This article is part 2 of 2 in what I wrote a week ago on “How the mighty fall”. Part one is located here. This article serves to help you understand how mighty and big companies fall and what you can do about it.

Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril


As companies move past stages 1 and 2, they will fall deeper into Stage 3 when they begin to ignore accumulated warnings. They tend to overlook obvious data that something is not doing well in their new ventures and believe that things will get better. They continue to bet big on the new ventures while denying the cracks of risk and peril.

Collins shares about how the leadership plays a part in the growth or decline of an organization.

Leadership-Team Dynamics:
On the Way Down versus On the Way UP (Taken from Page 77)

In seven out of the eleven cases, Collins found evidence of externalizing blame during the era of decline. CEOs blame a huge range of factors like the environment, inflation, company hit by strikes, unfair competition and ignorance. While it is true that these factors hit the company hard, the company’s denial of it made it much worst.

Here are the indicators for Stage 3:

1. Amplify the positive and discount the negative.
2. Bet big on new goals without empirical evidence or validation of previous small wins.
3. Erosion of healthy team dynamics. Debate and dialogue is replaced with consensus or dictatorial management.
4. Externalizing blame rather than accepting failures.
5. Obsessive reorganisations within an organisation rather than confronting brutal realities.

Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation


Companies at this stage know that they are in deep trouble and its board of directors look to a new fast moving CEO who will launch a new vision, be the messiah that will save the day. Some look to a dramatic cultural revolution, game changing acquisitions or a number of sliver bullet solutions.

HP exemplified stage 4 behaviour when it launched a conversational $24 billion merger with Compaq. It was a sliver bullet move, hoping that it will be the game changer and rescue them out of their woes.

Behaviours that can exemplify stage 4 or reverse the downward trend

(Taken from page 90)

Every company in Collins’ study indicated late stages of decline that made them grasp for at least one sliver bullet. The stage 4 behaviour worsened the situation these companies are already in. Collins also found out that eight out of the eleven fallen companies in the analysis went for an outside CEO during their era of decline, which usually worsened under saviours from the outside.

Here are the indicators for stage 4:

1. A tendency for sliver bullets or a game changing strategy that will help the organization catapult them out of the decline rapidly.
2. Searching of leaders as saviours, often for charismatic leaders and/or from outside the organization.
3. Introduction of new buzzwords and radical changes. Leaders engage in new slogans, new programs, new culture to align or motivate people.
4. Panic and haste, instead of being calm and disciplined on strategy.
5. Hype before results- leaders tend to sell the future to compensate the lack of current results, initiating a pattern of over promising and under delivering.
6. No sustainability of results. There is a trend of initial positive results but they do not last since there is no cumulative buildup and momentum.
7. Confusion and cynicism of what the company stands for. There is confusion on the ground over what their core values are, the workplace just becomes another place to work, a place to get a paycheck. People become distrustful regarding vision and values as little more than Public Relations.

Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

Collins remarked that no company that they have studied fell into Stage 5 and each company made their different decisions to reverse its downward slide. By the time a company has moved from stage 1 to 4, those in power can be exhausted, dispirited and eventually abandon hope. Some of the leaders just sell out, in other cases, the organization spirals down to utter insignificance or dies out right.

Zenith Corporation held onto dominant positions in television and radio. For every dollar invested in Zenith at the start of 1950 and held through to 1965 increased in value more than one hundred times, generating cumulative results ten times more than the market. However, over time, Zenith faced problems and threats from the Japanese who were building better television sets at lower cost. They brushed it aside believing that the Japanese were not able to build quality products (stage 1). In addition, leadership succession problems helped to plague the company when a chosen successor died (stage 2).

Zenith also blamed external problems such as the struggling US economy, labour unrest, oil shocks and so forth, rather than confronting its lack of competitiveness (stage 3). Profitability ratios went down to levels not seen in thirty years. The lack of a specific plan and leap into all kinds of opportunities like VCRs, videodiscs, telephones linked to televisions, home security video cameras, cable TV decoders and computers, drove its debt-to-equity ratio to 140 percent (stage 4).

