Vulnerability Based Trust

Last week we talked about how taking ownership of your mistakes, even when those mistakes are quite humorous, can build a leaders “trustability.” For more on claiming your “toots” click here.

Today I want to dig deeper into vulnerability based trust and how more of it can lead to better teams and better decisions for your organization.

Trust

Patrick Lencioni has written a great deal on vulnerability based trust in his books. Lencioni defines vulnerability based trust as a place where leaders comfortably and quickly acknowledge, without provocation, their mistakes, weaknesses, failures and need for help. These leaders also recognize the strengths of others, even when those strengths exceed their own. This trait sounds a lot like the “humility” that Jim Collins speaks about in his “Level 5” leaders, but we will get into that in another post.

I think everyone would agree that a vulnerable leader and working on a vulnerable team would be great, but how do you get there? I know I don’t want to go first!

Here’s how you get there. The leader must go first. Nobody is going to open up and be vulnerable until somebody goes first and it makes no sense to do it unless you believe that others will follow. That is why the leader must lead the way to establishing a more vulnerable, trust filled environment for their organization.

One exercise that Lencioni recommends is the “Personal Histories Exercise.” There are several different takes on this exercise, but Patrick’s take is a good one. This exercise only works if the leader goes first and actually admits a real vulnerability. If the leader is not willing to do that, skip the exercise.

If your leader is ready to open up, here is how to do the exercise with your team. Expect it to take 5 minutes per person to answer the following three questions about themselves:

  1. Where did you grow up?
  2. How many siblings do you have and where do you fall in that order?
  3. Describe a unique challenge or experience from your childhood?

Encourage the leader to be vulnerable when he or she leads this exercise. The leader will set the tone for everyone else to follow.

I highly recommend recording the answers to the first two questions somewhere so team members can refer back to them later. This type of information and knowing more about your team members families (kids, birthdays, etc.) allows conversations to expand beyond just work and news and get to the heart of what people are really about.

Next week, we’ll discuss the “Be-Do-Have-Help” exercise I learned from Chick-fil-a and how you can use it to develop more trust and understanding in your workplace.

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