Trust me

Part of my job is to keep track of leadership issues in current affairs. Each week I scan the media to see what the supposed great and the good are up to. This morning there are three stories I keep coming back to - the UK Royal Mail postal strike, the British National Party’s (BNP) invitation to appear on the BBC flagship news programme Question Time and the return, both in the UK and the US, of the dreaded question of bankers bonuses. Now all these are interesting stories in themselves and pose serious leadership challenges to the senior executives involved, yet I could not help wondering “is there a link between these stories and if so what is it?”

I had just started on my third coffee and was about to throw in the towel and watch Helicopter Heroes when I came across the stunning picture above. It is the winner of the prestigious Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 award announced today. The photographer is Jose Luis Rodriguez who said: "I wanted to capture a photo in which you would see a wolf in an act of hunting”. Bingo – I had found my link. The obvious presents itself doesn’t it? All the news stories involve hunting of some kind or other.

Yet, what I was really struck by in the photograph was the level of trust required to capture the shot; trust in Rodriguez’s own technical ability, trust in the custom-built camera, trust that the Iberian wolves would return to the same spot to hunt and, of course, for both man and beast to trust they would not turn on each other. Trust, or lack of it, was the common thread in the news stories.

Take the Royal Mail dispute. Dave Ward, the deputy leader of the Communication Workers Union, said that the Union could not trust the management negotiation team. Citing external forces “deliberately trying to undermine” a negotiated settlement he said talks could not continue when agreements reached in the negotiation room were, in his view, subsequently undermined by later statements by the Royal Mail management. The management themselves responded that this was not the case – and the merits of each position need not concern us here. Our real issue, rather, is how leaders striving for agreement need to be able to truly trust in each other. Ward said at the same press conference “without that trust there was no point continuing”.

At CHPD we regard trust as an essential characteristic of high performing leaders – particularly when building empathy. The bedrock of this behaviour can be summed up as to see issues, events, ideas, explanations or options ‘through the eyes of another’ - to really understand their mind-set. Building on this we recommend managers disclose their true feelings in order for others to do the same. It is at this, quite personal, level that the Royal Mail negotiations have collapsed – with insult and invective peppering the media exchanges on the eve of the strike.

Yet the other examples we are looking at today require a more strategic and long lasting view of trust and empathy. CHPD describes this behaviour at its highest level as senior executives building a climate of trust and openness in which people are valued for saying what they really think, feel and believe and can do so without any fear of criticism, judgment or punishment. As a manager myself I have encouraged my teams, and my team leaders, to create an atmosphere where this can happen. When teams address issues honestly without fear of retaliation they are much more efficient, effective and self supporting. And surely if it is right to create this culture internally, it is right to echo it externally. Enter the BNP at the BBC.

By the time this article appears the BBC Question Time programme will have aired but the leadership issue goes beyond one broadcast. Many people find the political and moral views of the BNP repugnant, yet the BBC gave them a platform for debate because they reached a level of electoral success and thus automatically qualified for an invitation. But was it right to invite a self evidently racist political party (their current constitution does not allow for non whites to join) the legitimacy the programme endows? For all major broadcasters there is a covenant of trust between them and the public and the question senior executives at the BBC will have to answer is: by inviting the BNP did we reinforce or undermine that trust?

Finally, just a year after the colossal bail out of banks across the globe by national governments (well, tax payers) the bankers are on the verge of awarding themselves eye-watering bonuses. The idea of a ‘covenant of trust’ between bankers and the public may seem risible but on both a personal and national scale we trusted the banks to do the right thing with our money. It would be unfortunate if in paying these bonuses the banking system repaid that trust by showing a collective lack of empathy with their paymasters.

This past year has seen the issue of trust in public institutions put under intense scrutiny. All leaders, in whatever walk of life, always need to earn that trust and can never take it for granted. These cases show how negotiations collapse without personal trust, how we all are forced to trust institutions to take the ‘right’ decision on our behalf and how trust can, sadly, be repaid. Trust is of course a two way thing: do we trust the wolf and does the wolf trust us?

By Russell Deathridge, CHPD Consultant
www.chpd.com