TRUST
Building social practice teams that fly high no matter how small.
The word trust originates from the Old Norse ‘traustr’ - meaning strong. Today it is defined as a ‘’firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something’’ and is integral to running effective organisations and teams, especially in the social sector. The origin makes for an interesting way of looking at trust. If it is present, something is strong, robust and consequently can stand up to stressors. Organisations live and die by their strength - that of our systems, processes, relationships, reputation and people; consequently a lack of trust causes these to weaken.
Larry Reynolds looked at this in-depth in his book, ‘The Trust Effect’ - defining the ways in which we can build high-trust organisations. Trust - as an organisational model is a challenging and difficult concept, it has a nuanced meaning and each of us has our own relationship with it. According to Reynolds, we have three possible approaches in our organisations, that of Hope, Power and Trust.
In the social sector, the work originated on a voluntary basis, with the blind faith that we all meant good. We were society’s do-gooders. Now, this is somewhat derisively called, the ‘motherhood and apple pie’ approach. There were organisations run on the belief that everything was peachy because we are all so lovely and caring and committed, but of course, this type of utopia does not exist, some might say a belief in it is naive. Reynolds calls this the ‘Hope’ model - come together and hope for the best. It is a high-risk model for any organisation. In this model, we make a lot of assumptions and presumptions, like, ‘everyone is as capable and committed as I am, so I’ll be hands-off from the start’.
Following the drive to professionalism, and pay for staff who deliver public services, many more bureaucratic processes have been introduced to the sector. Language like ‘performance’ and ‘targets’ crept into the dialect. We have become more ‘business-like’. There are benefits to this but we have shifted somewhat further and have commodified the people we serve as well as pitting organisations against one another. These do not help trust generally. This model creates the necessity to operate through checkboxes and processes - losing the humanity of the work - and engage in power-based relationships, the second of Reynolds approaches.
In the third type, a trust-based team or organisation, we are neither blindly hoping for the best nor driving for outputs and results at the expense of our teams. In a trust-based model, we are both appropriately attentive to quality and able to empower staff to flourish, and to collaborate with those who use our services.
Before we dive into how Reynolds said we could achieve this we must also acknowledge the interpersonal levels of trust that are required to manage people in the social sector - especially staff providing human services. Allowing one person the power to meet with another, who is by definition ‘vulnerable’ is an incredible act of trust. It takes a lot of courage, personal confidence and skills of discernment across various areas to enable and allow this much trust. We have all heard the horror stories, at least poor service, to at worst, causing further harm. Within the support and management dynamic, you and the other person bring your own relationships with trust into play. We work in traumatised systems and bring our own life histories, prejudices and fears to the work. We all need to be able to observe the interplay of trust dynamics in our organisations and teams so that we can function well.
Choose them well
It all starts with the choice of who we appoint to available roles. Clarity of role, and who will fit that specification are the initial keys to trust and success. Firstly, we have to know what affects our choice-making behaviour. How much training or insight do you have into behavioural psychology, including unconscious bias? This will help you to know your tendency to over-identify with certain types, to unconsciously favour or judge, which in turn can lead you to not gain the breadth and depth required to know whether someone fits.
When recruitment goes wrong, it is essential that we can look backwards. Do you look at recruitment failures and ascertain objectively what went wrong? Do you look at key questions like; the diversity of the panel; whether they have developed group-thinking; if they had long enough with the candidate (Reynolds’ says 12 hours)? Do you really test and stretch the candidate to check their values and personality? When I say test, I don’t mean put them through the grinder - you are never your best when you are under extreme pressure so how could you expect them to be?
Making appointments into our team is a really important endeavour. We are asking this person to add value to what we do, we need them to fit and to be good at the work they have been contracted for. How many appointments do you make based on an hour or two with someone? Are you comfortable with not appointing someone at all - do you realise that panic or desperation appointments are laden with difficulties?
If we don’t scrutinise these questions, we will fall foul of recruitment failures.
Promote learning
We live in the great age of lifelong learning and it would be remiss of us not to have learning conversations with our teams. If you think you will appoint a perfect candidate - think again! If you think anyone becomes perfect - think again! Thus, we have to look at what skills, knowledge or competencies our staff might need to learn right from the recruitment. Most of us will be well aware that we can teach knowledge and skills, so in recruiting we would really like people to have the personal and social skills that we need as these are harder to teach. However, don’t shy away from developing these, people need to have their confidence challenged, stretched and grown and it isn’t wrong to talk to someone about their need to learn in these areas. Personally, I would want to appoint someone with less experience but the right attitude, someone who can truly internalise learning, self-compassionately. Testing for emotional intelligence is a must in social sector roles. Being able to talk about personal and social skills is important, we mustn't shy away from those conversations.
Give good feedback
Feedback is the delivery of constructive observations and is an area that requires great attention to developing the right skills. There are some hard and fast rules about this - be clear, have examples that are fair, don’t waffle and for heaven’s sake don’t use the shit sandwich technique (that’s not clear or genuine at all!), be specific, don’t make it personal, relate it back to the task or values - always, and stick to your guns - notice the diversions and bring it back - you can do this if you are clear that your feedback is valuable or necessary learning for the other person or the team and you understand your purpose (read: am I micro-managing?) and the desired outcome.
