Welcome to messy but essential, the weekly podcast about the people side of project leadership. It's where we help you to improve your soft skills to reduce those hard costs. In today's episode, we're going to be looking at the topic of trust, and why it's so important in your life as a project leader. Over the next 15 minutes or so, we won't be able to do much more than skim the surface of this important topic. So check out the show notes, or blog notes for references that will allow you to go much deeper should you so choose. 

Before we go too far, though, let me introduce myself. I'm Rod Stilwell has been to a loving wife, father of six daughters, management consultant, and entrepreneur. And I've been involved in industrial and commercial projects for over 30 years. I've worked with a multitude of project teams on projects all over the world, some that frankly, totally bombed. And I learned more from those than the many hugely successful projects I've worked on or conducted post mortems on. Today, I work mostly with C suite executives and multibillion-dollar project management teams to ensure that all the players stay aligned with the vision and the charter. Because if there's one thing I've learned, it's that people make the difference between a successful project and a failed one. 

But let's face it, people are messy. In these podcasts, I'm going to share what I know. And together we'll explore better ways to deliver successful projects on time, on budget, and within scope through the people you work with. So sit back and enjoy the ride. Before we get too far, though, I would like to talk about safety for a minute. I know it's a little strange to start a podcast off with a safety minute. But the reason is simple. I believe that safety needs to be at the forefront of everything we do in projects, our first thought needs to be "have we created a safe environment in which to work?" And since this podcast is about the people side of projects, keeping people safe is everyone's job. Now, onto the safety tip for this podcast. 

Today's tip, check the path before you turn out the lights. When we go to bed at night, we trust that we don't have to wake up suddenly to an emergency and have to dash out of the room. But trust is tricky. take a quick look around you right now. Unless you're driving, in which case, Please keep your eyes on the road. If you suddenly lost power, or the ability to see, would you be able to get to an exit without tripping over things in your path. 

Now on with the podcast, who are the people you trust most in the world? I want you to keep them in mind as we wind our way through this messy people topic. We started our first podcast talking about trust. I'll confess it was a struggle to choose the launch topic. When I first floated the idea of creating a podcast, I sat down with my team and one of my daughters, who is very structured and thoughtful. And she pointed out that before I could launch anything, I needed to have at least 100 topics that I could bring to the podcast. I suppose that after 45 years in business that shouldn't have worried me. But it seemed like a huge number. Once I got going brainstorming with my wife, I surpassed 100 topics. So then the big question was Where to begin? As I looked over that long list, it became clear that woven through almost all of the topics was a need for trust. Trust in a model, trusting colleagues, trust in the process, trust in my team to challenge and correct me. As I'm sure you know, projects don't execute themselves. People execute projects. And people build relationships and teams. And trust is the foundation of every successful relationship and team. You see, without it, relationships fail, and teams are dysfunctional. So it became clear that trust needed to be the cornerstone of our podcast, and the topic of this first episode. 

Since part of the purpose of this podcast is to help project leaders like you bring down the cost of projects by building better teams. and managing the soft side of projects, people, I thought that this quote was particularly relevant. Patricia Aburdene, the author of Conscious Money said, "transcendent values like trust, and integrity literally translate into revenue, profits and prosperity." That's not soft stuff. But trust doesn't come easily, and it can't be bought. Trust needs to be earned. 

Do you still have those people in mind who you trust most? What is it that makes them trustworthy? 

When I was a young boy, I was part of the boy scout movement and continued in the movement as an adult leader for many years. One of the particular things about scouting was that when you shook hands and greeting a fellow Scout, it was always with the left hand. The reason behind this involves trust and vulnerability. When the founder of the movement, Robert Baden-Powell served in Africa, he learned that the Missouri tribe members always greeted each other by shaking with their left hand. You see, in order to do that they had to put down to shield leaving themselves vulnerable to attack. It didn't mean that they dropped their spear. But they did have less protection. They had to trust that the person they were meeting wouldn't attack them. Baden-Powell loved the metaphor and incorporated the left handshake into scouting, as he built a movement based on trust, leadership, and teamwork. 

So trust involves being vulnerable. And vulnerable means letting your guard down. One of the reasons that I started this podcast specifically for project people, is because projects typically have a defined beginning and end. At least we hope they have an end. Although if you talk to my wife, I suspect that she would tell you that some of my projects never seem to end. But that's a subject for another podcast. Because projects have a more defined timeline, I've discovered that some behaviors like building trust, and relationships must happen more quickly on projects than in normal, ongoing operational activities. The project team needs to gel more quickly than an ongoing operation. Results of teamwork are often more visible. In short, we have to trust more quickly when we're part of a project team. And for some that isn't very easy to do. So what is trust? 

Today, I'd like to explore two key components of trust. According to Stephen M. Covey, trust is the combination of character and competence. If someone is likable, do you automatically trust them? Have you ever met someone for the first time and instinctively trusted them? Or perhaps didn't trust them? Possibly something inside shouted "stop." or you felt an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach. How do you know whether or not you can trust them? Are you prepared to drop your shield? Or do you need more Intel? In the past month, I've spent more time working with clients on trust issues than any other single team behaviour. I've had CEOs tell me they don't trust the project team to give them straight answers. I've had investors suggest that they don't trust management to deliver on their commitments. Everywhere I turn, it seems that trust is involved. Joel Roberts, a former broadcaster and now an author and speaker points out that trust involves being credible. In his language of impact series, Joel stresses that credibility is made up of humanity and competence. Covey states that trust is made up of character and competence. And competence is contextual. 

