informed when a decision is a bad one, when a course of direction needs to be changed, and when there is a problem that needs to be addressed, and so on. Silence is deadly.

Integrity

When we talk about integrity, most people immediately think it means honesty. It does but it also means following through on your commitments, standing by your values and beliefs, and being authentic.

Honesty

You must be genuinely honest in all your interactions with other people to be seen to have integrity.

When you are honest there is a greater chance that your employees will be honest too.  Honesty builds trust and respect. When you are honest, you admit your mistakes and you encourage others to do the same. It is less likely that your employees will cover up mistakes which could turn into big problems if not addressed.

Honesty means you hold yourself to account, you lead with integrity, and you are authentic and transparent.

Fairness

You must be fair in your dealings with other people. You must treat everyone equally. Everyone must have the same opportunity to grow, contribute, and develop.

The fair leader must be conscious of their baggage and biases. Your baggage is made up of intangible things such as feelings, circumstances, and beliefs. They are the influences and experiences you have had as you have grown up and they can impact how you perceive others based on race, gender, sexual orientation, wealth, education, religion, and many other factors.

You must unpack the baggage by monitoring your feelings when you encounter a person who may fall into one of those categories. You can learn to recognise that they are stereotypes and therefore not valid indicators of the other person's personality, capabilities, competencies, etc.

There are many biases you could fall victim to.  Key ones include:

Proximity bias: An unconscious tendency to favour the people you are physically closer to. In flexible working environments, proximity bias heightens the risk that in-office workers will receive preferential treatment simply by spending more in-person time with their managers.

Affinity bias: This is a  predisposition to favour people who remind us of ourselves. Leaders can favour individuals who have similar experiences, interests, and perspectives. This can have serious implications for workplace inclusion and diversity recruitment strategies.

Confirmation bias: Our human tendency to seek out or notice information that supports our existing beliefs. This can be a problem for leaders, who need to be open to feedback, solutions and ways of doing things that they may not have favoured in the past. It can lead to poor decision-making.

Fundamental attribution error: A cognitive bias that refers to our tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are. This bias sees us overemphasise personal characteristics and ignore situational factors when judging others’ behaviour.

Recency bias: A focus on the most recent period rather than the overall period being examined. This is when you frequently evaluate employee performance based on your most recent interaction with the employee.

When you are aware of your biases, you can put in place strategies to overcome them. You must be self-aware and vigilant to recognise when a bias is impacting your leadership.

Authenticity

Being your authentic self is when everything you do is aligned with your goals, your values, and your beliefs.

When you are authentic, you live your values and stand behind them. These values are the core beliefs and principles that you live by in both your personal and professional lives. The values guide your actions and act as a moral compass.

Leaders who live by their values, lead with integrity.

When you are prepared to be authentic and stand by your values you know that leadership is not about always being popular. You will tackle issues that you know need resolving even though you may make enemies in the process. You will defend the decisions that you make. You will call out behaviour that is unacceptable. You will have zero tolerance for objectionable conduct that others choose to ignore.

When you live by your values, you will earn the respect of your colleagues and your team. Others will find you easier to understand. They are clear about what you want and expect from them. They know that what they see is what they get and therefore they trust you.