Matt Gjertsen [00:00:00]:

If you do not have trust, then you cannot have productive conflict. You're not willing to really get at the root issues of things. If you're not willing to have that productive conflict, then no one can identify what's really important, what the real blockers are to the team. Hello, and welcome to the Leadership Launchpad, where we help technical managers improve themselves, their teams, and their organizations. If you yourself are a technical manager, If you are an engineer or technician looking to become a technical manager, or you, if you are someone who supports technical managers, this is the place to get actionable insights from people who have been in the trenches on how to improve your own performance and the performance of those around you. My name is Matt Jertsen, the host of the show, and if you are not aware, my new book, Minimum Viable Manager, is now out in the world. Amazon, Barnes& Noble, all the places. You gotta get it.

Matt Gjertsen [00:00:58]:

I decided that because this book is organized into 4 basic parts, I'm gonna take the next 4 episodes of this show to walk you at a high level through some of the great lessons, some of the things that I think are really the most important pieces of the book. Before I can get into part 1, I do have to give you a little bit of background on this overall framework because the book is organized along these parts because of framework that I came up with after leaving SpaceX called First Principles Leadership. I talk about it a lot on this show. And basically what it says is that every leader has 3 basic responsibilities. You have to get people to work together, you have to get them working on the right things, and then you have to improve their work over time. Everything you do as a leader revolves around those 3 skills. And so, in order to give people a clear, simple framework to become a people manager for the first time, I looked at what is the most basic, simplest first step you can take in each one of those pillars. And that's building trust, which is part 1, setting expectations, which is part 2, and giving feedback, which is part 3.

Matt Gjertsen [00:02:10]:

There's also a part 4, but we will get to that a little bit later. Come back in a few episodes to find out what part 4 is. So today I want to talk about building trust. And so we'll break this into 3 parts of first talking about why trust is so essential. Second, we'll talk about defining what trust even is, and then third, give you some simple things that you can do to build trust with the people on your team. So why is trust important? I think especially for technical people, trust, other, you know, soft fuzzy stuff, we like to sweep it under the rug, but endless research and practical examples show just how important trust is. The first example that I always like to bring up is something called Project Aristotle, right? Google did a massive research project for over 2 years where they examined hundreds of teams within Google and ranked them all by high performers, low performers, and did a bunch of studies to determine what are the things that make a high-performing team. They came up with several things, but the clear research that stands out says the number one most important thing for a high-performance team is having psychological safety.

Matt Gjertsen [00:03:23]:

Psychological safety. Oh my gosh, I don't wanna talk about that. But psychological safety means, am I willing to call people out? Am I willing to speak my mind? Am I willing to hand handle disagreements directly with another person? Am I willing to put in that little extra effort because I know my team will have my back? This is all the research around Amy Edmondson, Harvard researcher who looked into this same phenomenon. They use the term psychological safety. I use the term trust because I think trust is what's necessary to create a psychologically safe environment. I'm not the only one who likes the term trust. Patrick Lencioni, the author of the book Five Dysfunctions of a Team, also defines trust As the foundational layer that is required if you want to have a high-performing team. If you do not have trust, then you cannot have productive conflict.

Matt Gjertsen [00:04:11]:

You're not willing to really get at the root issues of things. If you're not willing to have that productive conflict, then no one can identify what's really important, what the real blockers are to the team. All right. So, if you want to have a high-performing team, it starts With trust and psychological safety. The clearest example of that, which I talk about in the book, which I absolutely love, is from Ford in 2006 when Alan Mulally became Ford's CEO. So, when he came in, the Ford executive teams had a way that they would brief all of their projects where they would use a traffic light brief, where they would go through and each executive would say, All their initiatives, and then whether or not their initiatives were green, they were on track, they were on plan, uh, they were yellow, they were at risk, or they were red, meaning they were off track, they were behind. And so Alan Mulally comes in as a new CEO in 2006. He sits in on his first meeting.

Matt Gjertsen [00:05:12]:

Every executive around the room says all the initiatives are green. And he turns to them and he says, gentlemen, thank you for all of this information. I have one question for you. If all of our initiatives, all of our projects at this company are green, why is the company about to lose $17 billion? Right? The, the company had created a culture where even at the highest level, the executives didn't feel safe. They didn't have trust that they could bring up things that were going wrong because they knew it would be held against them. Instead of being seen as a problem for the team to solve, it would be seen as their problem that they needed to be held accountable for. And so the first thing that Alan Mulally did was change that dynamic, creating a trusting environment so that everybody felt comfortable actually talking about what was going right, what was going wrong. And if you know the story, it ended up being the thing that saved Ford, right? Because he had a clear understanding of the reality of the situation.

Matt Gjertsen [00:06:14]:

That is what in 2006 led the company to go out and get this massive loan. I forget how many, it was billions of dollars. They put all the company's capital up and said like, hey, give us money. And because of that, going into the 2008 financial crisis, they were the best financially capitalized company of all the automakers. And so they were the only automaker that didn't go bankrupt. So there it is, trust. It's absolutely essential. But as soon as I say trust is essential, I often then ask the question, well, what is trust? And it can become difficult.

Matt Gjertsen [00:06:47]:

Difficult to define because everybody has a slightly different definition. The way I like to think about it is that trust comes down to 3 basic things: the skills you have, the decisions you make, the connections you build, right? If I trust somebody else in a particular situation, because trust is situational, I believe they have the skills required for this situation. I believe they make good decisions, and I believe the 2 of us are connected, meaning they care about me in some way. If you think about people in your life that you don't trust, or people who don't trust you, you can probably trace the root of that distrust back to one of those 3 pillars being lacking. And I like to focus on the connection one, the connections that you build, being connected to the people on your team, because I'll admit it's the first one that I skipped over as a new manager. I was your typical person who just said, I want to go to work. I want to get things done. I want to focus on The requirements of the meeting.