In their grasp for salvation, Zenith stumbled upon a new opportunity that made them great again. They became the number two maker of IBM compatible personal computers. However, even with their success, they were dragged down by their television business, which deteriorated their financial position and cash on hand dropped to five percent of current liabilities. This lead to the selling of Zenith to Bull Corporation.

How do you recover when your organization faces decline?

Collins shares his insights on how you can make a difference by the following methods:

1. Understand how other great companies fall and learn from their mistakes.
2. There is hope that even when companies fall in stage 4, they have proven that they could recover from it. Examples like Nucor, Nordstrom, Disney and IBM fell but bounced back.
3. Never give in and be willing to change tactics. Never give up on your core purpose. Be willing to kill of failed business ideas and even close big operations when they fail to produce results.
4. Never give up on your core values and what you stand up for. Be willing to embrace loss, endure pain but never give up faith that you will prevail.

PS: I have prepared a book summary as a PDF so that you can download it and read it in its entirety. You can download it here.

Over the long holidays, I took the liberty of reading How The Mighty Fall by Jim Collins. It always intrigued me to find out how large companies, with rich history and successful businesses can actually slowly reach to a stage of decline. I mean these are companies who are well known and have brilliant staff working with them, and yet can catapult into oblivion.

This shows that companies, no matter how successful they once were, can slowly or quickly spiral towards its destruction if they are not careful. By learning how the mighty fall, we can start asking better questions like how can decline be avoided? What are the stages of decline? How can my company reverse course?

In Collin’s research project of more than four years, he has uncovered five stages of decline that is consistent with the studied companies:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success

Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More

Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril

Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation

Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

Companies that were evaluated based on the criteria that Collins and his research team had were the following:

A&P. Addressograph, Ames, Bank of America, Circuit City, HP, Merck, Motorola, Rubbermaid, Scott paper and Zenith.

Not all of them fell into bankruptcy, but a lot of them fell to stage 4, with except of Merck. In is important to take note that at the point of writing the book, HP and Merck might have already reversed their steep decline and show improved results.

Here are the explanations in greater detail of every stage:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success

Pride comes before destruction. Stage 1 starts when people become complacent with their success and sees success as an entitlement. They fail to remember what made them great and take it for granted that what has worked before could work again. They make statements like “We’re successful because we do these specific things”. Instead they should be focusing on “We are successful because we understand why we do these specific things and under what conditions they would no longer work.”

Collins cites the story of Motorola who invented StarTAC cell phones, which were the smallest phones in the world, using analog technology where digital slowly became the next wave. Motorola became arrogant and did not listen to the market, stating that “43 million analog customers can’t be wrong.” Their arrogance gave their competitors a growing market share and they fell from being the number 1 cell phone maker in the world to only having 17% share by 1999. By 2003, the number of employees dropped to 88,000- losing nearly 60,000 jobs from their 2001 figures.

Here are the indicators for Stage 1:

1. Neglect of primary flywheel: Leaders get distracted by other exciting potential earnings that they fail to focus on what make them great in the first place. They made a diversion and failed to improve their primary flywheel (their primary business).
2. Losing passion of their primary flywheel.
3. Focusing on practices and strategies that worked in the past and not the fundamental reasons for its success.
4. Refusing to attribute ‘luck’ random events. They think that success was due to their superior qualities of leadership and enterprise.

Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More

Reeking in their pride, companies pursue new ventures which promise better revenue and growth. There is nothing wrong with that, the problem is that it is done at the cost of reducing their focus on their core business and what made them successful. They started to pursue more and more new ventures that could generate money, without growing their team with the right people for the growth.

Rubbermaid aimed at introducing new products everyday, 365 days a year, while entering a new product category every twelve to eighteen months. Growth will come from doing a lot of new things, new geographies, new technologies, new joint ventures and new product innovations. The constant press and drive towards growth made Rubbermaid unfocused. For the first time in 1995, it reported its first loss. By then, the company closed six thousand product variations, nine plants and 1170 jobs.

