What does success mean to you? I’d argue that it’s relative to what you’re doing at the moment. When you’re a student, success is passing exams. As a parent, it’s in your children’s wellbeing. As an individual, success could be anything from riches to achieving world peace. At any given moment in time, we are driven by the results to be achieved.
As leaders, we try every way possible to refine the process to get the desired results. When we hone in on the right combination for peak performance, we are overjoyed. Therefore success is in accomplishing the given task. Thus performance, more so optimum performance, is the right combination that guarantees your success.
This may seem obvious, after all many businesses today are alive because they are performing well and you are right. But there’s an even greater commodity that customers buy from these companies that enable them to thrive for any length of time; trust! Take a look at the recent Ethiopian aircraft crash that shed a light on the massive distrust customers have with Boeing’s ability to build safe-for-use vessels.
Trust is important in every level and relationship of a well functioning organization. A culture of trust creates a harmonious environment where conscious leaders lead cohesive teams for better performance and customer service experience. Whenever you are put in a situation where you have to question the trust in your work environment, something is amiss. People look at trust on many levels. Here, however, we are looking at vulnerability based trust. When your people can believe and depend on you and you on them; that is what we need to work on building and investing more and more in.
“A culture of trust creates a harmonious environment where conscious leaders lead cohesive teams for better performance and customer service experience.”
A client of mine, whom we shall call Donald, is someone whom most would consider traditionally successful. He has years of experience in the air travel business, which he has accumulated from the age of 17. He is financially well-off and has built many successful businesses over the span of 12 years. Accomplished and resilient even in the face of adversities, Donald is the man we all aspire to be.
At 17, Donald was finishing school and prepping for university. His friend and mentor, whom we shall call Hart, had guided and emphasized to Donald that he could achieve anything with work hard. Unfortunately that same year, Donald lost his father. He had to take a step back from university, find a job and care for his family from then. Luckily, the airline he interned for hired him because of he was young and eager to learn.
Donald was good at his job. One day while at the airport checking passengers’ bags at the final point, his manager approached him and told him he’d wanted to recheck the bags. The manager did so and no shocker got all the same results that Donald had gotten. Naturally Donald felt very belittled and upset by this action because for him it spelled that the manager did not trust him at all. Perhaps the same reasons that got him hired led to this moment.
Since then Donald has moved on to bigger, better and greater. During our sessions however he talks about this moment and how it impacted his career. In fact 2 years into working at this job, he was approached by a competitor and happily left. And wouldn’t you know it; they told him they wanted to work with Donald because they were impressed with his performance.
Here’s a simple question for you: which character did you identify with and why? More importantly, look to your left, right, front and back; do you see similar patterns? What can we do to help?