In this changing world, it’s useful to think of leadership not as an immutable set of qualities but as an activity: the activity of engaging people to accomplish a common purpose. This process takes place within a particular social, political, economic, and technological environment — the features of which influence the effectiveness of certain styles and approaches to leadership. It is my contention that the environment has changed dramatically — in ways that I will describe more fully below — and that one of the new characteristics that leaders must adopt to be effective is that of vulnerability.

Vulnerability is not an attribute commonly associated with leadership. The word evokes images of weakness, fallibility, and defenselessness. Roget’s Interactive Thesaurus identifies nine synonyms for the word “vulnerability”: danger, dependence, exposure, infirmity, instability, jeopardy, liability, peril, and weakness. So why would anyone deliberately seek to be vulnerable? How can doing so possibly be necessary for leaders today? Isn’t living in the world dangerous and unstable enough without deliberately cultivating vulnerability? Before discussing these questions, let’s explore what I mean by “vulnerability” in the context of leadership.

The Discipline of Vulnerability

Pema Chödrön uses the metaphor of a room to describe how we often relate to the world. We create this room to suit us perfectly. It is the perfect temperature; the food is our favorite, as is the music. Only the people with whom we get along are allowed to enter this room. It is a wonderful environment, perfectly suited to us. But gradually the room turns into a prison as we become more and more afraid to venture out. The longer we stay in the room, the more threatening the outside So we take steps to for selves even more, padlocking the doors and shuttering the windows.

This is the position of too many leaders today. In a world full of perceived threats from all quarters, leaders tend to isolate themselves as they attempt to single-handedly eradicate all perils facing their organizations. In doing so, they cut themselves off from important sources of information and valuable relationships. In this new environment, the existing leadership paradigm — the “leader as hero” —  serves as a prison.

As Chödrön says, “Staying in this room is not productive of being a whole, healthy, sane, well-adjusted person. . . . It’s not productive of awe, wonder, curiosity, or inquisitiveness. It’s not productive of tolerance, and it breeds bigotry and racial hatred.” And then she adds, “Our life’s work is to learn to open the door.” Learning to open the door — for individuals, organizations, and even nations — involves cultivating vulnerability.

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge writes: “Each of the five learning disciplines can be thought of on three distinct levels:

1. Practices, which are the things you do
2. Principles, which are guiding ideas and insights
3. Essences, which is the state of being of those with high levels of mastery in the discipline.”

Using this framework, and thinking of vulnerability as a discipline, its essence is a sense of unguardedness and willingness to be changed. Principles or guiding ideas that support the discipline of vulnerability might include openness, transparency, “not knowingness,” trust, and compassion. Openness is a sense of permeability, a receptivity to influences from outside “your room.” Transparency is essentially a willingness to invite scrutiny and critique. “Not knowingness” is a bit harder to describe. The Zen Buddhist phrase “beginner’s mind” captures this principle well, in that it encourages us to approach each situation with a spirit of curiosity combined with a lack of certainty. “Not knowingness” is another form of openness — the openness to new ideas and ways of seeing the world. Trust involves yet another kind of openness — the willingness to engage in relationship with the other.

“The other” can be parts of oneself, other people, a higher power, or a process. Finally, compassion entails an openness to the suffering of others and the desire to alleviate that suffering. Embracing vulnerability through the application of these principles can be strengthened through a myriad of practices, some of which will be described later in this article.

The Call for Change

Why is vulnerability particularly relevant as a leadership discipline now? First, people around the globe are increasingly aware of the interconnectedness of all existence. Even in the most isolated settings, developments in communications technology have made it possible for people to quickly and easily learn about events occurring in other parts of the world. Such awareness then influences what they consider to be their sphere of concern. At the same moment, I can be troubled by the performance of my local school system, the bombing of the U. N. headquarters in Iraq, and the continuing heat wave in Europe. Knowing about these events inevitably expands my consciousness.

The globalization of the economy also compels individuals and organizations to operate as part of a larger whole. Even remote areas feel the economic impact of events occurring in other regions. For example, some months following the bombing of the World Trade Center, my husband and I were riding in a taxi on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. The driver started talking about September 11th and what a terrible thing it had been. As an American, I assumed that he was expressing his condolences for the loss of life in the U. S. As it turned out, his primary concern was the effect on his local economy of the drop in air travel following the attacks. This incident is but a small example of the powerful web of economic interconnectedness that characterizes our time.

Additionally, we have become increasingly consciousness of the interconnectedness of systems that were once perceived and treated as substantially separate. For example, there is more and more evidence that the phenomenon of “urban sprawl” contributes to a diminished sense of community and environmental degradation. When people must get in their cars and drive in order to carry out their daily activities, they no longer

Although the “leader as hero” may never be completely replaced, we now have other models to guide our behavior.

casually encounter fellow community members and they contribute to environmental pollution. Other examples abound. It is too early to know whether our rising awareness in this area will lead to changes in practices, but further progress will certainly be aided by a stance of vulnerability.

A second condition that calls for leaders to adopt a stance of vulnerability is the tarnished credibility of many major institutions, including the media, the church, and the marketplace. This may be a “good news, bad news” occurrence, setting the stage for citizens to require their leaders to act with humility, transparency, and trustworthiness. At this writing, it is hard to know what direction society will take: a flurry of laws, litigation, reorganization, and regulations intended to prevent such violations from recurring, or a more fundamental revisiting of our basic expectations about social institutions and their leaders.

A third condition, which is a potentially positive development, is an emerging civic re-engagement movement that seems to be gaining momentum. One example is the powerful Internet-based citizen participation vehicle “Move On,” which aims to “bring ordinary people back into politics.” It currently has an international network of more than two million online activists, which has taken action on a variety of political and social issues since 1998. In addition, more and more opportunities exist for large numbers of citizens to engage in dialogue and offer their views on important public developments. One such example was the historic “Listening to the City” event held in July 2002, in which 5,000 New Yorkers offered comments on plans to redesign lower Manhattan, rebuild the World Trade Center, and create a memorial for the victims of the September 11th attacks.