As a side note, the sandwich technique should be unnecessary because you should be praising your staff routinely and noticing the things they do well, even the smallest things, and it should not be dependent on them pleasing you. You may say I like x,y, and z about how you do that task - I would like you to get better at the a,b,c of it. If you give good feedback, no-one can argue with you, they may disagree but this and their reaction gives you vital insight and food for thought in building or ending the relationship.
Tell them the score
Building trust means being upfront with staff - what is going on in the organisation? Where are we heading? What problems do we have? Get them involved in the finding of solutions, but don’t lay so much stuff on them that they become anxious. Make sure you tell staff what they need to know and to disavow them of their misunderstandings. Some people might not want to know stuff because they trust you anyway, some might not want to know because it worries them, and others might well write a million different stories if you don’t do your best to fill in their gaps. There are a couple of score telling traps to avoid - that of over-share (this is more about your needs than their needs), telling staff all of the time how difficult your job is or whingeing at them, also avoid telling them to show how much you are in the know. You are there to model coping and learning skills, to ensure the job is getting done and not to show off your power.
Make them accountable
Accountability = doing the job you were hired to do and taking responsibility for it being done well. In the relationship breakdown scenarios I have seen, I can safely say that most of them were about the lack of accountability. Either the manager is not accountable enough to manage the team well, or the colleague is not taking accountability for the job to be done. Either way, if left not dealt with, you have a headache. In all cases, the one that is not taking accountability probably has an outlook of externalising blame on others. They don’t hold to account or be accountable because of (someone or something outside of themselves). If you are fair, make someone competent, give role clarity and are flexible and supportive, you should be able to say what you need to see improved (you have after all literally entered into a legal contract). In my experience, the social sector is much more forgiving than the commercial world, and I like that, but beware the place where your staff member thinks they are your client.
Act with integrity
Integrity is defined as ‘the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles’ and it should be a no-brainer that you avoid consciously lying or being unprincipled with your colleagues. It is also important that we qualify the definitions. Let’s define ‘honest’ - it is to be ‘free of deceit; truthful and sincere’ and this is important as said, but. we must acknowledge our imperfect natures, general subjectivity and those of others. Blatant lying is an absolute no-no, but colleagues also have to ask questions and check their understanding if they think this has happened.
It is essential that both you and they have integrity - conscious honesty. It is also important that all are aware of how perceptions ebb and flow with circumstance. We have to cultivate emotional intelligence to discern the subjectivity of our thoughts and feelings. The best we can do is to be consistent, be fair, explain, own our mistakes and realisations, have good morals but don’t be moralistic, and ask your team how they feel about you in relation to these qualities. This is a golden key - great leaders seek lots of feedback, it teaches you a lot about how you're viewed and about what is going on for those around you.
Be decisive
Umming and ahhing are undesirable qualities. Leaders have to be able to make a decision when a decision is needed. They need to be able to wrap up a discussion and say, ‘Okay, let’s try this’ or, ‘These were the decisions that we just made, agreed?’ and to own that. Perhaps the right question is, ‘What would you do?’ because we must encourage self-determination. Those that avoid decisions are paralysed by their fear, the fear of getting it wrong, of being imperfect, or their fear of what could happen to those around them (this may intersect with their own issues), or they may not have the knowledge that they need and need to have awareness of that gap..
Managers need to take charge where crisis happens (staff want and need this) or to sum up a decision, check everyone is okay with it and then test it out. They also need to cultivate the ability to take collective decisions, to allow teams to make them together. One of my favourite techniques is to make a decision early on in a meeting and then allow the team to pick it apart. This gives them a focus for their explorations rather than an open forum that can ramble everywhere, and I don’t mind being made wrong!
When you have a good relationship with learning and your staff trust you, they will know that they can say ‘this is not working’ and that you can cope with evolving things. If you get stuck with decisions remember that there are no wrong decisions - you can change your mind, get others opinions, adapt; but, you must be able to draw a line so that everyone can move forward. When your team is stressed (and let’s face it, in this sector they often are) they want your decisiveness. If you struggle to reach a decision then ask yourself what you are afraid of.
Identify their concerns
Every year when the staff survey goes out, are you shocked and surprised by what comes back? If you are, then you need to do work on the openness and honesty of staff communication and feedback. Make sure people can speak freely about their concerns, without judgment, challenge them if you need to (remember the colleagues who think they are clients), but also take on board what can be gleaned about them and the issue. Create collaboration, don’t lead like you and your teams have their own cold war. Build collaboration and conversation in teams. Ask staff to support, inform and upskill one another honestly. Ask them to do the same for you. When you get a negative response in the survey make sure you probably could have known it was coming. If not, act on it in whatever way is necessary, and take a note that somewhere there is a lack of trust.
This overview is in no way a replacement for reading Reynolds’ book, because it has so much more detail and learning to give, but it is essential for social sector leaders (and by leaders I mean everyone no matter where they are on the hierarchy) to understand and be able to discern the presence of trust and mistrust within their teams and organisations. It is an essential part of the Inspiring & Emerging Social Leader course run by SociaLed.
To express an interest in being part of the next Emerging Social Leader cohort click here.
Or email kate@social-led.org.uk for other courses