What do I mean by that? Well, it's not universal. I mean, I might trust my accountant to manage my bookkeeping, but I wouldn't trust her to perform surgery on me. Neither have anything to do with her character. In my life, I've discovered that people I didn't know well were less trustworthy in my mind than those I knew well. But I've come to realize that often we mistrust those who do not understand or know. As I got to know them more and better understand their background experience and what drives or inspires them, my trust went up. The better I knew them, the easier it was to assess their character and the competence. Of course for some, the more I got to know them, the less I trusted them.

So let's unpack trust a bit. Think again about some of the people you trust most in your life. How well do you know them? Are they family members? Close friends? Peers? Bosses? Patrick Lencioni, author of the Five Dysfunctions of a team has a few revealing questions he asks of people he meets. As you think, again of that most trusted list, can you answer these questions about them? Do you know where they grew up? Or where they spent their childhood years, for example? Where do they fit in the new family? Are they the firstborn middle child, perhaps the only child? What was unique about their growing up years that helped shape their character? In order to know this about them, at some point, they had to be vulnerable enough to share their personal past with you. If you agree that trust is at the heart of every healthy relationship, or functional team, as I believe, then we need to better understand how trust is achieved and maintained. 

In later podcasts, we'll look at building trust within a team. But for the moment, I want to focus on trust between individuals. Let's go back to Covey's assertion that trust is comprised of character, and competence. And let's dig a little deeper. Our character is that part of us that people can most often see and therefore judge the quickest. You've likely heard the expression, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression." Well, in most instances, that first impression is where your character is on display. Are you humble, brash, reserved, arrogant, shy, or outspoken, for example, Were you wearing the right outfit? Did you step up with confidence, or hold back with shyness? All those cues help us decide whether to trust someone's character or not. And while you can't change how you may have first appeared to someone, you can change the opinion of you as they get to know you. And before we go too far, let me share that I've often been wrong on my judgment of people based on that first impression. So I've learned that unless I go a little deeper, I am being totally unfair in arriving at a conclusion about someone based on such a small amount of information, good or bad. When you reflect on those most trusted friends or colleagues, what is it in the character that helps you trust them? Did you know about them when you first met them?

What did you learn about them that allowed you to trust them? Since trust is the foundation of every functional team and relationship, and trusting someone's character involves getting to know them more, how do we go about doing that? One technique that I've used in the past is what I'll call a character inventory. I think of a specific individual, and then I write down everything that I think I know about them, both positive and negative. And too often I get into the list and realize that I really don't know as much about them as I thought I did. Then I decide what else I need to know about them. And I write that down. Once I have a clear direction established, I then start the journey to expand what I know about the individual through our casual meetings or dialogue, speaking with others, checking your social media and so on. I don't rush into it, and I don't become a stalker about it. But I'm intentional about building the trust through better understanding and valuing the character. In future podcasts we'll certainly explore this theme in more depth. For now though, I'd like to unpack the second part of the trust equation: competence. 

Competence is a combination of skill and knowledge. Character provides the attitude to complete the picture. Again, think back to those trusted individuals who you've kept in mind throughout this podcast. What skills do you believe they possess? Or what knowledge do they have? Do you know what experiences they've had that have added to their skills and knowledge and perhaps even shaped their character? I know that in the past, I've gone out looking for a specific skill set to hire for a team, for example, and discovered much later, often to my chagrin, that someone else on the team already had those skills and that experience, but I didn't know that about them. I had everything I needed right under my nose, but I'd never asked. 

I remember reading a story about a now prominent country singer who had worked for a music label company, as the assistant to the President. In her spare time, she was a practicing musician, and she wanted to release a record. But when she submitted her demo, it was dismissed because she was just the President's assistant. So she submitted a new demo with a fake name. The talent team loved the demo and let the president listen to it. He too loved what he heard, and he wanted to sign her up. That's when he discovered that he already had: she was his assistant. 

How many people around us have competencies that we don't know about? How many of your team members have experiences that, if the team knew about them, would immediately add to the trust level? Do you really know the skills and competencies that you have on your own team? Today, we say that the average worker may have as many as five careers in their lifetime. Engineers that returned to school to become geologists or salespeople who studied theatre. Perhaps some of you team on their third or fourth career, but we only know about the most recent one. Are we depriving ourselves of the wealth of experience around us, because we simply don't know enough about our team? 

Trust is tricky, and people are messy for sure. If you've got anything out of this podcast, I hope that it's the message that building trust requires asking questions. It requires putting our own egos aside and spending time to better know those we need to trust. I can tell you from experience, the journey can be fun and incredibly rewarding on so many fronts. Be prepared to be amazed at what you learn about your teammates. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll join me next week when we look at what it takes to be a good listener. Until then, I hope you stay healthy and learn more about the people you need to trust.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai