Why Trust is Key to High-Performing Teams

Trusting teams. I went on a business trip to Las Vegas, and they put me up at the Four Seasons out there, which is a beautiful hotel. And one of the reasons it's a wonderful hotel is not because of the fancy beds. Any hotel can buy a fancy bed. The reason the Four Seasons is a fantastic hotel is because of the people who work there. That when you roam the halls and somebody says hello, you. You get the distinct feeling that they wanted to say hello, not that they were told to say hello. We're highly tuned social animals. We can tell the difference. Like, we can always tell when someone's working on commission. You can kind of feel it. We can tell the difference when somebody's genuinely being friendly or not. They happen to have a coffee bar in the lobby there at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas. And one afternoon I went and bought myself a cup of coffee. And there was a barista working that day named Noah. Noah was funny and engaging, charming. I spent far too long standing there buying my cup of coffee because I just so enjoyed talking to Noah. So, as is my nature, I asked Noah a question. I said, do you like your job? And without skipping a beat, Noah said, I love my job. Now, in my line of business, that's significant because like is rational. I like the people I work with. I like the job. I like the challenge. I get paid well. I like my job. Love is emotional. It's a higher order connection. Do you love your wife? I like her a lot. Right. There's a difference.

Noah said, I love my job. My ears perked up. He has an emotional connection to this company. This is interesting. So I immediately follow up. And I said, tell me specifically what the Four Seasons is doing that you would say to me, you love your job. Without skipping a beat, Noah said that throughout the day, managers will walk past him and ask him how he's doing, ask him if there's anything that he needs to do his job better. Not just his manager, any manager. And then he also said, I also work at Caesar's palace. And there the managers walk past us and catch us when we're doing things wrong and make sure that we're making the numbers and performing. And there I like to just keep my head below the radar and get through the day and collect my paycheck. He said, only at the Four Seasons do I feel I can be myself. This is the exact same human being. And yet the customer service experience that we would have meeting him at one hotel or the other will be profoundly different. Not because of the person, but because of the leaders, because of the leadership environment in which he's been asked to work. I get this question all the time, Simon. How do we get the most out of our people? They're not a towel. We don't wring them out to see how much we can get out of our people. It's a flawed question, which means we're going to get flawed answers. The correct question is, how do we create an environment in which our people can work at their natural best? And the answers will be profoundly different. If you do not have trusting teams, what you do have is a group of people who show up to work every single day, lying, hiding and faking. Remember, a trusting team is when people feel safe. It's a trusting team is when people feel they can be vulnerable amongst their own. They can raise their hand and say, I made a mistake, or you've promoted me to a position where I don't really know what to do. I think I need more training, or I'm having troubles at home and it's affecting my work, or I'm scared, or I need help without any fear of humiliation, without any fear of retribution. In fact, they say these things with confidence that their leader, their boss, their colleagues rush to them to support them. If you do not have trusting teams, what you have is a group of people who show up to work every day who will hide mistakes for fear of getting in trouble. They will not admit that you promoted them to a position and they actually have no clue what they're doing. They're going to just keep faking it. They would never tell you that they're suffering undue stress because of something that's happening at home and that it's affecting their work. They're not going to tell you that they're scared, and they're definitely not going to ask for help for fear that they'll find themselves on some short list for the next round of redundancies. And eventually cracks will show up and eventually the organization will break. Not because of the people, but because of the leaders leading those people. We know what this looks like in the extreme. I'm sure you all remember a couple of years ago, United Airlines had an incident where they dragged a paying customer off their aircraft with a broken nose, broken teeth, and a concussion. I feel sorry for every single member of that crew because 100% of them knew that that was the wrong thing to do. But none of them spoke up. None of them intervened because they feared getting in trouble more than doing the right thing. They did not work on trusting teams. This was not an anomaly. This was a steady build over the course of years that eventually culminated in an event like that. I was witness to a scene that played out years before with United Airlines that gave a flag that something was wrong. A scene played out in front of me as I was preparing to board a plane where one of the passengers attempted to board the aircraft before their group number was called, which, as you all know, is a serious crime.

And that is exactly how the gate agent treated this passenger. Step aside, sir. I haven't called your group yet. Please step aside and wait until I call your group is how she talked to a paying customer. And so I spoke up. I said, why do you have to talk to us that way? Why can't you talk to us like we're human beings? And she looked me in the eye and said, sir, if I don't follow the rules, I could get in trouble or lose my job. What she revealed to me is that she does not feel safe in her own organization. Her leaders do not trust her to do the job for which she's been trained to do. And guess who suffers? Company, customer, and her. The reason we love flying Virgin Atlantic, for example, is not because they have some magical formula to hire all the best people. It's because the people who work there feel safe in their own jobs. They feel trusted to do the job for which they've been trained to do. And guess who benefits? Customer, company and the people who work there. It is a leader's responsibility to set an environment. Leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge. Leaders are not responsible for the results. They're responsible for the people who are responsible for the results. And if you get the environment right, you get people like noaa. If you get the environment wrong, you get people like noaa. It's not the people, it's the leaders. Almost always when there are performance issues, almost always when there are customer service issues, it's so rarely the people. Yes, we have anomalies, of course, but if on balance you find that there's issues, it's almost always the leadership and the leadership environment. And usually it's the lack of trusting teams. The job of leadership is to create trusting teams. And if you want to play in the infinite game, you must have trusting teams. One of the worst things about trusting teams is how you build them. Because they're not traditional in the sense that we set a target, we're going to build our teams of trust, and we set out to build them. It's more of a practice. It's like getting into shape. It's like going to the gym. Yes, you want to get into shape. Unfortunately, you can't go to the gym for nine hours and get into shape. It won't work. But if you commit yourself to go to the gym every single day for 20 minutes, 100%, you'll get into shape. Simon, how long is it going to take me to get into shape? I don't know. And that's the problem. Some will respond quickly and someone will respond slowly, and there is no formula. But. But we all, 100% know that the process works. We 100% know that if you work out every single day for 20 minutes and eat healthily, 100% of us will get into shape. It's the same in leadership. There's no five magical things that I can tell you to do. There's no one day course you can go take or one off site you can have with your team. And all of a sudden they become trusting teams. Yes, those things are important, but they're part of a process. A process that we trust in. That process is called leadership. Leadership is a lifestyle. And even when you achieve your goal, even when you get into shape, even when the trusting teams are built, unfortunately, you have to keep going to the gym for the rest of your life.

It's a lifestyle. Leadership is a lifestyle. And the purpose of that lifestyle is to produce teams who take care of each other, who love each other and feel valued and valuable in the organization where they work. That is your job.

Sam.