Dear Readers,

I want to thank those of you who checked in throughout September to read my latest post. I missed posting at the end of August which gave many of you an opportunity to look back at some of my older posts.

I have worked hard in the last few years to post once each month. Like many of you, the last few years brought lots of changes in my life. August was the time I needed to catch up on lots of things that had been pushed to the side to adjust to those changes. There will be a new post tomorrow morning so look for it.

The new post will begin a series on trust for people who are not leaders but want to be trustworthy. Many of the behaviors for trusted leaders and others who are trusted are the same. The application of the foundational principles are slightly different. This series will address those differences.

Keep your eyes open for the new post tomorrow.

S,

Chris

Leaders develop trust by demonstrating they are responsible. They do what they say they will do and account for the people and property entrusted to their care. The best way to build trust is to accomplish those things your promise others you will do. Responsible leaders understand it is important to know their people in order to provide appropriate, challenging work for them. They know they must keep track of property and other resources in their charge to ensure their team has the resources necessary to accomplish assigned tasks and accomplish their mission. Responsibility is the top facet of the cornerstone of trust because it covers all the other aspects of trust. The top facet is hidden until it fails to hold the load over it. Likewise responsible leadership actions are done out of the sight of others and only become apparent they are not being done well when things fall apart.

Taking Responsibility for Yourself

You demonstrate responsibility by doing what you say you will do. When you promise to do something, others count on you to do it. For many, simply developing discipline to attend to personal tasks is a challenge. Think about the people around you that are late, fail to return calls as promised, show up for meeting unprepared, or fail to complete simple tasks well. Now think about people who push back on tasks yet consistently complete tasks well, are prepared for meetings, keep everyone informed about their progress, and complete things on time. Who is trusted more? People who cannot lead themselves are rarely selected to lead others. Learn how to improve your personal responsibility before seeking leadership responsibility.

A leader was assigned to present to a senior leader in the organization. She researched long and worked hard to prepare. She often backed up her work. A few days before the presentation, her computer crashed. Nothing on the hard drive could be recovered. Her supervisor thought she was sunk until she asked for a computer and some workspace. He thought she was going to pull some all-nighters. Instead, she pulled out a thumb drive, inserted it into a USB port and opened older copies of her work. She completed the presentation, on time, as promised because she anticipated total computer failure.

Taking Responsibility for the People in Your Team

Tracking and taking care of your people is an important leadership responsibility. You are only a leader if other people follow you so it is important to track and care for them. Tracking people is not a creepy internet stalking thing. Rather, it means you track things like where your people are during working hours, what their working hours are, what projects and activities they are working on during work hours, what training they have and require, any family issues distracting them during their work, and that they are being paid for the work they are doing. That is a long sentence. When you lead people, there is much to keep track of to ensure people continue to follow you.

There was a time that knowing where people were during working hours and what they were doing was pretty easy. Since the pandemic, it has become a little harder to do. Remote workers could choose to work on a different country. Many decide to break up their work day around person activities. Given you cannot stick your head in their office or cubical, it is hard to know what things they do while they are working. Just because it is hard does not absolve you of your responsibility to know these things. Develop practices that allow you to be able to check in with your workers during their work day. Find out what is going on in their work and personal lives. You can only help them be successful if you understand what hurdles stand in their way.

Want to find out how good a leader is? Find out how many people have pay problems and then ask the leader about them. If people are working for you, they deserve the pay promised them. Nothing builds trust more than asking your new employee if they received their first paycheck and that it was correct. You maintain trust by asking newly promoted employees if finance provided the correct pay increase. People know you care about them when you ask about their pay.

Training is an under used tool to improve performance and provide motivation. In many organizations, people dread being selected to attend training because it means someone thinks they are failing to measure up to expectations, therefore, they are in trouble. You should never let your people step so far into the pool that they are that far over their head to be in trouble. You avoid such situations by providing people training, so they are better prepared to face and overcome the challenges they will likely face. Training is something every one of your followers should look forward to, not suffered through. If you do not ensure your people are well-trained in all aspects of their work, you are not entitled to expect quality results! Quality results come from workers who are educated, trained, and motivated to a better job than they do now. They understand their shortcomings and have a plan to fix them. They can answer their own questions because they were trained to solve problems related to their job.

Engage your employees about their lives for the purpose of understanding them. Many employees enjoy talking about aspects of their lives. Asking about those things shows you care. Listening well in their happy times and asking appropriate questions develops trust. When bad things happen, employees are more likely to share those stories as well. You have the opportunity to help them in these hard times and increase your trustworthiness with all your followers.

Tracking Resources

If you do not keep track of the resources under your control, you may find you and your people no longer have what you need to what you need to do. Resources includes time, property, etc. Of these, time is the most important because once lost is it impossible to create more. Books and articles are plentiful on controlling and managing time. Many focus on efficiently using time. Efficiency is important but effectiveness is more important.

In the small non-profit I run, we often discuss finding the balance of efficiency and effectiveness creating social media posts. As an unsavvy social media person, I can create a post in 60 seconds or less.. It is efficient but not effective. The person that does our posts invests more time than I did, ensuring we have a captivating image that aligns with our mission and values, and supports the words in the message. Her posts generate more attention. The result is more engagement compared to my 60-second sentence.

Tracking property is an important leaderships task. In the past, property tracking was considered a management issue, not something for leaders. Leadership is a task of management, not the other way around. Traditionally, tracking property involves doing inventory to ensure everything you are expected to have is present. There is more to this task than counting. For example, you have ten employees and ten computers, it seems like life is good. If five of those computers are running Windows 3.0, five of your people probably are not working on their computers (note, at the time this was written, Windows 3.0 was nearing its 30^th anniversary as an operating system). From this example, we see that tracking property means ensuring you have all the property you are supposed have, AND that it is in proper working order.

When I first started identifying the elements of trust, I originally called this side accountability because I focused on property. As I reflected more on what leaders track, I realized responsibility is a better word for this facet of the Cornerstone of Trust. Responsibility reaches beyond physical property and includes caring for people and other non-tangeable recourses such as time, bandwidth, people, your personal actions, and reputations. You start developing trust in the area of responsibility by creating the discipline to do the things you say you are going to do. Once you can control yourself, you begin to develop influence over others and start the leadership journey. As others follow you, you become responsible to ensure they are trained, paid, and complete important, meaningful work. You know where they are and the things they do. Of course without resources, the right resources that work, people can do nothing. Learning to act responsibly as a leader covers many of the other aspects of creating trust. It all begins by doing what you say you will do.

Doing anything for 60 years is hard. At a 60 year wedding anniversary party, the husband was asked what the secret was to staying married for so long. His response, “Don’t get divorced!” Simple right? Simply work persistently on your marriage for 720 months and you too will stay married for 60 years. The principal of persistence is the secret for staying married for 60 years, succeeding in life, and leading others well.

While the principal of persistence implies success through repeated efforts, it is important to understand that persistence along does not guarantee success. In order for your persistent efforts to achieve success in some area of life, you have to execute correct behaviors, in the proper fashion, completed in the right order, on a consistent basis. Doing the right things at the wrong time, or without consistency, reduces the effectiveness of your behavior.

The Correct Behaviors

There are several acceptable ways to build a roof for one’s home. Many modern homes rely on trusses to hold the sheathing. Back in the day, builders used hand hewn beams to create the rafters. Prairie dwellers used thatching instead of traditional shingles. All work well to their purpose in their location, so long as you completed the right tasks.

Applying trusses requires different steps and skills than if a carpenter is applying a rafter structure. Trusses come preassembled, ready to lift to the tops of the walls to be secured appropriately. There are steps building crews take to secure the trusses to the walls and to the other trusses. Failing to complete any step of the installation correct means the roof is not completely sound. It may survive a normal rainstorm and carry the load of a winter’s worth of snow, but the first big wind that blows, the residents may find they are exposed to the elements.

Along the same lines, a thatched roof may work well to keep the rain off your head on a tropical island. If you build the same home in a cold climate that receives snow, however, you may need to learn to build an igloo! The grass that shed rain lacks the strength to hold solid precipitation.

You can persistently build homes in Canada with perfectly executed thatched roofs, but it is unlikely you will sell many. Correct behavior means not only executing what you know to the best of your ability, but also that the action is appropriate for the circumstances. It is a twofold test to determine correct behavior.

The Proper Fashion

The nation cringed every time the news played clips from the arrest of George Floyd. Two rookie and one veteran police officer struggled to arrest him because they did not understand the proper way to restrain and escort a resistant person. In the case of rookies, one expects them to learn from those with experience and according to one clip, one of the officers questioned the tactic but lacked another solution because of his lack of experience. There are effective techniques to control resistant people. Other police officers around the nation encounter resistant people and for the most part, those resisters are successfully placed in police cars, brought to police stations, and live to tell their side of the story. While most people will not find themselves in situations where the proper or improper actions result in the death of another, when someone fails to execute a behavior in the correct way, there eventually are negative consequences. You may persistently execute that behavior and experience some success, but failure is a more likely outcome.

An example is of the pilot who flew antique WWI airplanes. The particular plane he flew required someone to spin the propeller two times before attempting to start the engine. This procedure had something to do with moving oil or something like that, which prevented the pistons from seizing during operation. This pilot admitted he rarely completed this step and never had a problem except once. As he tells the tale, shortly after take off, the engine seized, causing the propellers to stop turning. He was able to turn around and land safely. He says he never skips the step now. The moral is that persistently following the wrong way to do things eventually results in failure. You may succeed in the short term, but the odds grow against you with time. Do the right things the right way long enough, and you are more likely to succeed.

The Correct Order

Sometimes the order one completes tasks is of little consequence. I was observing a class on preparing a radio for use in the field. The instructor told the students to insert the battery and then turn over the radio and attach the antenna. The point was that before you attach the antenna, the user has easier access to the battery. The instructor was teaching a class of people learning to become instructors. One student assembled the radio by first attaching the antenna and then placing the radio on its side and sliding in the battery. Following this method was typically slower and made it more difficult to align the pins in the battery compartment with the slots in the battery, which could damage the pins and render the radio inoperative.

The instructor trainer failed the student and explained he failed to complete the steps in the correct order. The student replied, “Doesn’t matter; it works!” The instructor trainer explained the reasons for assembling the radio as instructed and directed the student to complete the task again. Again, he did with the antenna first. Eventually the student was removed and spoken to by the headmaster of the training program. The student passed but received poor comments on his evaluation.

While the student’s point about the radio operating by assembling it his way was true, it was not the correct order. The order directed by the instructor reduced the risk of damaging the radio. Just because there are no consequences for failing to follow the order of directions in one iteration does not mean there are never consequences. If the student instructor taught all his people to assemble the radio the way he did it, the likelihood of damaged radios increases. The cost for repairing the radios increases, reducing funds available for other activities. Most importantly, the radio is not available for the operations conducted by the organization. Even if a replacement was immediately available, that may not always be the case.

Taking shortcuts may seem like it saves time in the short run. In the end however, the cost can be great. One may not break a radio pin, but what if an employee fails to follow a procedure and as a result people are injured or killed?

Consistent Action

Consistency is synonymous with persistence. However, they are not exactly the same. Consistency is the principal regular adherence to a course (derived from dictionary.com and merriam-webster.com). Persistence is consistency without stopping until you reach the objective. It is possible to be persistent without being consistent. Your results will take longer to achieve. Depending on how inconsistent your persistence is, you may find achievement not possible.

Consistent action goes a long way to improving attainment and speed of results. It is better to do a little bit on a regular basis than trying to complete a long list of tasks a single time (See Ten Minute Rule). Acting consistently allows you to determine how to adjust actions. You can beat your head against a brick wall for years hoping to break through it. If you bang your head against that wall five times every day, you will realize sooner that there is probably a better way to break down that wall and waiting until Saturday and banging your head for an hour without evaluating your results.

Persistence is an important principle of success. It implies you do not stop until you achieve your goal. However, repeating unsuccessful habits do little to move you forward. As you travel down the path toward your goal, it is important to do the things that work, effectively, in an order that builds on previous successes, consistently. That means you stop periodically to evaluate that you are doing the right things effectively in the right order on a regular basis. Persistence is more than never quitting. It means you evaluate to avoid making the same mistakes and hoping for a different outcome. Persistence requires periodically stopping to apply the lessons you learn so, you do the right things more effectively. If you are persistent and do not occasionally stop to evaluate your progress, you may find you ended up someplace you did not want to go. Take a breath, look around to see where you are, then adjust so, you stay on the path as you persistently move forward!

