One of my recent projects comes from a government that is building a huge city completely from scratch. The new location will be the highlight of an economic zone built to attract global business. Each of the project’s divisions, whether it be health and well-being, biotechnology, water or agriculture, is charged with a very aggressive plan for the rollout of the first phase which completes in 2025. They’re a demanding client with a focus on leadership skills for just about every position we discuss.

Any search firm will have had experience in screening candidates for leadership ability. But in this case, they’re looking for people who can build trust, and when you are talking about budgets derived from a $500 billion investment, trust is certainly essential. To my client, trust means that the person leading the charge has instilled a sense of mission, and that the wheels will not fall off the fast-moving project. People need faith in their leadership and colleagues, and it is this trust that holds the team together.


Senior Leadership Interviews

In our interviewing process for these projects, we start by asking candidates to define trust, and then to describe the ways that they inspired trust in their teams. The definitions provided by our candidates are often much the same—with most coming right out of business school. While their definitions might be similar, each manager brings the term to life in different ways.

After this process, I believe there are two different levels of trust. Each of them works to your advantage, but it is only through the second level of trust that leadership can be assured the team will survive the bumps ahead. Let me first describe these two levels by using examples of people on the firing line, and how trust affects them. Then, I’ll focus in on some of the action items that you can employ to build trust in your organization.


Trust Level One: Self-Knowledge

Ramesh knew that the deadline was going to be tough right from the word “go.” But to successfully move his piece ahead he would have to rely on the results from a set of experiments. Since his graduate school days, Ramesh knew that relying on science to conform to what you want isn’t always the smart play. “It might be OK in a boardroom discussion,” Ramesh thought when considering his predicament, “but it doesn’t always work in practice.”

As he sat looking at the negative results on the screen in front of him, Ramesh thought about the steps he would have to take. At his previous Fortune 100 employer, this problem would go to the boss immediately and the team would examine his every move. But here, he had the confidence that his boss would allow him to formulate an idea or two first. He knew that Alicia had faith in him. She’d given him time in the past to independently pursue an idea, and he had often made that time investment worthwhile for the company. He sent her a note indicating that the results were disappointing, but asked her for the weekend to come up with a Plan B.

Two weeks later, the team met to celebrate the passing of the first project milestone, as it was all “thumbs up” from senior management. The trust that his boss had in Ramesh was well placed, as in only 72 hours he had not only determined a new and better way forward, but he had paved the way for an even better outcome in the next step of the project. As he looked over the rim of his wine glass and met his boss’s eyes, there was a feeling of confidence that passed between them. He knew it was based on her trust that he would do his job well; but, even more importantly, on the confidence that she instilled in him that he played an integral role in the larger mission.

Action Steps:

• Instill the self-confidence that each person needs by celebrating their little wins along the way. The first indication of trust comes in the developing boss/subordinate relationship; downstream from this comes the trust each person must have in their own abilities.
• Develop a culture that it’s OK to fail, but that failure requires a redoubling of effort and a creative view of the opportunities to move ahead. Teach them to expect failure, and how to act when it happens to them.

Trust Level Two: Self-Governing Trust

As the production foreman responsible for the major commitments that had been made to the company’s No. 1 customer, it was Sofia’s responsibility to ensure that each production batch had the expected quality and performance. Unfortunately, Quality had pulled aside last week’s work because a wrinkle in the packaging line had produced a significant number of rejects. As she and the quality team manager looked over the inventory, it was a bigger problem than they both suspected. While purely cosmetic and with no issues in the product itself, the packaging would not be approved by the customer. It looked like the entire production line would have to be retooled to correct the matter, and with a looming deadline for this shipment, it couldn’t be done in time.

Sofia had to think fast, and she knew it would take more than her department to get out of this jam. She invited Ronnie from Quality and their warehouse lead, Jim, into a brainstorming session. The three of them knew that this customer and the large order meant a lot to the company’s bottom line. Sofia remembered a local company that they’d used in the past for manual packaging operations and wondered if they could get that firm engaged to repackage the product. Ronnie, Jim and Sofia knew that it would take everyone’s involvement to make this idea work, but they trusted each other and knew that each would give it 150% effort.

Two days later, a line had been set up in the warehouse to repackage that huge order, using outside labor but producing exactly what the customer wanted. Sofia picked one up off the line and examined it. It was perfect—and she recognized it would be out the door on time because of the total trust she shared with her colleagues.

Action Steps:

• Find every opportunity you can to give your people the experience of working closely with a diverse range of others in the organization. Mix up your project teams—put a finance person in with a team of engineers, or an engineer in with a team of chemists.
• Move your people through the organization into different jobs that allow them to gain an appreciation of how the business operates. The best people can benefit from knowing what it’s like on the other side of the fence.

Instilling the Mission

As my two examples show, trust forms at both an individual and group level, and it is always the leader who has brought this about by instilling a sense of mission. From the top down, each team leader must know the overall company mission, and then be able to translate that across their reporting structure so that everyone can see how their efforts tie back into the company big picture.

The highest ideal, that of Self-Governing Trust, occurs when colleagues at every spot on the organization chart know their goals in this overall mission and how they are going to achieve them. In closure, there’s an old saying, unattributed, but worth repeating: “Surround yourself with those who are on the same mission as you.” Good advice for the new year!

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David G. Jensen
Founder and Managing Director of CTI Executive Search
davejensen@careertrax.com
928-274-2266
www.careertrax.com
 
David Jensen is the founder and managing director of CTI Executive Search, a unit of CareerTrax Inc, a leading search firm working in the life sciences. Previously, he had been a managing director at Kincannon & Reed, a 30-year retained executive search firm where his company, CareerTrax, had been a contractor. In 1985, Jensen founded and was CEO at Search Masters International (SMI), a top executive search practice working with biotechnology companies, which was sold in 2001 to a $4.4B human resources service firm. Prior to 1985, Jensen had established a life sciences practice for Govig and Associates (Phoenix, AZ).