First of all, why is trust such a big deal. Can I start working with someone well without building trust? Is it important to build a bridge of trust before we work together. Well, it depends on what you want to achieve. When I was fresh out of college, I was hungry to learn more and do more and I didn’t particularly care about whether others disagreed with what I was doing. But, I did, however, care about what other people thought well about me and specifically there was one person I really wanted to think well of me and that was my manager. After all, he held the key (in a very loosely metaphorical way) to my bank account and specifically, how much was put into it. So, it was important to me that my manager knew that I was doing good work and not necessarily if I was actually good work by my perception.

Then when I start growing in my career, it became clear that in order to get my next level of achieving bigger things, it was important to me to figure out how to work with others. I had a bitter taste of this much needed medicine 2 jobs ago, when on one occasion I had a life changing conversation with my manager. It was a difficult one and it change a lot of things for me. I actually pondered on that conversation for a while to a point of physical pain. In the end, it got to a point of “something has to change” and I needed a fresh start. This time though, I took my new and valuable lesson and focused on building trust with my team mates and beyond. I also cared about how my manager felt but to a lesser degree. I didn’t know at that time that what I was doing was building trust and I just wanted people to know that I am a good team player and they can count on me to get things done and in someways help them do amazing things.

Fast forward to today, my linkedin profile’s about me section reads I wake up everyday to enable people around me reach their highest potential to achieve organization’s mission to positively change the world. I snap to this statement on a regular basis to remind myself of what I strive to do. The word that is glaringly missing but no less important is “Trust”. Now, we come back to the original question which is, why is trust important to my life’s mission to enable others? Trust is like a currency, everytime you ask someone to do something and they do not fully know or believe in why you are asking them to do, then you spend a little bit of the trust currency. Now, the key phrase is “they do not fully know or believe”. As leaders, you often come across situations where words cannot express the intuition and instincts you have about a decision that you are about to lay on someone’s shoulders. And, at someone point you have to resort to “trust me, this is going to work” and not always expressed in the exact same way but you get the idea. When you use that, you are spending some trust currency. An implicit assumption is that you have enough trust currency to dip into. More specifically, you have a built up enough of trust bank balance with the person you are asking something to do.

Here is something different and beautiful about trust that is not true about currency: Every time you spend it and it is used wisely and helps the other person achieve great things that benefits them in some shape or form: be it promotion, recognization or sheer satisfaction of having done something great for what they truely believe in, then it replenishes in many folds. Trust is also mutual and not always have the same return to each person and it takes time and conscious effort to build.

Lot of leaders, who wish to do great things by enabling others to reach their full potential often fall short on the trust currency and simple go negative balance from the get go. This is often an huge mistake and one that is really hard to get back on unless both parties have the hard conversation and reset their relationships and agree to focus on trust explicitly. If a leader, especially someone with authority (like a manager) continues to throw their weight around to force people into doing what they don’t want to do, they often will find themselves without anyone to lead and this is manifested with mass exodus of future leaders in their organization.

Now, I think the important question one must ask if they are going to lead is “How do I build the trust if I have nothing to start with?”. This is an important questiont to ponder. You cannot manufacture it like our government does with currencies. Only way to build trust is by embark on things that only helps the other person and not you directly or indirectly. The other person should feel like you have their back in a self less way and that you will always strive to help them no matter how difficult the situation gets. This takes time and discipline, especially from the leader. The reality is, a leader is always under duress from their leaders to get things done and most leaders just transitively pass on the duress to their reports without building the necessary trust bank. This is not easy and that is why leadership is tough or atleast the one where you are not leading with authority.