As a facilitator of this session, I was profoundly impressed by both the skillfulness of the process and the quality of the results. This event required a stance of vulnerability from everyone involved. Those who commissioned the process remained open to being influenced and were willing to modify the outcome to reflect the needs expressed by participants during the day-long event. Those who attended the gathering demonstrated trust that their input would be taken seriously, even as they entered into the dialogue with self-described “New York cynicism.” Those who organized the process were flexible and willing to make changes in real time, for instance, when the majority of participants balked at taking part in one planned exercise. The gathering truly demonstrated the qualities of vulnerability described in this article and, indeed, had an impact on the course of the rebuilding process.

A final condition brings us back to the point made earlier: that desirable leadership attributes will be influenced by the environmental context. In order to help leaders to operate effectively in this complex, interdependent, and heterogeneous environment, scholars are articulating a new image of leadership. Recent books such as The Spirit of Leadership by Harrison Owen (Berrett Koehler, 1999), Leading Without Power by Max De Pree (Jossey-Bass, 1997), and Leading Quietly by Joseph Badaracco, Jr. (Harvard Business School Publishing, 2002) emphasize the relational, subtle, and even spiritual elements of modern leadership. Increasingly, the inner work of leadership is being linked to outer actions. Although the “leader as hero” may never be completely replaced, we now have other models to guide our behavior.

Taking Off the Armor

“You become what you practice most.” — Unknown

It is difficult to expect leaders who have not embraced the discipline of vulnerability throughout their careers to do so when the stakes are high. Instead, leaders must consistently cultivate this approach over the long term. Pema Chödrön writes, “When I was about 12, I read a Life magazine series, ‘Religions of the World.’ The article on Confucius said something like: ‘By the time you’re 50, if you’ve spent your life up until then taking the armor off . . . then you’ve established a pattern of mind that for the rest of your life, you won’t be able to stop. You’ll just keep taking the armor off. But if by the time you’re 50 you’ve become really good at keeping

that armor on . . . it’s going to be very hard to change.”

Regardless of our age or position in our organization, how might we start to “take off the armor”? We can begin with the principles of vulnerability outlined above: openness, transparency, “not knowingness,” trust, and compassion. For each of these guiding ideas there are numerous practices that run the gamut from audits to Zen. Below are examples of some that might support each of the principles (also see “The Principles of Vulnerability”).

Openness. A number of years ago, I attended a barbecue hosted by a local police officer, along with mutual friends. This was the first time we had met most of the people at this party. Early in the evening, our host began railing against the Puerto Ricans who had moved into his community in recent years. He described them as having caused an increase in crime, poverty, and teen pregnancy in the town. My first instinct was to react to aggressively defend the people he was maligning — but we were his guests and it did not seem appropriate. I was greatly conflicted: I felt as though his beliefs, his perspective, would seep into me and become a part of my identity if I didn’t mount a defense. But as a guest and a stranger, I did not feel it was polite to argue with him.

Instead, I tried to be open to his perspective. When I actually allowed myself to take in his point of view, I realized that police officers regularly encounter people at their worst. Given that, why would he have a different perspective about Puerto Ricans? Once I became vulnerable and considered his perspective, it changed me.

At that point, I began to pay attention to the ways in which my fear of being “colonized” by “the other” was causing me to become rigidly defensive of my own views. I started exploring various practices that enhance individual and collective openness. The Buddhist practice of tonglen, which means “exchanging oneself for the other,” is a powerful personal discipline for cultivating compassion and a sense of connection with others. Tonglen entails the deliberate “breathing in” of someone’s pain, anger, sadness, and negative energy and “breathing out” light, warmth, and positive energy directed toward that individual. I have found it to be especially helpful in countering the tendency to defend my own beliefs and reject those of other people.

There are also numerous exercises that encourage taking different perspectives, including the exercise called “Multiple Perspectives” described in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. The exercise, which is useful for teams working on a real problem, involves identifying each of the stakeholders and rotating among roles in order to see the issue from as many vantage points as possible. This exercise can benefit individual participants as well the team as a whole.

The June 2003 issue of Fast Company magazine features an organizational example of the power of taking multiple perspectives. The Dofasco Steel Company of Hamilton, Ontario, has distinguished itself because of its emphasis on the “triple bottom line” (society, the economy, and the environment) as well as its consistent profitability, in an industry where neither are typical. Former CEO John May berry says, “These things all bleed into each other. How do you get happy shareholders? Start with satisfied customers. How do you get satisfied customers? Start with happy employees. How do you please employees? Try not to wreck the community they live in.” When faced with seemingly incompatible goals, such as reducing energy consumption while still producing high-quality steel, the company creates innovative solutions by “constantly examining problems from all perspectives as we try to solve them. And often, an improvement in one area that might initially look bad for another stakeholder actually pushes you to come up with solutions that are better all around.”

Transparency.

Individuals and groups alike can practice transparency, the openness to scrutiny or critique. On an individual level, we can invite friends, family members, and colleagues to offer feedback about our behavior and its impact on them. We can also make ongoing efforts to align our purpose, values, and goals to result in more consistent actions. If others know what our values are and can observe a pattern of behavior consistent with those values, then the reasons for our actions are clearer than they might have been if we behaved in inconsistent and unaccountable ways. Any effort to bring to consciousness our own mental models and assumptions, along with the willingness to make those public, is practicing transparency.

For organizations, one powerful way of practicing transparency is by inviting scrutiny — feedback — from outside parties through external evaluations and audits. Recently, the food industry, spearheaded by the Food Marketing Institute and the National Council of Chain Restaurants, implemented an animal welfare initiative that is producing audits of eggs, milk, chicken, and pork producers and will eventually result in inspection of cattle and feed lots. In 1997, McDonald’s restaurant began a process that eventually required all of its meat producers to undergo animal welfare audits: In 2002, it conducted 50 such audits worldwide.

