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| Trust your Team with your Life |
Sometimes ago I wrote a post on this blog, and also on the Think Act blog, about an essential attribute of leadership, namely HUMILITY.
I got many positive and encouraging comments about this analysis, but also many questions about it: How can you show and develop humility as a leader?
Well, I strongly believe (and observed) that truly humble leaders demonstrate a difficult virtue in their daily life: TRUST.
Actually, trusting others is quite difficult to achieve in the corporate world, which is by essence competitive and seen as a battlefield... But trust is at the heart of highly effective teams and corporations.
There are several key components required to build highly effective teams for a leader, for instance:
- Recruiting top talents
- Setting an inspiring vision
- Making decisions efficiently
- Communicating a lot
- Holding people accountable
But all these key success factors would be useless if the leader does not empower people. Indeed, the principles of delegation and subsidiarity are considered in most business schools and consulting firms performance assessment tools as the primary ingredient of success. This is easily understandable, even intuitively, as the African proverb says: "If you want to go fast, go alone... But if you want to go far, go with others"...
The most effective teams in the world are probably the US Navy SEALs, the famous commandos who rescue hostages in the most challenging conditions one can envisage. They perform in "fire teams" of 4 to 6 soldiers, trained in perfect harmony to address all types of lethal situations. Each member of the fire team has a role, and fully delegates other roles to the others, assuming they will perform it to the best of their capabilities and training - this is subsidiarity. But the "glue" which ensures this harmony, cohesion and efficiency is only about mutual trust.
Trust is the pre-requisite to empowerment, communication and team-work. Without trust, Navy SEALs would not perform well. Without trust, corporate leaders cannot expect their teams to perform. Without trust in the corporate world, everything can become an ordeal or a problem in the group, and therefore impede progress and performance. Conversely, in a high trust environment, the capable people in the organization will feel that everything is possible, hence perform greatly.
Trust basically enables everything: It frees up creativity; It makes people confident; It allows honest communication; It speeds up decision making; It allows inspiring thinking and actions...
I'd like to share a final thought to summarize all: I have advised dozens of CEO's in my career, and I can definitely write here that the greatest leaders are always the most humble ones - and the most humble ones are the ones who trust their people most !
Back in 2008, Steven Covey wrote in his book, The Speed of Trust, that trust is the one thing that changes everything. He was right, 100%.
Trust definitely leads to inspiration and connection !
"LEARNING TO TRUST IS ONE OF LIFE'S MOST DIFFICULT TASKS"
Isaac Watts
