The awkwardness was palpable. As the meeting droned on, the evidence began to mount: no agenda, lack of focus, petty side arguments, no meeting owner at the helm. . . not even a god-damn notetaker to capture the stream of insanity. It was going from bad, to worse: meeting hell.
Sound familiar?
Welcome to my weekly leadership meeting circa Q3 2015. Yeah, it was that bad, maybe worse.
How is this relevant? In a word: trust, the lack of which manifests itself in many ways much like the meeting I described.
Let's take a step back: great leaders have the ability to run effective meetings and channel energy towards healthy debate and ultimately group decisions. Great leaders are able to stitch together a tapestry of diverse perspectives at the seam of their similarities (or differences) and MOVE FORWARD with decisiveness and clarity. But what could get in the way?
Lack of trust.
And here's the catch: most meetings suck, and most leaders are too frazzled from the last meeting/offsite/marathon to really deliver their best 100% of the time.
Allow me to hit the pause button for a dose of positivity: Big things are accomplished only through the perfection of minor details. Why this quote? Because little improvements to say, meeting structure, can go a LONG way. For example, basic meeting etiquette suggests an agenda with time allocated to each topic, a meeting owner/organizer, and a notetaker. If decisions are to be made based on information, a meeting pre-read should be included. This is basic stuff and helps establish TRUST across meeting attendees.
But trust is much deeper and greater than just meeting etiquette. Its about people. Relationships. And what you need to do to earn/build/foster trust. As Stephen M. R. Covey shares with us in The Speed of Trust: "We judge ourselves by our intentions, and others by their behavior. Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust."
Their are specific behaviors that these leaders embrace:
Remember the scene in Inception where they have to actively increase their consciousness of the dream state in order to offset the skepticism the dream world is imparting? A good leader will call into consciousness the fact that the team lacks trust and get them to focus on it. Bring it front and center and have it about.
Then what?
I've since heard three powerful words that inspired me to write this article: "trust and commit". Say it with me: "trust and commit." One more time, "trust and commit." I can't HEAR YOU !!??
Okay, that's enough.
The point is, these three words reshaped our team's ability to collaborate, discuss, decide and execute. "Trust and commit" became our mantra and a pivotal threshold at which the group would decide to "trust and commit" or not. If trust and commit was achieved, that means the decision was fully-baked and all stakeholders had signed off. More importantly, all stakeholders would be ACCOUNTABLE to the "trust and commit"(ment) they had made.
By simply having a decision-making mantra, our team was able to review and discuss initiatives quicker, make decisions faster, and execute more consistently.
Okay, one more time: "TRUST and COMMIT!!"
[Editor note: Thank you to our readers for all your calls and emails since this post was published.]