Other ways in which organizations can practice transparency include aligning vision, mission, values, goals, and practices and collectively uncovering assumptions and mental models. The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook and other resources describe a number of techniques for creating a shared vision and uncovering mental models. Although the techniques are well proven, they are most successful in environments in which there is already a fair amount of openness and trust.

For a variety of reasons, having the answers can be the most unhelpful thing a leader can do.

“Not Knowingness.” People in leadership roles are often expected to have all the answers. In fact, for a variety of reasons, having the answers can be the most unhelpful thing a leader can do: It allows others to avoid taking responsibility; it perpetuates the “leader-as-hero” myth; it suppresses creative thinking that can come from those on the margins; and it keeps others at a distance. “Not knowingness” requires especially rigorous practice because the pressure that leaders experience “to know” comes both from within and without.

Leaders who want to adopt this principle might find inspiration in the experiences of former Hewlett-Packard executive Greg Merton. In his article, “Leadership is Sourced by a Commitment to Personal Development” (Reflections, Fall 2002), he writes, “I am learning that a willingness to be vulnerable arises out of strength, not weakness. We protect ourselves out of fear, not confidence. And if we want those around us to learn, then we must be learning as well.”

The creation of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is an excellent example of “not knowingness.” Since the early 1980s, this bank has made a success of doing something no other bank has done: lending to the poor. In Reflections (Spring 2002), the leader of the bank, Muhammad Yunus, described its origins. Conditions in Bangladesh in the mid-1970s were horrific. As Yunus walked from his beautiful bungalow to the university where he was teaching economics, he would pass by people dying in the street. He realized that his economic theories were useless in the face of those conditions. He said, “I felt completely empty. . . . I realized I could help people as a human being, not an economist. So I decided to become a basic human being. I no longer carried any preconceived notions.”

Stimulated by this realization, he traveled into local villages to learn about poverty by listening to poor people themselves. He discovered that many of them earned a meager income by making things to sell but, in order to buy the raw materials, they had to borrow cash from a moneylender at high interest rates. Making these payments left them without enough money to live on. The people Yunus met were not victims or malingerers; they were motivated entrepreneurs who lacked resources. This learning became the foundation of the creation of Grameen Bank, which has grown to be an international model for microcredit banks, lending money to people with no collateral.

Trust. “Not knowingness” also involves a willingness to trust an unfolding process and to have a kind of faith, whether it is faith in other people, in oneself, in a deity, or merely in the integrity of the outcome. In A Path with Heart (Bantam Books, 1993), Jack Kornfield includes a wonderful story about Vinoba Bhave, who was Gandhi’s closest disciple and heir apparent. After Gandhi’s death, his followers tried to convince Vinoba to lead a nationwide convention to decide how to continue Gandhi’s work. With serious reservations, Vinoba agreed, but only on the condition that the conference be postponed for six months so he could walk there on foot, halfway across India.

In his travels, Vinoba discovered the same scenario in village after village: The people were poor and were unable to grow their own food because they owned no land. At first, he promised to talk to Prime Minister Nehru about passing a law to give land to the poor villagers. Upon reflection, he realized that such a law would be ineffective in addressing the problem because it would take years to pass and when it was finally put into place, corrupt governmental officials would siphon the land grants away before they ever reached the people. Sadly, he gathered a group of villagers together and told them his conclusion.

In response, one rich villager pledged to give some of his land to 16 families, each of whom needed five acres. This generous offer prompted others to follow suit in village after village as Vinoba traveled to the conference. During his journey, he stimulated the transfer of more than 2,200 acres of land to poor families. As a result, others joined the effort, which became known as the great Indian Land Reform Movement.

Kornfield writes, “All of this began from a spirit of listening, a caring for truth, and a compassionate beginner’s mind brought to an old and difficult situation.” I would add that it also came from a trust in an unfolding process. If Vinoba had proceeded with an agenda, clear goals, and a decisive vision of the future of the Gandhian movement, would the Indian Land Reform Movement ever have happened?

Compassion. Compassion is defined as “deep feeling for or understanding of misery and suffering and a desire to promote its alleviation.” It results from the act of “opening the door” discussed earlier in this article. The spiritual practice of tonglen is deliberately aimed at cultivating compassion.

Whether we use a spiritual or cognitive route to expand our perception of the interconnectedness of elements within systems, we cannot fail to experience a strengthened relationship with the other parts of that system: individuals, work groups, organizations, cultures, nature, and so on. Awareness of this relationship creates the groundwork for a compassionate response to the other. Peter Senge quotes Einstein on this topic:

“[The human being] experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

The practice of systems thinking can enable us to see the interconnection between elements that had previously been perceived as separate. Systems diagrams can be a useful tool for cultivating this type of thinking. In a leadership course I was teaching for people with mental retardation and their workers, we used a rudimentary systems diagram to describe the relationship between the behavior of staff and clients in a group home. One of the residents understood the connection immediately: “So when staff yell at me, then I feel ashamed and that makes me mad and I yell back. The staff think I’m acting out and then they restrain me.” Through the practice of systems thinking, this participant, who had previously viewed interactions entirely from her own perspective, was able to take the perspective of others. This stimulated a thoughtful discussion about the ways in which the behavior of the staff and residents influenced each other, which helped to break down barriers between people in those two roles.

Perhaps a case study will be useful at this point. What follows is a real situation.

In the mid-1990s, a small town in a rural state experienced a series of violent events that challenged the community’s capacity to act compassionately toward individuals with mental illness. The incidents also challenged the state mental health department to operate with a stance of vulnerability rather than the usual defensive posture that is so prevalent in response to scandal. First, a man with a history of mental illness attacked members of a local religious order; two of these women subsequently died. The man knew these individuals and had grown up in the community. Several months later, another murder took place in the town; the alleged perpetrator was on a waiting list for mental health services. During the same year, in a nearby town, a resident of one of the state-run psychiatric facilities was murdered by her boyfriend.