Like many other leaders and students of leadership, I learned and use the SWOT model to help analyze during change. For those who have never heard of SWOT, it stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. You can read more about it in my December 2018 post https://saintcyrtraining.com/2018/12/27/strategic-planning-for-2019/. The Model is great to help organizations identify things that are wrong. However, the SOAR model helps leaders and organizations identify what is right. Using SOAR allows leaders to understand things that do not need fixing and should be preserved.

SOAR is the model that helps leaders identify Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results (Moore, C. 2021). The model builds upon the idea of leading from strength discussed in the book Strengths Based Leadership by Rath and Conchie. As a result, leaders find themselves focusing on the important things to keep. It is equally important to know what works in order to keep it as it is to know what is broken in order to fix or replace it.

The SOAR model is based on a method called appreciative inquiry. Appreciative inquiry revolves around a series of questions pertaining to a particular topic such as organizational governance, or product and service line.  Examples sound like, “What is something that excites you about this widget?”, or “How does our current structure encourage creativity?” The purpose is to identify those things to save and bring forward as change happens.

Aspects of appreciative inquiry are described as a series of Ds depending on the source. Positive Psychology describes them as discovery, dream, design, and delivery (Moore, 2021). Forbes uses five Ds; define, discover, dream, discover, and deploy(Spavell,2021). 

Like SWOT, SOAR begins by examining strengths. In this model however you ask a series of questions that reveal strengths. Two examples of strength finding questions appear above. This process provides different points of view on those things that are strong. Those strengths allow us to lead from those points.

Opportunities is also a common point between SOAR and SWOT. How and what questions help leaders identify opportunities such as, “What does the future look like given current trends?”, and “How can we use our strengths to meet our clients’ future needs?” Opportunities give those in the SOAR model to see the future and develop possibilities.

Aspirations allow inquiries about things we as individuals, leaders, and organizations hope to be at our best. This step requires imagination. The conversation may begin with a prompt like, “In three years, our group is operating like a well oiled machine. Employees are excited to come to work. Peace and harmony reign. How did we achieve these ideals?” Of course, the answers to these type of prompts offer possible solutions to move from the good work you now do to great work you could be doing!

Results are important. Ken Blanchard said in his book The Secret, he proposes that both relationships and results are important. You may not always need others to achieve things, but you do if you are a leader. Ask other things like when they felt their talents were best used or what ways help you work better.

The SOAR model based on the appreciative inquiry process is different. Use opened ended questions to encourage others to respond with narrative answers. Create space for people to answer the questions by remaining silent(Miller etal, 2004). I have a professional coach who warned me at our first meeting that after she asked a question, she would not speak again until after I answered her question. She said it took a long time to get used to silence but learned important insights are born in silence. Crafting quality appreciative inquiry questions may seem difficult. Fortunately, there is help in the form of books and websites that offer examples. 

Appreciative inquiry is frequently used in groups. I found it a helpful tool in one-on-one situations. When I am trying to collect feedback about my performance as a leader from my boss, peers, or employees, using appreciative questions prompts people to provide better information. Remember that if you are asking questions, you need to accept the answers. Record them so you can later reflect on them and make changes as necessary, and of course identify things to keep with you. When you ask questions of others in an appreciative way, it inspires confidence in them as change happens.

Problems and change are difficult. As a leader, you can SWOT them or SOAR over them. Both models have advantages. When used together, there is an even greater potential for break through successes. Identify your strengths, find your opportunities. Dream of your aspirations, achieve results. When you use the appreciative inquiry process in the SOAR model, you find the good stuff to keep with you as you make changes. Don’t SWOT your problems; SOAR above them!

References 

Miller, C, Aguilar C, Maslowski, L. McDaniel, D. and Mantel, M. ((2004) The nonprofits’ guide to the power of appreciative inquiry. Community Development Institute. Denver, CO.

Moore, C. (6/5/2021). What is appreciative inquiry? A brief history & real life examples. PositivePsycology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/appreciative-inquiry/ retrieved 6/16/21

Sparvell, M. (1/25/2021). Appreciative inquiry: Getting more of the good stuff. Forbes.com. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2021/01/25/appreciative-inquiry-getting-more-of-the-good-stuff/?sh=19f8d9856fd9 retrieved 7/16/21