Trust as the Differentiator

culled from:articlecity.com

In in his recent book Flash Boys, Michael Lewis discusses how high-frequency traders rig the most iconic symbol of global capitalism – the US stock market. In an interview with Steve Croft of 60 Minutes earlier this year, Lewis discussed how it worked and the young 30-something year old who figured it out. Brad Katsuyama was a trader at the Royal Bank of Canada when he discovered how high-frequency traders were front running the market and using milliseconds to take advantage of just about everyone. Brad’s response to this inequity was to start his own exchange called the Investor’s Exchange (IEX), which comes with “speed bumps” that eliminate the advantage of high-speed investors.

While I found this story as intriguing as the other topics Michael Lewis has brought to light, it was Brad’s final comments on 60 Minutes that really caused pause and reflection. He said, “We are selling trust, and to think that trust is really a differentiator in the service business – it’s kind of a crazy thought, right?”

    We are selling trust, and to think that trust is really a differentiator in the service business – it’s kind of a crazy thought.

This is not so crazy in the financial services world – or the world where most of us go to work every day. According to the 2014 Edelman Trust Barometer survey, 82% percent of people don’t trust that their leaders tell them the truth. This statistic is sobering, sad, and at the same time an amazing opportunity for those leaders who want to differentiate their organizations on the basis of trust – both with employees and with customers. What if transparency and trust were truly seen as differentiators in the workplace? What could it do for attracting top talent for business growth? What would it look like, and what would it mean?

If the IEX will eliminate the distrust in the stock market by removing the speed advantage, then what must leaders do to eliminate the distrust from their leadership, teams, and organizations and create trust as a differentiator?

Ask yourself these three questions to see what gaps you might have to close, or how close you are to already differentiating your leadership with trust. These are the same three questions your people are asking and answering about you and your leadership.

    What if transparency and trust were truly seen as differentiators in the workplace? What could it do for attracting top talent for business growth? What would it look like, and what would it mean?

1. Can I trust that my leaders truly believe I can get better results than they can?

This sounds basic, and we have all said that the people closest to the work have the best answers.  But having leaders really believe this to be true is much rarer than you think. What significantly contributes to people’s distrust that “their ideas matter” is the fact that many individuals feel their leaders “direct, tell, and sell” rather than “ask, listen, and learn.” Declarations like “we should know” or “we can do this” quickly become one-way directives instead of dialogue and conversations on the most strategic questions we must address to achieve meaningful results.

Leaders need to go off the prepared script and get curious about what their people really think and feel is possible. Do your people really believe that their thinking, creativity, and problem solving could be a catalyst to significance performance growth? If you shift your behaviors to ask, listen, and learn, people will trust that the rhetoric about their importance to the business’s future is true.
2. Can I trust that sacrifices for the whole really matter to you?

Your people are asking themselves:  Can we trust that putting “we” before “me” is what you as our leader really wants? They are thinking:  We can tell really quickly when “getting my numbers at any cost” is what you really mean. They want to be sure that “owning the whole before my specific piece” is something that you value, really want, and truly understand.

Your people want to be part of “something bigger than themselves” – they want to elevate their thinking and responsibility. However, this requires being co-accountable for the big picture and leading not in a vertical fashion, but horizontally, where ambiguity and shared responsibility exist everywhere. Silos and siloed behavior often become entrenched with rigid leadership calls for individual accountability and functional metrics. Leading with a simplified list of integrated priorities for all sets the stage for trusting that “owning the whole before your piece” is the shared standard for everyone.

    If you shift your behaviors to ask, listen, and learn, people will trust that the rhetoric about their importance to the business’s future is true.

3. Can I trust that it is safe to speak the truth and that you really want to hear it?

Truth telling is not a core competency in most organizations, mainly because people believe that it is not safe to say what they really think and feel. What would it be like if your people truly trusted that you wanted to hear the brutal realities, the bad news, and initiatives that weren’t going as planned? What if they trusted that you saw this dissatisfaction as necessary and the natural fuel for growth and improvement? What if they knew you would approach these truths with humility and encouraged them to do the same and you always went first with what you could do differently?

This is similar to great orchestra conductors who look at what they themselves are doing that is inhibiting their orchestra from playing at its best, rather than constantly changing out the players. What if these practices of realism and honesty enabled you to capture the trust of your people based on the fact that they could bring their authentic ideas to the table for discussion, and not just the ones that made everyone feel good?

To think that trust can be a differentiator in a business to attract and retain top talent and to get exceptional results, it turns out, is not so crazy – just ask your people.