Any one of these tragic events might have provoked a serious backlash against the mental health department and the people it served. The coincidence of three violent crimes happening within a short timeframe was a recipe for disaster. It would not have been surprising to find the system’s leaders engaging in defensive practices such as scapegoating, retreating, and retaliating. Instead, leaders within the system chose to stay focused on the circumstances of the people they served and the well-being of the community at large, a focus that necessitated a different set of responses than the conventional ones.

What did the department actually do? In the instance of the nuns’ murder, the department reached out to those people who had a stake in the unfolding events. First, officials asked themselves, “Who is going to be most affected by this horrible incident and its potential implications?” They contacted the head of the local chapter of AMI, a national education and advocacy group for people with psychiatric disabilities and their families. They also got in touch with the leader of the local mental patients’ advocacy movement, the mayor of the community, the head of the agency that served the perpetrator, and the Catholic diocese. This group of people from the community got together and said, “Our community has a reputation as a caring community, and we need to let people know we are not going to scapegoat people with mental illness or let this become a witch hunt. That’s not what this community is all about.”

Although the event and its aftermath were tragic and painful, the behavior of this community group, supported by leaders within the mental health department, prevented worse consequences. In fact, a reporter who had grown up in the community returned to his hometown shortly after the attack to see what the effects had been. Fully expecting a severe backlash against people with mental illness, what he found was very different. Four days after the incident, 1,000 citizens crowded into a church just down the street from the convent for a public prayer service. The town’s mayor urged them to pray for the family of the perpetrator. The state legislature later called for improved treatment of mental patients living in local communities. The nuns continued to pray for the man who had killed two of their own.

How does this example illustrate the discipline of vulnerability? Instead of padlocking the door, turning off the phones, and hunkering down in their “room,” the department heads acknowledged that they needed to work with other key stakeholders. They recognized that they were but one element of a larger system, and possibly not even the central or most relevant one. Instead of protecting and defending itself, the department reached out to others. Its message was, “We need you; we can’t do this alone.” Given that department leaders were besieged by lawsuits and attacks in the newspaper, actions that often lead people to feel defensive, it is all the more remarkable that they chose to respond in this way.

Further, the department proceeded with a sense of not knowing, a courageous stance for an institution expected to wield power, expertise, and accountability. Leaders focused on creating an expansive, long-term agenda, rather than on merely reacting to the crisis. This approach enabled the broader group of stakeholders to establish common ground. It would have been impossible for them to do so if the emphasis had been on defending the stakeholders’ individual actions regarding the specific incident. Instead of fortifying their “room,” these courageous folks opened the door and went out into the world, vulnerable and open to influence. This is a clear example of the discipline of vulnerability at work.

A Fresh Approach

I have attempted to describe some current conditions that call for a stance of vulnerability and to describe why vulnerability is a core leadership discipline for these times. Although it may not be the most accurate term for what I have tried to describe, it does have the advantage of freshness. Using “vulnerability” as a positive term, a condition to which leaders might aspire rather than eschew, invites reflection upon our existing assumptions about leadership. Because I also wanted to include some practical elements, I have attempted to touch on some of the ways in which an individual or collective might cultivate vulnerability. Anyone interested in further pursuing these practices will find ample information else-where. My main hope in writing this article is that it might contribute to our individual and collective capacity to “open the door” and venture out into the world.

The post Embracing Vulnerability:A Core Leadership Discipline for Our Times appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

I have also observed that the amount of trust that exists within a group of people greatly affects the results they can achieve together. A guest on a recent talk-radio show on financial investments demonstrated the impact of trust within the U. S. economy. A highly respected portfolio manager with 40 years of success in mutual fund investing, he remarked that, despite Alan Greenspan’s testimony before Congress that the economy is moving in a positive direction, the stock market is still slumping. Historically after recessions, markets recover first, followed by the rest of the economy; yet in our current situation, the economy is showing signs of recovery but the markets are still experiencing downward trends. Why? The guest attributed the slow market improvement to human factors. He asserted that, in response to gross misrepresentation of earnings and other mismanagement by top executives from companies such as Enron and Worldcom, many people now distrust large corporations and hesitate to invest in them. In other words, despite signs that our economy is getting back on track, trust — or lack of trust, in this case — appears to be significantly limiting the recovery of the markets and the economy as a whole.

As a result of my observations and conversations with others about this topic, I have been investigating how to build trust in organizations, particularly schools. I’ve looked at numerous studies that have attempted to define trust and explain how it works. While thought provoking, their findings leave me unsatisfied. One of the reasons I am not adequately convinced by many researchers arguments is that their approach to understanding trust tends to be deconstructivist.

They break apart the concept into many different components in order to analyze it, and the more they do, the less I understand and connect with it.

I have come to believe that we can better understand trust by looking at it as a system composed of many independent yet interrelated and interconnected factors, including but not limited to integrity, honesty, character, reliability, and competence. Because the power of trust lies in the synergy of these variables, building it requires us to understand their interplay in our relationships and in our organizations.

In a recent article, Peter Senge touched more deeply on this process when he discussed the importance of “holism,” a way of understanding the world whereby “the whole is enfolded into each element or part” (see “Creating the World Anew,” The Systems Thinker, V13N3). It is a way of seeing not only the interconnections among the parts and the whole, but also how they mutually evolve together. I believe trust is a concept to which holism applies: We cannot adequately understand and nurture its components without looking at the essence of the whole concept. In our attempts to break it into what appears to be its constituent parts, the “spirit” of trust no longer exists.

To illustrate, let’s try to isolate one of trust’s components, honesty. Although honesty is a positive trait for which we should strive, an honest person is not necessarily reliable or dependable, two other components of trust. Would we trust an honest but unreliable person? We might have confidence that that person will tell the truth, but we probably wouldn’t trust him or her to follow through with commitments. As Stephen Covey puts it, would we really trust an honest but incompetent surgeon to perform a major operation on us? This example hints at the complex nature of this seemingly simple characteristic.