Here are the indicators for Stage 2:

1. Excessive growth that is not sustained will lead to the breaking point in an organization.

2. Undisciplined discontinuous Leaps: The enterprise makes dramatic moves that fail at least one of the following tests:

a. Do they ignite passion and fit with the company’s core values?

b. Can the organization be the best in the world at these activities or in these arenas?

c. Will these activities help drive the organization’s economic or resource engine?

3. Easy cash erodes the discipline that sustained the company in the first place.

4. The company becomes bureaucratic and people increasingly thinks of jobs rather than responsibilities.

5. Poor succession planning and inability of grooming next generation leaders.

6. Excessive focus on personal interests or ego, rather than what is good for the company in the long term.

PS: I will post part 2 in the following week. If you can’t wait for it, I have prepared the book summary as a PDF so that you can download it and read it in its entirety. You can download it here.

Watch this video to understand why people buy into what you do. Find out what compels people to be drawn into your mission and become great fans.

What are your core values?

When an organisation becomes bigger over time, it needs to have systemic ways of engaging the different functions each individual staff. That is why we have policy and manuals. This helps to ensure a proper way of doing things and also how each department communicates with each other.

While many organisations tend to focus on technical competencies and software that improve performance, most of them tend to neglect one of the most overlooked components of a structure that governs the behavior of the organization, its Core Values. Some companies call it principles, beliefs or philosophy of values. This in my opinion is a strong binding adhesive that will hold the company together and also determines how each department or colleague will communicate with each other.

People don’t tend to remember their company core values. It’s because these values tend to have zero meaning to them. They tend to be reserved for management talk, where department heads talk about once in a while during speeches but is not usually translated down to the operational level. In fact, most organisations hire for competency, rather than for core values. They are not able to see the link of how core values can add to the bottom line of their organisation.

Core values are important.  Without values, there are no clear guiding principles to how people will base their decision making process. When that happens, decisions are made based on what they feel is right. This is also pretty much subjective compared to the kind of staff your company has.

If you have a group of colleagues that place a high value on maximising profits, all their decisions will be made to support that value that they hold on to. Alternatively, if you have another group of colleagues that places a high value on environmental sustainability, your company might be spending a lot of your efforts and time in ensuring that your work will reduce the waste generated and impact to your environment.

However, if you put these two groups of people together with a different set of values together, what do you think will happen? Decision-making might be slowed. Arguments might arise because of differing values. One side might want to maximise profits at the cost of the environment, while the other side wants to reduce profits by taking care of it.

Therefore, it is important for an organisation to be clear of its values. To let it be a binding force that will help everyone in it to make the right decision in the face of differing views. Values should be clear and must give clear principles to make the right decision. This is even more important especially when situations are dire and difficult decisions have to made.

Being clear about your core values is sometimes a challenge. Being consistent in following through with them even when it threatens your financial success is even a bigger challenge.

Can you recite all the core values of your company?

Let’s examine  a case study on Johnson and Johnson’s Tylenol crisis and what we can learn from it.

Case Study- Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol Crisis  

In 1982, Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol, the leading painkiller medicine in the United States commanded a 35% of the over-the-counter analgesic market share. It contributed almost 19% to the company’s profit during the first three quarters of 1982. In October 1982, seven people in Chicago were reported dead after taking extra-strength Tylenol capsules, and a widespread panic ensued about how widespread the contamination might be. It was reported that one individual succeeded in lacing 65 grams of the deadly cyanide into Tylenol capsules, 10,000 times more than what is needed to kill a man. Immediately after the incidents, the company’s market value fell by $1 billion dollars.

Suddenly, with no warning, Johnson & Johnson found itself with dilemma of the best way to deal with the problem without destroying the reputation of the company and its most profitable product. James Burke, the chairman of Johnson & Johnson at that time, reacted to the negative media coverage by forming a seven-member strategy team immediately, and their strategy guidance from Burke was first “How do we protect the people?” and second “How do we save this product”.

