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 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 it's like we can always tell when someone's working on commission right you can kind of feel it right we can tell the difference when somebody's genuinely being friendly or not they happen to have a coffee bar in the lobby there 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 no it 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 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 them does 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 walked 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 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 ring 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 were rushed 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've 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 will 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 is 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 till I call your group as 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 what 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 Noah if you get the environment wrong you get people like Noah 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 unbalance you find that there's issues it's almost always the leadership in 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 someone some will respond quickly and some

will respond slowly and there is no formula 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 offsite you can have with your team or 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 thank you [Music]