Trust is Important

The summary statement for the Law of Solid Ground, from The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is; trust is the foundation of leadership. No matter how gifted, smart, or charismatic we are as leaders, if we don’t have the trust of our followers, they won’t want to follow. We won’t have influence and our leadership won’t last.

We’ve all seen it happen. We’ve seen companies and people that have stolen peoples’ retirement, athletes that have used performance enhancing drugs to win medals, and the list could be even longer.

I started listening to the radio show of a pastor way back in the 1990s. The man was hilarious!  He could tell stories from his life that would have me laughing out loud while I drove. His wit and humor would drive a spiritual point home, the way nothing else could for me.  I learned so much from him about myself, about marriage and about God. When we moved to Seattle in 1997, I lost touch with his radio show. He and his family had moved to Florida to pastor a very large church.

I found him last year in an online news website. He resigned from his church, guilty of extra-marital affairs and a cocaine and pornography addiction. How did that happen? I was heart-broken. The members of his church were surprised and devastated.  Many left his church, and worse, some even lost their faith in God. This pastor had been leading two very different lives and he had violated the trust of his followers.

Trust isn’t automatically granted because of your position or title. It takes time to build. Trust comes from being consistent in doing the right things whether we feel like it or not. Trust is built when we do what we say we’re going to do. It takes ethical behavior which comes from the inside out. We can’t compartmentalize good character and ethics–it’s impossible to have this is one area of your life and not in another. Eventually, we will be found out, and when that happens, broken trust is hard to re-establish.

Sure, we can teach ethics and how to build trust, but it won’t make any difference if we aren’t ethical and trustworthy. People do what people see (the Law of the Picture.) Building trust takes more than words, it takes actions. Trustworthiness must be modeled.

The decisions that we make are based on who we are on the inside. They are determined by our character.  The leaders that people want to follow are bigger on the inside than on the outside. They lead from right motives and for the right reasons. Leaders who build trust want to add value to their people and make it better for those who follow.

How do we develop our character so we can be trustworthy?  John Maxwell recommends three things.

1. Develop integrity–make a commitment to be rigorously honest, even if it hurts.
2. Be authentic–be yourself with everyone.
3. Strengthen your discipline–do the right things every day whether you feel like it or not.

Trust is the foundation of leadership. It is the glue that holds an organization together.