Although the company knew they were not responsible for the tampering of the product, they assumed responsibility by ensuring public safety first and recalled all of their capsules from the market. They alerted consumers across the whole nation not to consume any type of Tylenol product, which is about 31 million bottles and a loss of more than $100 million dollars (Lazare, Chicago Sun-Times 2002). In fact, when similar incident happened in 1986, Johnson & Johnson immediately removed all capsules from the market permanently until the company done something to provide a better product protection. The cost was a high one.

However, the company quickly won praise for its swift and appropriate action. Along with nationwide recall and alert, Johnson & Johnson established relations with the Chicago Police, the FBI, and the Food and Drug Administration, which allowed them to play a part in searching for the suspect and preventing further tampering. The company was given much positive coverage for their handling of this crisis.

After the crisis, Johnson & Johnson unleashed an extensive marketing and promotional program to bring Tylenol back to its number one position. Burke said: “It will take time, it will take money, and it will be very difficult; but we consider it a moral imperative”. Within five months of the disaster, the company had recovered almost 70% of its market share for the drug – and the fact this went on to improve over time showed that the company succeeded in preserving the long term value of the brand. In fact there was some evidence that some consumers who were so reassured by the steps taken by the company, they switched from other painkillers to Tylenol.

The reason Tylenol reacted so quickly and in such a positive manner stems from the company’s mission statement – a credo written by Robert Wood Johnson in 1940s. He stated that the company’s responsibilities were to the consumers and medical professionals using its products, employees, the community’s where its people work and live, and its stockholders. Johnson & Johnson’s responsibility to the public proved to be its most efficient public relations tool. They have showed themselves to be prepared to bear the short term cost in the name of consumer safety, and this has undoubtedly established a strong trust relationship with their customers – which became the key to the brand’s survival.

From the example of Johnson and Johnson, we can derive that making principled decisions based on your values can actually yield financial success and high trust among your customers.

Values should be something that all leaders should consistently share about in their daily decision-making. It is something that must be caught, rather than taught.

Recruiting people based on values

In my work with companies, there are some of them who also make hiring decisions based on values. This is interesting as most companies basically just make their decisions based on what I mentioned earlier, skills and knowledge. They view that skills and knowledge can always be learnt, however, having a staff that is aligned with their corporate values is indeed difficult to find.

In the book “Good to Great”, the companies listed as going from good to great have a common attribute, that is they are consistently disciplined in waiting the right person to come aboard their company. They do not hire people when there is an urgent need for a replacement but are willing to wait, even for many months, for the right person to come along.

Should ‘profits’ be a part of your core values?

Before you start thinking that values have got nothing to do with earning money and profits, let me assure you that profitability and sustainability is important as well. Unless you are a charity or non-profit organisation, most companies are called companies because they exist to serve a need and also make money in the process. There is absolutely nothing serving people and earning money from it (or even tons of money from it).

In some companies that I work with, I usually observe what their core values are. If there is no hint of earning profits as one of their core values, I might question the importance of the values of the company.

In one group of companies that I worked with, I talked to the Group Director and found out that their core values meant little to them. This is because profitability was not one of their values. When most of the time they are talking about an important value that is not listed down onto their values statement, I start to question what is the relevance of the other values. She confessed that the values were there simply because it was a ‘company’ thing to do and that business consultants constantly asked them to include them. Is this common in your company?

What would you do?

1.  You realised that some of things you need to do are not consistent with your core values. What will you do?

2.  If one of your core values is to create mutually beneficial relationships. However, your project has overrun its deadlines and incurred cost along the way. Your boss asks you to ‘squeeze’ your suppliers by asking them to reduce their claims to you. What will you do?

3.  How will you help a new colleague understand your company’s values? What if they say that its only management talk and is not people to everyday living?

4.  How do you hire a person who exhibits the values of your company? What kind of questions will you ask?

ACTION STEPS:

1.  Get your team to start memorising the core values of your company. Seek to find relevance in making decisions based on your company’s core values.

