R- How reliability builds trust

The easiest way to think about reliability in terms of building trust is to imagine your leadership like a vehicle that takes you from A to B.

In order to be reliable, you need to invest in the vehicle to keep it maintained and so you have the assurance that it will do what you need it to do when required. If you buy the cheapest, crappiest car out there, the odds are that you are going to have a breakdown along the way somewhere and fail to make an appointment. The vehicle won't deliver when it counts.

Conversely, if you borrowed a vehicle from someone, would you expect it to be reliable? Of course. If the owner of that vehicle had never changed the oil, tires or refilled it with fuel, would you want to use it? And if you did, you might be filled with dread that it will either fail a test when needed or at a crucial moment, it might stutter to a halt and you and anyone you happen to be taking with you might be stranded down some lonely back road with no way out. 

So if we play the analogy out, why then do so many of us let others experience our leadership when we haven’t invested in it, haven’t maintained it, and are basically running on bald tires, old oil, and are the victim of rust? And why do so many of us expect others to follow us when they can clearly see the poor maintenance going on?

Company Sergeant Major Alun Bowen, my CSM at Sandhurst (and one of the most influential people in my life to this day) used to say, “Anyone can lead when it’s easy. It’s when people start taking bullets and exploding around you that real leaders emerge. Your soldiers RELY on you to be more than good. Excellent is the benchmark”. It has stuck with me for the last 20 years.

In order to be a reliable leader and therefore build trust, two key factors need to be fulfilled:

1) you know you can rely on yourself to lead when it counts. 

2) others can rely on you to lead when it counts.

So the question is, how do you manage these?

In simple terms, maintain your own leadership vehicle. Make the time to develop it and build up your fitness by running leadership experiments which not only let you practice in low-stakes environments but allow you to graze your knees and not break your legs as you learn. Pay for regular inspections by seeking feedback, getting a coach, and attending professional development. 

Then, when the time comes for the steep hill, long road trip (use whatever analogy you like) - but when it counts, you know you have the “leadership chops” to deal with it. This means that you have run enough experiments, and have the data points to be able to rely on the decisions you will make and the actions you will take being effective. 

If you have demonstrated this experimental approach and led in this way consistently and without an obsession with the outcome but more on a curious exploration of the experiment itself, those around you will notice. They will then trust you and when it counts know that they can rely on your consistency, clarity, and cut through in the crucial moments. 

Reliability by its nature is a progressive and cumulative trait of trusted leaders. It cannot be built overnight and it needs consistent work to keep it up. But once you have trust in yourself and those around you can trust you because you are reliable, and you team it up with psych Safety, and kind, defined, aligned, and assigned Expectations, the impacts are significant.

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