Defining Trust

Let’s begin by defining trust. Webster’s Dictionary says trust is “firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing” and “assured resting of the mind on the integrity, veracity, justice, friendship, or other sound principle of another person.” Stephen Covey defines it as “the balance between character and competence.” These definitions focus on a particular state of mind that one needs to be able to trust someone.

But if instead we think of trust as an underlying condition necessary to support all effective human interactions, then it becomes a foundational systemic structure. In this supporting role, trust is not visible in the traditional sense; like the wind, only its effects can be seen. For example, trust is absent if we think a relationship might jeopardize our personal or professional interests and well-being. Similarly, we can comfortably surmise that high levels of trust exist in organizations in which members feel a sense of community and connectedness.

To explore the idea of trust as an actual but intangible structure, let’s consider the iceberg metaphor. When you look at an iceberg, only the tip is visible; the greater mass lies out of sight below the surface. By looking “beneath the surface” of daily events in your organization, you can determine the structures that influence people’s behavior. If we apply this metaphor to understanding trust, the tip is our daily interactions in which we experience varying levels of trust or mistrust (see “The Iceberg Model of Trust” on p. 2). These interactions, a series of seemingly unrelated events, are the concrete results of an organization’s climate of trust, which exists in the patterns and structures “below the waterline.” One unpleasant encounter may not lead us to feel an overall sense of mistrust. But if the behavior continues over time, it’s likely to undermine relationships and erode trust throughout the organization. (Note that certain events, such as layoffs, are significant enough to be “trust busters” the first time they occur.)

Using the Trust Lens

So how do we notice patterns of behavior that support or undermine trust? By looking through a “trust lens.” In almost every interaction between people, a “trust transaction” takes place that transcends the actual event; that is, based on what occurs, levels of trust rise or fall. To determine the degree of trust being transacted during an interaction, you can take the following elements into consideration:

1. The history of interactions between individuals and/or groups (What has happened between them in the past?)
2. The literal meaning conveyed through the interaction (What words are being expressed?)
3. The inferential meaning conveyed through the interaction (What voice tones, facial expressions, and body language are being used?)
4. The result of the interaction (Did one party gain an advantage over or “hurt” the other in some manner?)

If we think of trust as an underlying condition necessary to support all effective human interactions, then it becomes a foundational systemic structure.

Knowing the history between two parties offers us the greatest insight in determining the level of trust transacted in a given encounter. Consider, for instance, how different your conclusions would be if you knew that two individuals you were observing had been best friends their entire lives or that two groups had previously experienced a significant conflict with each other.

Because we don’t always know the history, we can try to “read” the trust transaction at both the literal and inferential levels. At the literal level, we analyze the words and phrases being transmitted between the parties involved. In general, using deceptive, demeaning, and intimidating language diminishes trust, while communicating openly and honestly with what Covey calls “courage and consideration” builds it.

Observing literal transactions has its limits, though. According to numerous studies, the words we use make up only about 10 percent of what we communicate. It is at the inferential level — the voice tone, facial expression, and body language — where we do 90 percent of our communicating. Psychologist Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon says that “language is seen as the primary vehicle” to transmit information and “non-verbal communication is primarily seen to transmit emotional information.” Thus, actively observing all aspects of an interaction and asking, “Do these behaviors convey trust or lack of trust?” is crucial in determining the degree of trust being transacted.

We have to be cautious, though, whenever we try to determine levels of trust, because we each bring to any situation our own set of assumptions about how the world works. Therefore, when we use a “trust lens,” we need to consider how our mental models are influencing our perceptions. A continual comparison between actual data and our assumptions will help us to discern whether we are making accurate judgments or whether we are overgeneralizing based on limited information.

How Trust Becomes a Structure

When a pattern of transactions occurs over a period of time, it creates a structure that becomes the “cultural norm”—a climate of trust or mistrust. In a reinforcing process, our behaviors strengthen the cultural norm, which strengthens the behaviors, and so on. For example, suppose a number of people in an organization behave dishonestly — perhaps by misrepresenting financial data — to help the organization “get ahead.” If the organization’s leaders fail to censure the dishonest conduct, the organization will assume that “this is how we do business.” In this way, isolated behaviors grow into a pattern of dishonesty. Likewise, when trustworthy behaviors, such as honest communication, competence, and integrity, are modeled and reinforced, they eventually become the cultural norm.

Another example is using standardized testing as the sole mechanism for assessing the quality of a school system, which may end up creating a culture steeped in cynicism and deceit. In order to maintain their school’s stature in the community and — in some cases, even it’s funding — some teachers might end up “teaching to the test,” basing their lesson plans on the test questions rather than on sound curriculum. And, in extreme cases, this emphasis on “making the grade” might even influence students to cheat, especially if passing the test is the only way to advance to the next grade or graduate.

The scenario seems like a “chicken and egg” syndrome: Did the structure cause the behaviors, or did the behaviors create the structure? I believe the answer is “yes” to both questions. We may blame lack of trust on the “system,” but we need to remember that, with or without intention, we create and reinforce that system through our behaviors.

LOW TRUST IN AN ORGANIZATION

If the lever is a district’s strategies for reaching its objective — helping every child reach his or her potential — then the position of the fulcrum reflects the level of trust within the organization. In a low-trust environment, the fulcrum is far away from the goal. People end up expending more effort to achieve the objective than they might otherwise in a high-trust environment.

In this sense, we might view trust as an example of what system dynamicists call “dynamic complexity,” because the effects of trustworthy or untrustworthy behaviors in an organization are not always closely related in time or space to when they actually happen. In fact, the impact is often felt much later. So to nurture trust, we need to practice the art of simultaneously “seeing the forest and the trees” — seeing the organizational culture and the individual behaviors within it.