2.  Make your core values practical in your work. Find linkages on situations that happened in your country and ask your colleagues what should have been done using the framework of your core values.

3.  Ask your colleagues whether do they see you demonstrate the core values of your company at work? Do they see you living up to it?

NOTE: If you strongly feel that everyone in your organisation needs to live by its Core Values, do ask how Deep Impact can help you to make a impact in creating highly experiential activities that will help them to remember them.

Watch this video to understand why:

This is my 5th article to be featured in the Straits Times and it all started from a controversial topic on why people leave their jobs. In my experience working with clients, I noticed that most people often leave their jobs because of their bosses.

Read what are the top reasons why they leave and how to avoid people leaving your organization.

You can read download the article here.

You can read other related articles that were featured in the Straits Times:

Do Motivational Talks Really Work? (Appeared on Straits Times, Recruit- 21 May 2010)

Build Trust With Your Team (Appeared on Straits Times, Recruit- 22 Mar 2010)

Build A Successful Team (Appeared on Straits Times, Recruit- 26 Feb 2010)

Go From Good To Great (Appeared on Straits Times, Recruit- 17 Apr 2009)

Hawthorne Workers (picture from ansanelli.com)

In 1924-1932, a series of experiments were conducted to examine how fatigue, monotony and supervision on an assembly line affected productivity. However at the end of the experiment, researchers were amazed to find out many other correlations that affected employee productivity and morale. Many of their insights and observations are still used by today’s management. What they have discovered decades ago will be to increase productivity of your team today.

The name of this experiment is called ….

The Hawthorne Experiment

This experiment was carried out at Hawthorne Works, a factory that produced electrical components and equipment. It was one of the state-of-the-art factory of its time where over 40,000 people worked there. Hawthorne Works also pioneered many quality control practices and principles.

In all the experiments, an observer sat and watched a particular control group. In some of the experiments, changes to the illumination of the room were made. In another, conditions of the work environment constantly changed. In fact, it was changed 23 times. Changes included introduction of 2 five minute breaks, more breaks being subsequently added, breaks were lengthened to 10 minutes, food was given during breaks and staff were being dismissed half an hour earlier and then 1 hour earlier. In most cases, output generally increased.

What was interesting was even when conditions were worse off at some time, production generally increased. The amazing thing was that when these privileges were taken away and workers resumed their normal working conditions, output was increased by 25%. What was more interesting was that the team had no supervisor and they assumed personal responsibility for their work and output.

Here are some of the findings of the Hawthorne Experiment:

1.    The simple fact that the participants were asked to be part of an important experiment, created better attitude within them. They considered themselves to be an important group because their views were constantly sought after by the company.

2.    There is an eager desire within each person for cooperative activity…. and can be utilised by intelligent and straight-forward management.

3.    Consultation between management and employees gave a sense of belonging to the company. This helps people to take ownership of what they do.

4.    When employees form a social atmosphere in the work environment (which also included the observer), they tend to be more motivated.

Implications to the work environment and how you can use the Hawthorne effect in your work place:

1.    Giving your staff specialised training or verbal appreciation will help them work harder and increase their motivation.

2.    Getting people to work in small teams helps to improve performance if the team is harmonious and dedicated.

3.    Giving a sense of freedom to staff without a need for micro-management will tend to yield ownership in their work. Frequent interaction between management and staff is also a crucial contributing factor.

4.    Creating an environment where there is a social factor is also important to staff motivation. There is a need to change some management’s thinking that fun or social relationships should not take place in work environments. It does add to your bottom line when you have employees who feel a sense of belonging to the company.

PS: I would love to hear your comments. Do let me know what you think! If you have other reasons, do share them in the comment link above this article.

Impolding Structure from www.washington.edu

You have always suspected that members of your team are not happy and yet when you ask what happened, you don’t get any good answers. You’re sure that there’s something wrong, but you just can’t confirm it. How can you tell if your team is at risk? 