Matt Gjertsen [00:07:47]:

And my mind on that changed drastically when I was a leader at SpaceX and I had a team that was going through hard times. I had a team where people didn't get along very well, and I had to focus on the building connections piece because I'm sure most of us, even if we don't know it, most of us have probably been in situations where we had a tough relationship with people until We went out for a beer with them until we found out we both liked the same book or movie until whatever, right? Until there was some point of mutual connection that wasn't just about work. We struggled, but as soon as you had that connection, things got better. So when it comes to building trust, there's lots of things that you have to do. But I focus on this idea of creating common connection where we can understand one another. The example that I give in the book for how to build trust is using connection-building questions deliberately in team meetings. So, at the beginning of a team meeting, we're gonna spend 5 minutes talking about something other than work so that we can get to know one another. What is the last movie you saw? What's the last book that you read? Where are you going on your next vacation? Right? Those are the basic questions that you start with if a team doesn't know each other very well.

Matt Gjertsen [00:09:13]:

As the team gets to know each other better and they understand that they can talk about things freely, now you can start to bring up things like, what's a challenge you're facing right now? What's the last big lesson you learned? Right? What's something pivotal in your, from, from your background, maybe from school or from your previous employer? Now, I get it. When I bring up this, it's funny, this happened just last week. I brought up this exact technique to a group of executives at a startup, a growing hard tech company. And they all looked at me and just like said, that is so cringe. Like we, it sounds so artificial. It's so weird. Why would we ever do that? I get it. Now, first, let me, let me, in my defense, say a couple of things.

Matt Gjertsen [00:10:02]:

One, if you don't already build these connections, then anything you do to build connections is probably gonna feel forced, right? That's the point of it. It's a new routine. It's a new drill that you need to do to introduce this new behavior. So anytime you introduce a new behavior, it's gonna feel weird at first. You're not gonna be good at it. And so the way I like to tell people to get past that is to be open with it. Tell your team, Hey, I wanna see if us getting to know each other a little bit better will help the way we work together. And so I wanna take the first 5 minutes of our team meetings to have this separate discussion, right? Don't try to hide it, just be open with it.

Matt Gjertsen [00:10:45]:

So that's the first thing that I'll say. Just a quick interjection. I wanted to remind you that I run a company called Built where we train the next generation of hard tech leaders how to build teams capable of solving the world's hardest If you are an aspiring technical leader, an existing leader, or responsible for training leaders in your organization, please check out builtleaders.com to see if we can support you and your team. And the second thing I'll say is that these are only techniques. If you've listened to me before, you know, I like to distinguish between procedure and technique. Procedure is you have to build trust on your team, but there's a lot of ways you could build trust in your team. So if taking 5 minutes to do this, or you're, it doesn't make sense, then maybe it's something as simple as planning deliberate team lunches once a month or once every couple months, just finding different ways to bring people together in a way that feels like it fits for your team. Another great example that I tend to think is more of a one-to-one situation that you can run with every one of your direct reports.

Matt Gjertsen [00:11:51]:

is using something that I like to call a user manual for me, where this is a simple document that asks a list of questions that kind of say how do— how you want to be worked with. So, you as the manager would fill all these out saying, you know, this is how I like to receive feedback. These are the things I value. This is how you convince me of something. You answer a bunch of those questions, you give that to your direct report, and you say, after you read this, I'd love it if you could fill out something similar, fill out these same questions so that I understand How to best interact with you. Again, you're taking that time to deliberately say, look, I wanna know who you are and how best to lead you. That is how you build trust with the people on your team. So, like I said, this is the first of a series that we're gonna be running.

Matt Gjertsen [00:12:38]:

I think trust really is the beginning of being a great manager, having a way where you can bring people together so that They trust you, you trust them, and almost most importantly, they trust each other. That's a big reason why taking these times to deliberately bring your team together are so important. So, trust is essential. It's what you have to have if you wanna have a high-performing team. Trust comes down to the basics of the skills you have, the decisions you make, and the connections you build. And so, if you are a new manager wanting to build trust on your team, my suggestion Is you start with the connection piece. Think about on your team, what are the things that we do to deliberately build connection? Right? Are we just clocking in, clocking out, doing the work, and I have no idea what's going on with the other person? Or are you making sure that not only do you know it about each other, but they know about each other as well? Especially in a world that's this busy, it's not going to happen organically. Very often.

Matt Gjertsen [00:13:41]:

We need to take the time deliberately to do it. And the faster paced your organization is, or my goodness, if your organization is hybrid or virtual, you definitely have to do this deliberately. It's the first step towards becoming a better manager. And how do you know if this is the thing you need to focus on? Just ask yourself as a manager, are you spending a lot of time handling personal disagreements between people on your team? When they have disagreements or issues with one another, do they come to you or do they handle it directly? Do people often speak up in your team meetings? Do they, or do they hide their ideas? Are people willing to openly say, I messed up? If the answer to these questions is no, if people are always coming to you, if people aren't being willing to speak up, chances are it comes back to trust. So starting there is really critically important. Next time we'll go deeper. We'll go into the second part of Minimum Viable Manager, which has to do with setting expectations. I think it's one of the most often missed things.

Matt Gjertsen [00:14:45]:

It's one of the hardest things to do in our ever-changing world. So I hope you found this little preview on building trust with your team from Minimum Viable Manager helpful, and I look forward to seeing you next time on the Leadership Launchpad.