Leveraging Trust

Activities such as mandated standardized testing, which attempt to solve a complex problem in one fell swoop, reflect the prevailing system of management in most organizations today. In a keynote address at the Systems Thinking and Dynamic Modeling Conference in June 2002, Peter Senge described the attributes of this type of organization:

• Culture of compliance
• Management by measurement
• Right and wrong answers
• Managing outcomes versus designing systems
• Uniformity
• Predictability and controllability
• Excessive competitiveness
• Loss of the whole (person, connections to others and to the world)

This management structure creates an environment that undermines trust and produces a, “Trust Death Spiral,” in which mistrust and low performance continually reinforce each other. In this setting, people may feel that they must do whatever necessary to get ahead or even survive in the organization. From a systems thinking perspective, to move away from this kind of management system and toward one that is fundamentally transformational and empowering in nature, we need to understand how an organization’s interrelationships, processes, patterns, and underlying structures influence individual and group behaviors — and how we can leverage trust to change those dynamics.

What does it mean to leverage trust? Archimedes, one of the world’s great mathematicians, claimed that he could transport the globe with a lever, saying, “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth.” The principle of how a lever and fulcrum work together can help us understand how trust influences an organization’s ability to reach its goals.

A lever is a stiff beam that rotates about a point of support called a “fulcrum”; one end of the beam goes under an object to be moved. The purpose of this simple machine is to lift a heavy load using the minimum possible force. How much force you need depends on the length of the lever and where you place the fulcrum. Since it’s often not possible to change the length of the lever, to get the highest leverage, you need to focus on the position of the fulcrum. To minimize effort, place the fulcrum so that it’s close to the object and push on the other end. This is how a jack raises a car so we can change a tire. If the fulcrum is farther away from the object, you’ll need to apply greater force to the lever to lift it.

Low Trust. Let’s apply the metaphor of a lever and fulcrum to the organizational setting. If the lever is a district’s strategies for reaching its objective — helping every child reach his or her potential — then the position of the fulcrum reflects the level of trust within the organization. In a low-trust environment, the fulcrum is far away from the goal. People end up expending more effort to achieve the objective than they might otherwise in a high-trust environment. For instance, if administrators of a school district and its professional teacher organization mistrust each other, the district may spend more time settling disputes than fulfilling its true mission to educate children (see “Low Trust in an Organization” on p. 4).

High Trust. When the trust fulcrum is in a more advantageous position, most institutional actions can be directed toward fulfilling the organization’s mission. In the example above, if the school district works closely with its professional teacher organization to nurture a trusting, mutually beneficial relationship, it will likely not have to direct so much effort to managing that dynamic and can instead focus on educating children (see “High Trust in an Organization”).

Organizations that build systems and structures that nurture high trust and mutually beneficial relationships can trigger a “Trust Growth Spiral.” In this positive reinforcing process, trust and consequently high levels of performance mutually reinforce one another. Increased trust results in intangibles, such as confidence, pride, and ownership, which lay the psychological foundation for continued success, thereby inspiring even greater levels of trust.

Building Trust

In most organizations, the process of building trust consists of occasional events designed to promote teamwork. Many of us have participated in activities such as “supportive chair trust circles,” in which people simultaneously sit on the lap of the person behind them and support the person in front of them; eventually, the entire group is seated in a circle without the use of any props. In “trust falls,” one partner closes her eyes and falls backward, trusting that her partner will catch her before she hits the floor. While fun (unless your partner doesn’t catch you!), these exercises only tap the surface of what it takes to build trust in an organization.

Creating lasting trust is not a one-shot deal; it is an ongoing process that requires deep, long-term commitment from everyone involved. So how do we begin? Following are some examples of how my organization, the West Des Moines Community School District in Iowa, has sought to understand the systemic nature of trust and then work to create structures and engage in behaviors that enable it.
In 2000, the administrative staff development planning team, part of the Administrative Leadership Team (ALT), began to design a three-year leadership development program. We found that we value what the IABC Research Foundation has identified as five qualities that high-trust cultures generally acknowledge and reward:

• Competence (workers’ effectiveness)
• Openness and honesty (amount, accuracy, and sincerity of information shared)
• Concern for employees (exhibition of empathy, tolerance, and safety)
• Reliability (consistent and dependable actions)
• Identification (sharing of common goals, values, and beliefs)

To evaluate the levels of trust in our organization, the ALT disseminated a 16-question trust survey to all its members. The results revealed that, while the perceived level of trust was generally high, some items scored relatively low on the overall trust barometer. Based on those results, we initiated a four-session in-service training during the 2000-2001 school year. The sessions involved all building and district-level administrators and focused on identifying trustworthy and untrustworthy behaviors and their impact at the interpersonal and organizational levels. Feedback following each session was overwhelmingly positive. Results from a follow-up survey revealed an improvement in perceived levels of trust among ALT members.

HIGH TRUST IN AN ORGANIZATION

When the trust fulcrum is in an advantageous position, most institutional actions can be directed toward fulfilling the organization’s mission rather than dealing with interpersonal issues.

Here are some of the breakthroughs we have achieved through our efforts:

Building a Shared Vision. For several years, the district, with the vision and support of its superintendent, has embarked on building a learning community. One step in this process has been to develop a shared vision statement for the district through a series of collaborative processes with parents, students, staff, board of education members, and interested citizens. Through continued dialogue, the district generated a simple, yet powerful statement: “The West Des Moines Community School District will be a caring community of learners that knows and lifts every child. We will inspire joy in learning. Our schools will excel at preparing each student for his or her life journey.”

This shared vision is now guiding the district’s discussions, decisions, and future plans. It has:

• Provided the foundation for a major reorganization of the high school
• Caused the administration to seek to identify the students who do not feel “known or lifted” and to improve our services to them
• Influenced some conversations to focus on why and how we want students to experience joy in learning
• Brought forth community members who challenge the district to do better

In a nutshell, through a foundation of trust built through the development of our vision statement, avenues of communication are opening up.

Changing Our Mental Models.