1.    Some members of the group feel frustrated and sometimes avoid bringing out certain issues when it is important. 

2.    There’s unresolved conflict in the group. They might even avoid meetings to keep away from meeting the person they are unhappy with. 

3.    Team members start to complain about each other and say “Just between you and me, I believe that Jack is …..” 

4.    Members start to point fingers and lay blame at each other. 

5.    You start seeing small cliques within the group; each trying to support their friends in discussions. 

6.    Worst of all, anything you say, seems to be the best idea and you are constantly reminded that your ideas will make a huge difference in their lives. 

What can you do? 

1.    Remember that when people come together, conflict is inevitable. Rather than call it conflict, we should call them reasonable engagements. It is reasonable to engage your team members in a conversation. Conflict resolution skills should be developed to handle different opinions, rather than avoiding conflicts. 

2.    People do not need you to necessary agree with them on everything but they need you to hear them out. Once team members have spoken, they tend not to harbor resentment. 

3.    Be sure to remind your team that they are challenging ideas and not each other. 

4.    Check if team members share the same objectives, it is simply impossible to solve issues if they do not have that common ground. 

5.    Help members understand that the group’s interest takes precedence over self interest. 

6.    Educate team members about the different working styles and personalities of each member. Tools such as DISC personality profiling assessments have been used by over 50 million people, many of them in the Fortune 500 companies. 

To prevent a group from disintegrating, a leader must be sharp to detect the symptoms and then apply the necessary ways to address them. I have personally learn from my mistakes that whenever team problems arise, I must address them quickly. Failing so will lead to a lot more problems in the future.

Want to know ways to increase your team work and by helping your managers work on their team management abilities? Contact Kenneth now.

Related Articles: 

Here Are The Limitations Of Most Teambuilding Programs 

How Teamwork Helps You Achieve More With Less 

Getting People to Consistently Trust You In All You have to say 

10 Ways to Inspire Team Members to Consistently Give Their Best

People Resigning from whyatt.com.au

Whenever a person leaves a company, it is estimated to cost their employers about 2 years of that person’s salary. This cost comprises of rehiring, training, loss of contacts that this person might have, employee benefits and etc. During exit interviews, I don’t think you will actually hear the REAL reasons why they leave. After talking to many professionals and including HR practitioners, I have concluded that in most instances, people actually leave their bosses, not their jobs.

I understand that there might be other push/pull factors for a person to leave; however, I will just focus on the reasons to why people leave their bosses (or managers).

1. Poor leadership skills of bosses

One of the main reasons is that their immediate bosses tend to have poor leadership skills. Bosses tend to give them unclear job descriptions, make them work hard without proper recognition/rest, are picky or have poor people skills. Making staff work hard is not the main issue, but not giving them the proper respect and acknowledgment at work is extremely frustrating to their staff. There are some bosses who also tend to be insecure in their role, pushing their staff down, while ensuring that they be acknowledged for every level of success their staff brings.

2. They are micro-managed by their bosses
If a staff is constantly asked by his/her superior on the progress of their work and had them to intervene in the way they do things, they will tend to be frustrated. Bosses intervene mainly because there is a lack of trust in their staff’s quality of work. It is better for bosses to actually manage based on end results rather than day to day monitoring.

3. Bosses with hidden agendas
The lack of trust between staff and boss tend to produce conversations with hidden meanings. When trust is low, people start to guess what their boss actually mean in their conversations. Some bosses speak in meetings to seemingly care for their departments, but often their staff feel that there is a hidden purpose behind every statement. Some people have even commented that their bosses are political and hide behind different meanings in a statement. The way to combat such ill feelings is to be forth-coming, truthful and transparent in the way you relate to staff.

4.    Bosses not delivering promises

Have you heard of the following statements:

“I have plans to promote you in the next few months” or “If you were to achieve these targets, you can expect _____” to only find out that your boss did not fulfill his/her promise?

The thing I am trying to bring across is that sometimes managers don’t deliver on what they say. It only needs to happen only once before people starting doubting everything their boss says. The only way to address this issue is to consistently say what you mean and mean what you say.

