Built on trust

When coronavirus disease sent everyone to work at home, many people moved. Two years later, a conversation occurred wherein the boss wanted everyone to return to the office.

Employee: Good morning, boss. I cannot come to work today due to heavy rain. I am living on an island now.

Boss: In your application, you put swimming as your hobby. See you at work! And this manager followed up with a note of encouragement: “Don’t think of me as your boss. Think of me as a friend that can fire you.”

For the longest time, bosses and managers carry their big egos and domineering personalities as they rule the workplace. You have endless literature and articles encouraging bosses to be assertive and never to take no for an answer. And these untrained bosses and managers know they can wield their power to fire their people on a whim or at least punish them when they refuse to follow them. How can you blame them? Think of this “reality show” wherein the celebrated boss would look at his people and say: “You’re fired!” And now the tides seem to be changing.

Business owners and significant decision-makers are wondering how to attract promising talents and keep them. One frustrated HR head told me how difficult it is to recruit people; the talent leaves and quits in less than two years. In the exit interview, the person tries to be polite, but everyone in the workplace knows that the talent decided to leave because they could not stand the boss and they feel that they are not trusted.

Many managers and bosses have not taken the time to read up on leadership books. I suspect they binge a lot of Netflix series or K-drama rather instead. But Jim Collins showed through his body of research a long time ago that the ideal leader is characterized by leadership traits and skills that have consistently caused their organizations to attain sustained growth and success. And the traits happen to be humility, strong will, intense resolve, and a tendency to give credit to others while assigning blame to themselves.

Collins said the most powerfully transformative leaders possess a paradoxical mixture of personal humility and professional will. They are timid and ferocious, shy, and fearless. They are rare and unstoppable. Many bosses concentrate on willful, ferocious, and fearless traits and leave behind what Collins discovered as their most important trait: humility.

Sometimes, a leader’s strength and determination will be required to navigate a storm or a crisis. Other times will require humility and deference to ensure that the best ideas rise to the top regardless of who comes up with them. All these characteristics are necessary tools in a leader’s toolkit, and knowing when to pull out the right one or when to balance one with another is the mark of outstanding leadership.

A crisis has a unique way of violently breaking old habits and starting new ones. In our workplaces, workflows and work cultures were thrown into complete disarray while new ones were formed in their places and are still being formed today.

When employees were asked what they wanted, almost all signs point to a job that includes a great deal of trust. Many employees would choose a job that offered a flexible work schedule over one that didn’t. While some wanted to stay full-time remote employees, a greater majority wanted to work in a hybrid work environment. All of these involve a lot of trust. Amazingly, many employees say they will quit if they are not trusted to do their job. Trust is a cornerstone of healthy relationships. And it’s increasingly important in the future when teams may not work together in the same physical space, and flexibility, freedom, and autonomy are the primary motivational drivers of the future.

Relationships are built on trust. A relationship devoid of trust is like a phone with no service; without it, all you can do is play games. Relationships lacking trust naturally drift towards suspicion, skepticism, and cynicism.

Of course, we need to review performance. Of course, people have to provide deliverables, but all these should work under a culture of trust, not suspicion. And the boss is the leading player here. When we find our company, organization, church, family, or relationship low on trust, the alarms start blaring because we know relationships are on the brink of breaking down.

So, there are many more things to be done than leaders demanding HR institute the right required wardrobe to wear in the workplace. Start building a culture of trust.

(Francis Kong runs his highly acclaimed Level Up Leadership 2.0 Master Class Online this Aug. 17-19. For inquiries and reservations, contact April at +63928-559-1798 or and for more information, visit www.levelupleadership.ph)