Optimist, New York Times bestselling author of "Start with Why" and "The Infinite Game", and founder of The Optimism Company
"Trust has to come before performance, not the other way around." It's a simple idea, but one I've seen leaders get backwards again and again. When people trust that they can tell the truth without being punished for it, we can start solving the problems in front of us. 💬 More thoughts from me, Kelly McAdoo, and Chris Hsiung over on The Curve's Substack (linked in comments)
Before Alan Mulally took over as CEO of Ford, the previous CEO had a habit of firing people who brought him bad news. So by the time Mulally arrived, every status meeting was a wall of green slides. Everything was great, except the company was bleeding money. He finally asked how both of those things could be true at the same time and the room went quiet. Eventually one executive marked a project red, fully expecting it to cost him his job. Instead Mulally thanked him and asked who in the room could help. I've sat in a version of that meeting...many times. Everything on the agenda was green. Staffing was fine, the units were fine, all of it fine. Then I'd sit down one on one with those same people and hear a completely different organization described to me. I didn't think anyone was lying in that room. Rather, it was because they feared what it cost to be the one who spoke up. That gap between what gets said in the room and what gets said behind a closed door is the most honest measure of a culture I know. You can usually trace it back to how leadership handles bad news. If everything your people tell you is green, you don't have a healthy organization. You have a frightened one, and a frightened organization can't fix itself because nobody will say out loud what's actually broken. It rarely comes down to bad people. It comes down to fear: Fear of getting blamed, of looking weak, of saying something hard in a room full of people who outrank you. I've come to believe the same fear that keeps a status report green is what keeps someone quiet while a colleague crosses a line. You don't fix that with a policy. I learned it the slower way, which is that you go first. You take the rank off, sometimes literally. You ride along, walk the jail, sit in the break room, and you keep showing up until people start to believe you actually want to hear it. You admit your own misses out loud and you thank people for hard truths instead of making them regret it. It's uncomfortable, and it takes longer than you want it to. It's also the job and part of the calling of leadership. I wrote about this with Simon Sinek and Kelly McAdoo for ICMA - International City/County Management Association's PM Magazine. The short version is that culture happens either by design or by default, that trust has to come before performance and not the other way around, and that leadership is a skill you can actually learn. Which means the culture of your agency or your city isn't fixed. It's a choice you make every day, usually in small moments when nobody's watching. You lead the people who serve. Start there. More at The Curve. For those attending the annual ICMA conference in Long Beach, Simon and I will be on stage for the keynote to talk more about this and other leadership topics. Full article linked in the comments 👇 #TheCurve #Leadership #LocalGov
Trust is the floor, not the trophy. Without it, people spend more energy protecting themselves than solving the problem.
I think there is another layer to this. I have seen organisations where people were not particularly afraid to speak up, yet management still received a surprisingly optimistic picture of reality. Over time, KPIs, reporting routines and escalation processes had shaped what people considered worth reporting and what they dealt with themselves. Trust certainly matters. But sometimes people are telling you the truth and you are still not seeing the problem. That is when one needs to start looking at the system that produces the information, not only at the people providing it.
Trust doesn’t come from asking people to trust you. It gets built every time someone tells the truth, particularly an inconvenient one, and isn’t punished for it. That changes what leaders are able to see, hear and ultimately solve. Mark Towne, Ed.D., this feels very connected to some of the work you’ve been doing.
Simon Sinek Trust first is also the harder sequence to hold under pressure. When performance slips — a missed target, a failed launch, a difficult quarter — the instinct is to tighten control and demand accountability before trust is restored. But that is exactly the moment the sequence matters most. A team that cannot tell the truth about what went wrong cannot fix it. And the leader who punishes honesty in the hard moments has taught their team what truth costs — and they will price it accordingly from that point forward.
Trusting your boss and team is what will keep you working hard and with commitment. There have been no harder times than when I didn't trust my boss or team. It's not something you don't take home.
This is such an important part of leadership. If people only tell us what they think we want to hear, we don’t really know what is happening. Creating enough trust for someone to disagree, raise a concern or tell us something we would rather not hear is much harder than asking for honesty - but that is where the useful conversations start.
Absolutely, Simon. Many leaders say, “Prove yourself first, and then I will trust you.” But people cannot consistently perform at their best in an environment where every mistake must be hidden, every disagreement feels dangerous and honesty carries a penalty. Trust does not mean removing accountability. It means creating the safety required for people to speak the truth early, before a concern becomes a crisis. Fear may produce compliance for a while, but it is trust that produces ownership. And sustainable performance is rarely demanded into existence. It is built in an environment where truth can be spoken without fear.
This is the one I have watched leaders get backwards the most, and the cost is always the same. When I finally worked somewhere I could tell the truth without flinching, everything got easier, the problems came out while they were still small. Grateful you keep saying this plainly. It reorders how I lead every time I hear it.
Optimist, New York Times bestselling author of "Start with Why" and "The Infinite Game", and founder of The Optimism Company
1moRead more: https://getinspired.cc/lead-with-trust