In the early 1990s, the district’s school board created a policy that supports and encourages “participatory management.” This policy, which allows greater partnership and ownership in decision-making among all district stakeholders, has strongly influenced our mental models about how decisions should be made. At the event level, this policy demonstrates a belief in actively including those directly impacted by decisions in the process. Below the surface, the message is one of trust in the integrity, character, and competence of those once uninvolved, who now have a greater role in influencing policy.

Developing Personal Mastery.

The year-long trust-building workshop for members of the district’s administrative leadership team has brought trust and trustworthiness to the forefront of our consciousness and conversations. Our understanding of the gap between the current reality of our district’s trust climate and our future vision of a high-trust culture has inspired us to grow and learn as individuals and as a group.

Engaging in Team Learning.

Central office administration regularly conducts “maintenance” meetings with the leaders of our district’s professional and support organizations. These meetings provide opportunities for team learning through honest conversations. The conversations go beyond polite talk to deeper listening, engagement, and feedback. Using reflective skills has helped team members more effectively manage disagreement and resolve conflict.

Building Trust Informally.

Through the development of policies, practices, and cultural norms, an organization can make conscious efforts to build and maintain trust

In addition to formal organizational efforts to build trust, more informal interactions have also contributed to a high-trust climate. For example, recently, a confrontation between a teacher and student required an administrative response. Rather than the principal dictating how the teacher should handle the situation, the principal conducted a dialogue with the teacher based on the spirit of “knowing and lifting every child.” She helped the teacher recognize why the interaction did not align with the shared vision; turned the meeting into a learning opportunity; and indicated that she trusted the teacher to do the right thing. The teacher ultimately resolved the conflict with the student in a way that maintained a positive teacher-student relationship.

Benefits of a High-Trust Culture

When the level of trust in an organization is high, its influence is felt and observed at every level and in every aspect of its operations. High trust allows organization members to focus on their primary mission rather than taking precious time and energy to deal with the numerous crises that prevail in a low-trust environment. They can then focus their resources and energy to reach their goals.

For schools, “profit” is measured by student achievement. A multi-year study completed by University of Chicago professors Anthony S. Bryk and Barbara Schneider resulted in the book Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for Improvement (Russell Sage Foundation, 2002), which links higher student achievement with high levels of trust between teachers and principals and among the teaching staff. Bryk and Schneider go so far as to say that without trusting relationships, school improvement efforts are “doomed to fail.”

For all kinds of enterprises, trust is a high-leverage resource that sustains success and effectiveness. Through the development of policies, practices, and cultural norms, an organization can make conscious efforts to build and maintain trust. As an organization reaps the “profits” of a trusting culture, it simultaneously perpetuates, or sustains, trust as an important commodity unto itself.

Ultimately, trust involves developing and maintaining relationships. Today’s workplace requires effective, skilled, and compassionate transformational leaders — not just managers — who recognize the need for trust and who facilitate organizational change to create high-trust cultures. We can start this process by taking to heart the words of Edward Marshall, who said, “The answer to leading others to trust and high performance may be found by looking in the mirror and asking: Am I trustworthy?” Ensuring the answer to that question is “yes” may be the highest-leverage action we can take as leaders today.

Doug Stilwell has 22 years of experience in education. He is currently the principal of Crestview Elementary in the West Des Moines Community School District in Iowa. Doug is also a doctoral student in Educational Leadership at Drake University.

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In systems thinking terms, a delay is when the effect of an action occurs after a break in time. The break may be seconds or years, but in real life, waiting out a delay without intervening can seem interminable. We live with a multitude of system delays in our lives and they can be frustrating.

• The time between planting seeds and harvesting vegetables or flowers
• The time between starting a manufacturing process and having a finished, functioning product
• The time between arriving at the check-out line at the supermarket and heading home with groceries in the car
• The movement from summer to fall to winter to spring
• The time between the first inkling of a creative idea and the completion of the painting/novel/software program
• The movement of children through developmental stages
• The ups and downs of the stock market

“Do Something”— The Struggle for Control

When we act and don’t immediately see results, we feel compelled to do more. In our organizations today, we believe that one of the best ways to improve a system’s performance is to manage its delays, which often means reducing or eliminating them. A good example is offered by Logli Supermarkets in Rockford, Illinois. Logli sells more groceries than any other supermarket in Illinois. Reasons for their success are obvious to any customer. With 23 check-out lines available at all times and a system of free drive-up service, where teams of efficient young people load groceries into your car, the delay from entering the check-out line to driving home is all but eliminated.

Sometimes managing a delay means making it more palatable, which is why decorating physicians’ offices has become a popular, new interior design niche. When patients find waiting to see the doctor comfortable and interesting, they are less likely to complain about how long it’s taking.

But most of the time, when we try to manage delays, we are in crisis mode. We move quickly, coming up with fixes that may have negative, unintended consequences. Much of the time we don’t even realize that we’re experiencing a delay. When we act and don’t immediately see results, we feel compelled to do more before we even experience the outcome of our initial intervention. Doing something, anything, reduces our anxiety and makes us feel more in control, even if we’re really making things worse over the long run. But acting in these circumstances can lead to over-correction, much like what happened when I caused the houseboat to zig and zag all over the river.

“Do Nothing”— Trusting the Process

So how can we overcome our impulse to act, whatever the consequences? A good first step may be to see and acknowledge the delays in the system. For example, when we reach a juncture where our performance seems to have plateaued or a problem symptom isn’t improving, we can say, “We may have hit a classic delay.” Especially if we can’t change a delay, we must respect and trust it. If our patience is still wearing thin, we can ask a few questions before taking action:

• “If we do something, what will happen? Will we create additional delays or problems down the line?”
• “If we do nothing, what will happen?”
• “What can we do to live with our anxiety while we figure out the best response?”

A second approach to managing delays is to manage yourself. Sitting on my hands and breathing deeply eventually helped me stop over-correcting the houseboat. Reading about and talking with other parents about typical behavior for a 13-year-old helped me survive my daughter Lisa’s early teens without either going crazy or taking rash action that might have caused more problems.

