Trust in Leadership

Seminar for Leaders and their Teams

See Seminar Gallery: for impressions from past seminar participants

See also Trust in Leadership Coaching Program

Trust in Leadership: Overview

Leadership is both a role and a way of being in relationship with oneself and others. Trust is the fundamental ground of that relationship. Trust in Leadership offers participants a framework by which to understand, experience, and talk about trust dynamics that are essential for productive, sustainable business relationships. Similarly, the framework helps participants understand and speak about betrayal dynamics, which, according to recent research, are increasingly prevalent and damaging in the workplace. Finally, it offers a road map for how to cultivate and restore trust, especially once trust has been damaged. Essentially, this is a rare opportunity for leaders and their work groups to address directly core issuesÑtrust and betrayalÑwhich affect all aspects of individual and organizational effectiveness, to heighten their awareness and to embody new skills in their leadership practices. This seminar can be offered as a stand-alone but is ideally offered as part of an ongoing initiative, such as a more extensive leadership or team development program or coaching process. It is extremely important to design a follow-up program to reinforce trust dynamics and support new, healthier patterns of interaction.

In any configuration, Trust in Leadership is a highly experiential and participatory seminar. For the purposes of this summary I describe the two-day version. The seminar can be broken down into a modular series of half-day sessions to encourage a greater degree of applied and deepened learning. Depending on the groupÕs objectives, the seminar can readily be expanded to focus on certain issues and concerns with greater specificity and depth, such as communication skills, embodied practices, conflict resolution, etc. With a larger time frame and broader mandate, the course can integrate the wisdom of other relevant frameworks or models, such as The Human Elementª (Will Schutz, Ph.D.), Non-Violent Communicationª (Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D.), etc.

Benefits from this seminar include improvement with respect to:

• Productive, adaptive teams that share vision and commitment
• Learning environments that encourage risk-taking and innovation
• Follow through that is consistent with both the spirit and letter of agreements
• Rapid, decentralized and appropriate response to change, and
• Attraction and retention of the caliber of people you want to work with.

Awareness and tools for dealing with betrayals help participants with persistent, costly breakdowns that can result in:

• Missed opportunities and slow recovery from mistakes
• Knowledge and participation withheld by team members
• Toxic work environments, and
• Overall diminished productivity.

I offer the Trust in Leadership seminar in the context of my work as a coach and consultant to business leaders developing mastery in leadership practices that cultivate trust-based collaboration. Indeed, my professional work is based on the premise that all interpersonal interaction and communicationÑwhether in the context of negotiation, conflict resolution, collaborative process or agreement structuringÑis essentially either building or diminishing a sense of trust that is at the core of all relationships. Groups wishing to improve their performance and to facilitate easier, less fractious (or toxic) and more productive collaboration benefit greatly from the typically rare opportunity to discuss how they can best work together and what trust and betrayal dynamics they are experiencing and need to adjust.

Trust in Leadership: Purpose and Approach

The seminar is designed for leaders as a group themselves and for leaders with their work groups. The course can be integrated into existing leadership and development or else strategic alliance (internal and external) initiatives; it can also launch such initiatives that then unfold in anticipation of and in response to actual needs. Indeed, Trust in Leadership, together with follow-up coaching and group facilitation and use of the diagnostic instruments, offers an effective framework for incremental and conscious cultural development within an organization.

Day One: Foundation
The first day is devoted to setting the foundation and context for a productive and pragmatic inquiry about trust and betrayal dynamics that arise in the work context. I lead a discovery process by which participants:

• Explore the role trust plays in leadership and collaboration and its impact on the "bottom line"
• Identify specific behaviors from the groupÕs experience that build and break down trust
• Distinguish among types of trust and betrayal as described in the Reina Trust and Betrayal Modelª
• Learn about the "7 Steps for Healing from Betrayal" (Reina Model)
• Practice congruent, effective communication in difficult conversations.

Participants discern and articulate questions that help each person to explore and build upon existing wisdom and make choices for action consistent with their individual and collective values.

Day Two: Application
The second day is devoted to application of the model. Participants deepen their familiarity with the model by applying it to their own situations. They explore what is actually involved in travelling the path, individually and collectively, outlined in the "7 Steps for Healing from Betrayal." Further, participants

• Gain self-awareness about their capacity for trust
• Engage in exercises that allow them to embody the learning
• Practice congruent, effective communication in difficult conversations
• Consider the role of forgiveness in rebuilding trust and achieving reconciliation.

This second day is vital for giving group members opportunities to explore their interpersonal leadership and collaborative dynamics and begin to reframe expectations and to restructure agreements for how they want to work together. The embodied learning piece is also essential so that participants begin to own this material and integrate it into their daily practices and experience.

I strongly recommend that groups consider using one or more of the instruments as part of the seminar for the benefit of working with statistically valid quantitative and qualitative data about their collective experience. The instruments can be completed in advance of the seminar or at some time during itÕs progress. We review the feedback report together after a foundation of common language for the issues has been establishedÑin a two-day session, this is the second day. Participants explore individually and as a group the possible meanings and implications of the results. A natural consequence of this inquiry is a conversation about what the group wants to reinforce or change and viable ways for accomplishing objectives they identify. This way, the group understands and acknowledges its current experience and elects its own direction, goals and process for change (and possibly healing).

