Trust and Collaboration

No other aspect of effective leadership is more apparent than the loss of trust through bad behaviour. Building and sustaining trust is critical to accomplishing tasks, achieving goals and creating a performance driven culture. This is true for any enterprise, whether for-profit or not-for-profit. In this way, trust is an operational and collaborative imperative. A lack of trust in any organization leads to below-average safety, quality, and overall low performance.

Influential leaders are acutely aware that trust and collaboration are inseparable. Trust and collaboration share the same purpose, and without trust any collaboration becomes a farce. After all, people – not processes, policies, strategies, tools or methods – make up the collaboration, and trust is critical in motivating people to do the actual work.

Influential leaders also know that trust begins and ends with their own behaviour. Research shows our behaviour is in fact the physically manifestation of our emotional human energy. Trust can only be developed within a flow of positive human energy and so it follows that only positive behaviours have the power to create trust. Your propensity for positive behaviours is directly linked to skill level of Positive Presence.

Technical mastery, intelligence, personal and professional drive, past accomplishments, and vision are admirable and necessary leadership qualities, but they alone do not inspire long-term trust and collaboration. These qualities must be complemented by interpersonal and behavioural competencies. A leader’s high degree of credibility is the sum of both behavioural and technical skills, and this credibility is what sustains trust. Trust, in turn, leads people to support the concept of collaboration at first and then, ultimately, to fully participate in or pursue collaborations. Trust is the ultimate starting point that makes everything else work. When trust is operating at its best, then the collective intelligence and talent of people can come together in a network of performance capacity that drives goal achievement to the highest levels.

In the absence of credible leaders, people will still perform their tasks and abide by organizational rules. They only do so, however, because they want to keep their jobs, and they perform at the lowest acceptable level possible. Obviously, this response is a narrow perspective that produces superficial results. A collaboration that is built on trust has a deeper meaning and thus has long lasting power. It energizes, engages and awakens passion and commitment, even in health care, where many workers suffer from compassion fatigue – the stress, isolation, pain and apathy felt by caregivers in practice cultures fraught with fatigue, cynicism, and loss of personal worth and value.

Influential leaders are not just passive recipients of trust; they are also proactive givers of trust. They view trust as a mutual practice: They work hard to earn and keep it, and they expect and demand others to do the same. By displaying trustworthy behaviour every day, influential leaders serve as a model to their people and key stakeholder partners. For example, influential leaders spend time contemplating the qualities and qualifications of candidates for a senior leadership position. They do not hire quickly to expedite the recruitment and hiring processes, especially when the position has been open for a long time. Their goal is to find the most ideal match for the organization and its culture. Seeking to hire people who believe what the organization believes in core values and purpose, this reflective practice accomplishes two goals: 1) it lessens the risk of hiring a selfish, uncooperative leader who could undermine the collective success of the leadership team, and 2) it sends a message to the entire organization that the influential leader is serious about building and strengthening trust within the culture.

Many organizations possess great potential for creating high levels of organizational performance excellence, but are missing the one key ingredient for excellence – trust among the senior leadership team. This is reflected in the safety, quality, service, and financial performance indicators of the organization. The impact of low levels of trust ripples through the entire organization. Influential leadership is inextricably linked to the trust intangible. When a disparity or misalignment exists between the convictions and core values organizational leaders profess and the actual behaviour they exhibit, they create confusion and distrust among team members. Consequently, without trust there is no influence, and without influence there is no opportunity to reach peak performance in personal and organizational achievement.