Managing delays in creative projects (including software development) can be tricky. Start by accepting the need for incubation and “soak” time in a creative process and build latitude into the schedule. Creative people almost always underestimate how long a project will take, because they already have a vision of the finished product. Also, many of the most creative solutions come after a period of inattention to the problem or sleep, when the limbic region of the brain is active. If we press forward too aggressively and feel pressure to create now, we never access these powerful thought processes.

Thus, managing a delay may mean doing something counter-intuitive for a while: nothing. We are a very “doing” culture, and many of us have a hard time sitting back and waiting. This kind of inaction in the face of an ongoing challenge requires a great deal of trust in the process.

When aerospace manufacturer Woodward Governor sought to reduce delays in the production of aircraft engine controls, after several failed interventions, the organization finally decided to stop work-arounds. Previously, if a group on the assembly line was missing certain parts, they borrowed them from other teams. Over time, this pattern of borrowing backfired. It was hard to keep track of parts borrowed from various projects. They were seldom replaced in a timely way. So when the original team needed the borrowed parts back, they had to spend time tracking them down and often resorted to borrowing them from somewhere else in the plant—another time-consuming work-around. In their eagerness to keep products rolling, workers had unintentionally slowed down the entire plant.

To reduce delays, people had to be willing to do nothing. When they were short of parts, instead of borrowing, they waited to receive a new shipment of inventory. After a while, to everyone’s amazement, the plant began to meet deadlines consistently. As they finished orders on time, they stopped having a backlog of work. At first employees felt uncomfortable, because they worried that the work was running out. In a short time, however, they got used to this more regular stream of activity and found their jobs much less stressful. Workers were happy about going home earlier. Customers were delighted with the on-time deliveries. Woodward Governor had successfully managed the delays in their manufacturing system.

In some cases, the best response to a system delay is to say the Serenity Prayer. (This may seem corny, but it can help.) “God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.”

When we stop spending energy trying to change things that are not going to change no matter what we do, we have more energy to work on those things on which we can have an impact.

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We spoke with the manager of a billing department at one hospital who makes it a point to know the workloads and the personal circumstances of each member of her unit; that way she can cut people slack when they need extra support. For example, when one employee’s husband suffered kidney failure and was awaiting a transplant, the billing manager gave the woman a pager and organized a team of people who could step in and pick up the woman’s work on a moment’s notice. That way, the employee would be able to take her husband to the hospital without delay if a kidney became available.

Is the leadership in your organization as empathetic and flexible as that hospital’s billing department manager? Stress is on the rise in all organizations. The pressure on earnings at publicly traded companies has created a demand for “doing more with less.” At the same time, consumer expectations for uniquely tailored products and services have led to customer dissatisfaction. That there seems to be no relief to the stress makes the workplace even more stressful.

Empathy and Flexibility

Managers trying to alleviate the stress felt by colleagues have two strategies available: empathy and flexibility. Empathy is nothing more complicated than caring about someone, but authentic caring begins with knowledge. That billing department manager had to know a lot about the circumstances of her colleague’s family. What’s more, she had to care enough to feel responsible for a solution. Most managers think they know a lot about people they work with; countless studies show they don’t. Most managers say they care a lot about the people they work with; experience casts doubt on that as well.

Here’s a simple test. Think of someone who works with you. Write down their three most important values. Then write a short sentence describing their primary career goal. Finally, write down two of their fears. To get an “A” in this test, check out your answers with the person you selected. Let them confirm what you do or do not know about them. I’ve done this countless times in organizations. The pattern is always the same: Few workers know much about their colleagues’ values, goals, and fears.

As the stress increases in organizations, managers’ success will be based on how well they help others deal with it.

Flexibility is equally important to stress management. Here’s another story, this one from Barbara Ehrenreich in The New York Times (, “Two-Tiered Morality” by Barbara Ehrenreich, June 30, 2002):

When I applied for a job at Wal-Mart in the spring of 2000, I was reprimanded for getting something “wrong” on this (job applicant’s) test: I had agreed only “strongly” to the proposition, “All rules have to be followed to the letter at all times.” The correct answer was “totally agree.”

That kind of inflexible adherence to rules, regulations, and dogma prevents smart managers from putting empathy into action. I’m sure the billing manager’s hospital had some regulation on the books that might have prevented her flexible response, but wisely, she found a way around it. How flexible is your organization in allowing you some wiggle room to take care of people?

Reciprocal Trust

Often, the issue is trust. Do companies trust their managers? Do managers trust the people they supervise? Trust is reciprocal. If you trust others, they are more likely to trust you. Here’s a story from Peter Scholtes, author of The Leader’s Handbook: A Guide to Inspiring Your People and Managing the Daily Workflow (McGraw-Hill, 1998): The Falk Corporation of Milwaukee found its restrictive funeral-leave policy was creating widespread dissatisfaction among employees and resulting in a lot of time off for funerals. Managers at Falk realized that although they believed more than 95 percent of their employees were “trustworthy,” company policies were designed to keep the 5 percent in line. To align company policies with employee trustworthiness, Falk changed its rigid, seven-graph policy on bereavement leave to read: “If you require time off due to the death of a friend or family member, make arrangements with your supervisor.” The result surprised everyone: In the next year, the number of days off for bereavement declined more than 50 percent.

As the stress increases in organizations, managers’ success will be based on how well they help others deal with it. If you don’t know much about your people, and care even less, you won’t be very effective. If you don’t find ways to work the system to help them get what they need to cope, you will fall short of your own potential as a leader.

Edward Miller, (miller@newsroomleadership.com) is a personal and professional coach to journalists and news executives., “Reflections on Leadership,” his weekly e-mail essay on newsroom management and leadership, is read by more than 10,000 journalists around the world. A consultant to media companies in the U. S., Finland and Sweden, Edward is the former editor and publisher of The Morning Call in Allentown, PA.

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