Entrepreneurial Sin #5: Failing to trust others as much as you trust yourself

I spent the first decade of my career ignoring my Midwestern tendencies. From the very first day that someone laughed at my flat pronounciation of the name "Eric," I was convinced that I needed to denounce my heritage of twangy vowels, blushing modesty, and blind trust in the good intentions of others. The last bit, I learned, was called "gullibility" out East.

I came home from work one day nearly a decade ago, my first week at a new job, sharing with my roommate the odd behavior of my boss, who had sat down with me and gave me what I only later identified as a veiled threat.

She explained to me how important it was that I "get it". I nodded in agreement to appease her but didn't truly understand what she meant. I noticed that many of the other people in our department were constantly present for our boss, practically camping outside of her office in order to get face time with her. I noticed that some people got things done with minimal effort, while others had to write proposals and get eighteen approvals before taking a first step. All of this struck me as inefficient.

"People who 'get it' are the ones who do well here," my boss said.

Back then, I could only feel subtext but not identify it. I knew there was a reason why my boss had said that repeatedly. I sensed that she was asking me "Can I trust you?" but I didn't really know how to seem trustworthy, just how to do my job. Meanwhile, someone who had started the same day that I had immediately "got it" and played along with our boss's whims. She checked in with our boss constantly, visited her office several times a day, shared vacation pictures and anecdotes, and adhered to what I was later to learn was the accepted behavior of someone who was trustworthy.

I decided to mind my own business and take what my boss said at face value. I also assumed that she hired me because she had faith in my abilities and in my intentions to do good things for the company. My actions would speak for themselves, I assumed. And yet, so much at that company existed beneath the surface. My decision to not give my boss the cues she required to trust me made me very isolated and lonely.

In the end, both of us were wrong. I was wrong to refuse to acknowledge a very human tendency to support people to whom you can relate. If we feel understood we don't feel threatened. Like it or not, by not adhering to my boss's need for validation alienated me from her. My boss was wrong to assume that because I didn't fall in line to the letter with what she was comfortable that I was not trustworthy. She was also wrong to inflict her neediness on her employee and slow me down.

Once I left that job I went to work for someone who had total faith in my abilities and didn't stipulate how my performance was to look, just how it should result. Needless to say, everyone succeeded.

My roommate took in the conversation with my boss as I had related it to her, and which I could only describe at the time, as "kinda weird" and said, "You better be careful. She wants a scapegoat." From that point on I felt like a marked woman. And though I tried to make more of an effort to please my boss, every attempt was awkward. The damage had been done on her end; I could have set up a tent outside her office, and she still would have accused me of being out of touch, and I resented the dog and pony show that kept me from doing my job.

Over the course of the month that followed that conversation, as my rommate's worst projection began to play itself out, I started to wonder about this presumption I had that all people were good, that all smart people assumed that others meant well. I thought about previous jobs and the signs that suggested otherwise, but I chose to ignore the warning: Protect yourself.

At one particularly political job, even my supposed good friends in the office had documented our conversations in email, "just so I have a record of what you said," they'd say to me, and I understood that in effect they were asking for receipts of rightness, should they need to provide a proof of purchase later when they decided to trade in our friendship to keep their jobs. Still, I refused to protect myself. It just didn't seem right to have to put energy into a contingency plan should people decide not to trust me.

I learned that I needed to recalibrate my default setting of assuming people would believe in me and my work. I learned that mistakes were NOT permissible; and that covering them up was not tantamount to lying; it was being smart.

Still, I never felt entirely comfortable with these rules. Despite seeming to tow the company line in this respect, I always felt that I would be able to run my career differently when I was my own boss. Today, as an entrepreneur, I would like to regenerate some of that inherent innocence that I brought to my worklife earlier. Not the fear of speaking up, not the naivete, but the assumption that people have good intentions.

It sounds funny, I know; some would argue that when you are in business for yourself you have to be doubly cautious of others, you need to be particularly perceptive when someone isn't "getting it," lest you pay for their mistakes, lest someone else execute your ideas faster. But I can't see how an enterprise will thrive without an underlying boost of faith.

Think of the standard startup, without the resources to hire only the most experienced (read: expensive) talent. In order to sustain itself, faith in others' competence is a requirement. You can't afford to believe otherwise. I worked at a start-up in 1999 and was hired because of my years of experience in media. Still, I hadn't managed a team before; the hire, in many ways, was an act of faith. My boss, one of the founders, asked me to help him hire a staff of writers for the site. I wondered how we would do this. We were an unproven entity with a great management team, but no "sexy" names in our ranks of writers, and a small budget. My boss, the co-founder, had already begun hiring people that I would never have considered for a professional-grade Website. He hired a former chef, a rafting guide, and ad copy writer for my lifestyle section.

"These people have never published for a national magazine," I told my boss, wishing he would have consulted with me first before making the offers. I was surprised, he was a nationally acclaimed journalist himself. Why would he throw caution to the wind for his own company? I figured he was being cheap.

"But these people are SO passionate!" he said. "They're just what we need. We don't need naysayers."

In the end he was right. These folks were the most diligent, flexible, and resilient people that I'd ever worked with before. They learned their jobs quickly and were open to any recommendations that I made to enhance their work. They were happy to move around and try new positions, as we grew and needed them elsewhere. They also had deep knowledge from their respective former careers that enhanced their work beyond my abilities of improving it. They saw opportunity, and we believed that they were capable, and those were the defining factors.

Of course not everyone should be trusted, but we must trust people when growing a business, just as we must take calculated risks with capital and make investments to secure our future. And just like with money, we must not take away our investment the minute we are uncomfortable. To do so is to assume we have nothing left to learn, that we know it all already, that we don't want our businesses to thrive.

More next time on the need to trust other people, dammit.

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Comments

[Susanne]

Love that post. When I still worked in an office some of the best work was done by people who had no formal training in what they did, but were able to pick up things fast and to think of the office as a system.

And I can't imagine working surrounded by people whom I don't trust.

[Christien]

This is one critical element of true leadership.

[Christien]

This is one critical element of true leadership.

[genevieve]

Ooh, you had the radar for exactly what's wrong with one of my very significant relatives - I was too young to pick up what was wrong though.
Isn't it interesting that what the more intelligent woman will do is to identify the inefficiency of that neediness, and of the requirements for extra validation? That fascinates me, I have been punished for it by this person but nonetheless I cannot play along with her. Amazing how you nail these things, Jory. Just amazing. Thanks again for getting it down here :)