Leadership and collaboration from a core commitment to cultivate trust are essential for real (rather than in name only) and sustainable partnering of any kind in business. As stated in "The Leadership Challenge," by Kouzes and Posner (1995), "Trust is at the heart of fostering collaboration. ItÕs the central issue in human relationships within and outside the organization." Trust is an essential and often overlooked element of individual and organizational effectiveness. Trust has also been shown to be the most significant predictor of individualsÕ satisfaction with their organization.

In "The Leadership Triad," Dale Zand (1997) asserts that the primary forces essential to effective leadership are knowledge, trust and power. Knowledge and power tend to get plenty of attention; trust is often the weaker (or missing) link. Edward M. Marshall, author of "Building Trust at the Speed of Change" (2000), states that the "most effective and fastest business organizations are those which understand how to mobilize the power of trust-based relationships in the workplace; it is a matter of focus, awareness and systems of structure and reinforcement. ÉHow we create speed distinguishes the winners." If leaders want the higher levels of performance that come with trust and collaboration, they must demonstrate their trust in others before asking for trust from others. Leaders go first, as the word implies.

For a sense of the relevance of dedicated attention to trust and betrayal dynamics, I offer the following excerpt from "The Leadership Challenge," by Kouzes and Posner. The authors describe a study where executive leaders in a professional development seminar were divided into two groups and given a problem set to work out together. Each group's problem set was identical except in one regard: one group was told that they could trust those in the group; the other group was told that the others in their group could not be trusted. The results...

After thirty minutes of discussion, each team member completed a brief questionnaire. Other executives, who had been observing the team meetings, also completed the questionnaire. The responses of team members and observers were quite consistent: the group members who'd been told that their role-playing peers and manager could be trusted reported their discussion and decisions to be significantly more positive than did the members of the low-trust group on EVERY factor measured. In the high-trust group,

• Members were more open about feelings.
• Members experienced greater clarity about the group's basic problems and goals.
• Members searched more for alternative courses of action.
• Members reported greater levels of mutual influence on outcomes, satisfaction with the meeting, motivation to implement decisions, and closeness as a management team as a result of the meeting.

In the group whose participants were told that their manager wasn't to be trusted, genuine attempts by the manager to be open and honest were ignored or distorted. Group members' distrust was so strong that the manager's candor was viewed as a clever attempt to deceive them, and they generally reacted by sabotaging the manager's efforts even further. Managers who experienced rejection of their attempts to be trusting and open responded in kind. ...What's crucial to keep in mind is that this was just a simulation; these people were executives from various organizations attending an executive development program. They behaved and responded as they did simply because they'd been told that they couldn't trust their role-playing manager. They wanted to be rid of each other after only about ten minutes! Trust or distrust can come with a mere suggestion, it seems, and in mere seconds. It's also highly contagious and can spread throughout the group.

Overview of the Reina Trust and Betrayal Model and Instruments

The primary model I use for working with trust and betrayal dynamics in this seminar is the Reina Trust and Betrayal Model, as published in "Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace," by Dennis and Michelle Reina. The Reina model, based on over ten years of research with people in organizations of all kinds, specifically identifies behaviors that contribute to trust or betrayal dynamics in the workplace. It is the first model that distinguishes between types of trust and defines a continuum for types of betrayal. It is also the only model of its kind about which I am aware that offers a roadmap for recoveringÑor healing--from betrayal in terms that anyone can apply. Three research-based and statistically valid diagnostic instruments are available for bench-marking where a group is with trust/betrayal dynamics: Leadership Trust Scale (LTS), Team Trust Scale (TTS), and Organizational Trust Scale (OTS). They allow groups to deepen the conversation about trust and betrayal by having everyone working with a consistent body of both quantitative and qualitative data.

The OTS and TTS give feedback about interactions experienced within a defined collective and thus can be used as a type of cultural audit. They are 48-question, self-report, Likert scales surveys which ask questions about factors that influence the development of interpersonal trust in an organization or team. The LTS asks about such factors and is designed also to measure a leader's capacity for trust in the relationships closest to him or her. The LTS has 60 questions and is designed for use in the same manner as a 360-review instrument with eight contributing persons (direct reports or otherwise). The instruments may be used independently or in concert with one another. The can also be used in combination with other instruments, such as FIRO-Element B, MBTI, DiSC, etc. Together, the Reina model and instruments help leaders and teams identify where their strengths and challenges lie and where to target their energy for improvement. They help focus and prioritize where to devote attention for a successful intervention or viable change process.

Please contact me to explore program design and fee structure options to suit your needs.

Seminar Gallery: for impressions from past seminar participants

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Beata C. Lewis, J.D., guides business leaders and their teams developing mastery in practices that cultivate trust-based collaboration. As a coach and consultant she works with organizations meeting the challenges of growth and change, especially in regenerating collaboration where it breaks down, due to lapses in communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, collaborative process, and agreement structuring. She is one of a select group of coaches and consultants certified to work with the Reina Trust and Betrayal Modelª and to administer its instruments to benchmark, measure, and monitor levels of trust within organizational systems.

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