Conclusion

Whenever people leave, take a good look at the leaders. In most cases, people leave their bosses, not their jobs. In order to stop great people from leaving, always start with working on the way leaders lead their people.

PS: I would love to hear your comments. Do let me know what you think! If you have other reasons, do share them in the comment link above this article.

Image from lifeinthenhs.wordpress.com

Trust is the currency in all relationships, whether in office or at home. If you do not have enough of this currency, you will realise that whatever you do, you will need more time, energy and money to perform a task. However, you will realise that the reverse is true as well.

Imagine how things can be done faster if people had their trust in you?

Imagine that business deals are done simply with a handshake rather than countless pages of contract?

Imagine how you can align people to a common objective because they trust that you will deliver?

Before we carry on further talking about Trust, let’s define what it is in the first place.

Trust is basically summed up in one work “Confidence “. We do place our trust (or confidence) in people and objects every single day of our lives. We trust what people say (or similarly, we distrust what some people might say), or we trust objects to fulfill their functions (eg, our car will work well and take us to the intended destination).

I will just focus on one of the most challenging areas and that is how do we get people to consistently trust you in what you ALL that you say.

First of all, Trust building is a function of 2 things, namely: Character and Competence.

Character:
If a person has a great character or good intent in all he does, you will tend to believe him. If he is congruent in his speech and actions, there is absolutely no reason to even doubt anything he does. Character is important because most people have values and if these values are in conflict with what they believe in, they will leave your organisation.

When I was younger, I kept asking people to trust what I have to say. To my dismay, there were quite a few times people didn’t believe in me. This was because my character has not matured to the point where I ‘walk my talk’ or am clear on my values. I realised that when you have strong values, people actually respect you in what you do and will be drawn to what you say or share.

This is indispensible especially when you need to organise groups quickly or even make difficult decisions. Although what you do might be painful for certain individuals, they will still trust you because you act in good character and intent.

I am absolutely convinced that most politics stem out of distrust and ill-intent. The only way to combat such issues is to demonstrate good character and intent.

Tips on developing good character and intent:

• Be clear on your values and stand up for them.
• Honour everything you say (this includes your commitments to family and kids).
• Be careful of making rash commitments that you cannot keep.
• Trust others so that they can trust you. Trust is a reciprocal relationship.

Competence:
While character is important in developing trust, I strongly believe that competence is the other element. I mean, are you able to trust a person who does not have the capability to do what he said he will do? Will you trust an inexperienced surgeon to perform a major surgery on you? Trust seems to be developed when you consistently deliver what you promised. You simply cannot trust someone who regularly shows poor performance at work. Therefore, in my opinion, competence inspires trust.

One of the fastest ways I learnt about building credibility and trustworthiness is when I have a track record. Being able to show for results do matter to a lot of people. When I first started out in business and talked about my inspirational teambuilding programs, it took a lot of convincing for decision makers to use my programs.

In recent years after running so many mindset change teambuilding programs and giving keynote speeches for government and corporate clients, it was so much easier to get the buy-in from them! I realised that I was actually spending a bit of time sharing about my experiences with the different types of clients and what kind of results that I had achieved with them. Most of them wanted to hear them and know whether I could deliver it for them as well.

That is why competence is important in establishing your trust currency. You have to show that you are capable to perform a task well and it will automatically inspire confidence within people. That is why to convince people quickly is to show them results and that you are competent in doing what you said you can do.

Tips on developing competence:

• Constantly read and attend seminars to be an expert in your field.
• Achieve mastery in what you do for a living.
• What kind of results am I currently displaying in my work? Is it helping me display credibility in my work?
• Take responsibility for your results and make a decision to constantly improve it.

Conclusion
Character and competence sums up what you need to get people to constantly trust what you have to say. Since trust is developed over time, therefore character and competence also takes time to build. Where do you think you are in your character and competence level?I hope to hear from you.

Related Articles:

What’s Your Trust Meter Like?

How To Develop TRUST Within Teams

Teambuilding Lessons From Growing Orchids