Leadership lessons from the garden – Trust

What is trust? According to the dictionary, trust is “reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something”. Several times during my career, I was fortunate to work with leaders whom I trusted. However, I also worked for leaders that I did not trust. When trust was present, I did my best work. When trust was broken, both my motivation and relationship with the leader were negatively impacted. Leadership trust takes time to develop but can be lost quickly.  

To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved

George MacDonald

Trust and Gardening

In gardening, there is trust relationship between a gardener and the seeds he/she plants. Gardeners rely upon seeds. While a gardener provides the soil, water and light, she trusts that the seed will do the rest (e.g. produce a plant). At some point in my gardening journey, I developed full trust in seeds.

Why is trust so important in gardening? Because the success of a garden is based upon the yield of what is planted. That yield is based upon several factors including planning. As a gardener, I create a master plan for the year based upon my expectations of germination and growth. I trust the seed to germinate and grow to maturity at the expected time. If I could not trust this process, then planning would not be possible. Without a plan, the success and productivity of the garden would be limited.

Trust and Leadership

Just as gardeners and seeds have this symbiotic relationship, trust needs to exist between leaders and their teams. Leaders have a responsibility to ensure that trust develops. A leader has two key responsibilities when it comes to building trust. First, leaders need to model the behaviors of trust. Second, leaders need to set their expectations of trust within the team. Just as a gardener knows what to expect from a seed, teams need to know what to expect from their leader.

Let’s look a little deeper at the two key responsibilities of building trust.

Modeling behaviors of trust

Teams need to be able to rely upon their leaders. For this to happen, leaders need to exhibit the following:

• Character – Leaders need to understand what they ‘stand for’ by examining their values and beliefs. People trust leaders who display values such as honesty, integrity, courage and loyalty. Self-reflection is a key component of becoming a trusted leader.
• Ability – There are soft skills and hard skills that leaders need to gain trust. Soft skills include good communication, ability to delegate, listening to feedback and making decisions. Leaders also need to command a level of expertise in the area they are leading. Teams want leaders who understand their challenges and who can guide a path forward.
• Commitments – Keeping commitments builds trust while breaking commitments reduces trust. This also includes keeping confidences. Sharing information, provided in confidence, is a trust breaker.
• Influence – Influence is about building relationships and understanding your stakeholders. It’s about gaining commitment and getting things done. Teams will know right away if their leader has influence by the way she or he interacts with others. Don’t underestimate this attribute.

Setting expectations

Setting expectations is not easy because it requires time to think through what is required and then clearly communicate. It’s also important that a leader role model these expectations. For example, if a leader expects everyone to show up on time for meetings and he is consistently late, then the expectation is negated. Here are the areas to think about when setting expectations:

• Priority – It’s rarely the case that we have the luxury to focus on one thing at work. Therefore, a leader must set priorities. When priorities change, as they often do, communication of that shift is needed.
• Time – Expectations about time can relate to task completion, deadlines and about showing up to meetings, events and appointments. Whatever is expected must be clearly communicated, and commitment gained.
• Quality – Here I mean the overall expectation around the work of a team. How is failure managed? What is the expectation between speed and quality? The expectation of quality will ultimately define how you and your team are perceived.
• Communication – It’s important to define how you want your team to communicate with you and how often you want to be kept informed. I once had a boss who preferred verbal updates rather than email updates. Initially, he wasn’t clear about this expectation. After his expectation was communicated and understood, communication flowed smoothly.

In Conclusion

Team members also have a responsibility to understand their leader’s expectations on the above items. If something is not clear, ask questions. Remember, just as a gardener and seed have a symbiotic relationship, so do leaders and their teams.

To learn more about gardening, check out my blog post titled “Four Key Benefits to Gardening“.