Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

Whatever it takes to lead a team, build a product, and run a business

Tag: trust

  • Give Honesty a Try

    I use to say that you can’t lose being honest with me. There is no potential downside – only upside. I have no problems with critical opinions on me, others or the organization we’re part of. I don’t necessarily have to agree with these opinions but I want, and need, to know them. After all, if I don’t know you don’t like something odds are I won’t do anything to change it.

    I know there are different managers out there and openness and honesty don’t have to work equally well in each case. However, if you have to hide your opinions and play someone else to survive in a decent health in the organization then, well, I wouldn’t like to be a part of such company in the first place.

    For the sake of this argument consider you really can openly talk with your bosses about your problems and frustrations, if you have any. Will you just be honest like you’d be when describing the situation to your friend over a pint of beer?

    From my experience: many people are not.

    I don’t get it. Let’s say my decision pissed you off or you felt my opinion was unfair. We can sit down and discuss it through. I make mistakes. Everyone does. I change my mind when I face reasonable arguments. So please, challenge me. Challenge my opinions and my decisions.

    When your only reaction is venting in front of your colleagues then you do no good to me, to the company and, most importantly, to yourself. What are you trying to achieve that way? Is that what you believe works in the long run? I mean, really?

    If you choose being honest, be honest consequently. Being so only to some point is um… quite the opposite of being honest.

    I have one more advice: even if you don’t trust your manager give them a try. Maybe they won’t appreciate your open and straightforward attitude. In such case your situation will suck anyway so you don’t lose much. Fortunately, there are many managers who don’t work that way and you just can’t lose being honest with them.

    Like me, for example.

  • Trust Isn’t Measurable

    I have a question for you. And yes this is one of this dumb black-or-white questions which don’t take into consideration the world is just gray.

    If you had to choose a vendor among the one which you trust more and the one which can be paid less what would be your choice?

    I pretty much expect most of us would say we would choose the trusted one. However what I see everyday people do the opposite. They tend to base on a price heavily.

    Of course the question is flawed since it assumes that everything else is equal which is never true. However the message I’m trying to send here is that, despite what we say, we tend to make our decision basing on things we are able to measure. We can easily say this offer is $10000 cheaper than the other; we can easily say that this schedule is a month shorter than that etc.

    Unfortunately we can’t say that our trust for the company A is at 5 and for the company B is at 7 (whatever 5 and 7 means). Personally I would probably be able to state that I trust one vendor somewhat more than another but it would be totally personal and your opinion about these companies will likely to differ much. And even if we both agreed we would have hard time trying to describe what exactly “somewhat more trust” means and why it is worth ten thousands more to our decision-makers.

    And that’s why I’m not really surprised we tend to act differently than we use to say we’d do. The reason is simple.

    Trust isn’t measurable.

    Every time we face the task to compare few things we tend to base on aspects we can measure and that’s where trust falls short.

    Luckily enough sometimes we are able to forget about this whole comparison thing and decide we just want to do business with a trusted partner. Even if they would be more expensive if we took an effort to compare their offer to others, which we don’t do anyway because, well, we decided to go with these trusted folks in the first place.

    With trust in place business relationships tend to be significantly better. And yes, I can explain it. More trust means more transparency. More transparency means more information shared. More information shared means better knowledge about the situation. Better knowledge about the situation means better planning. Better planning means better outcomes. And better outcomes usually strengthen business relationship.

    I would choose trust over price. If I stated I’d do it every single time I would lie (I did actually) but when it’s my own call or I’m strong enough to defend the decision trust trumps the price.

  • Role of Trust

    It is said that formal agreements are for bad times. As far as everything goes well we can forget about papers even when there are some of these. Either way it’s all about trust.

    A question: what happens when a subcontractor doesn’t do their work well? Do you take a signed papers and count forfeits? Or you trust them and you believe you can find a solution which is acceptable for both sides?

    What about relations with your bosses or your customers?

    Probably in each situation we have a different level of pain. Sometimes we’d use our formal weapons faster, sometimes we’d try to avoid that as long as possible. Where’s the difference? Trust. The more you trust someone the longer you’ll be talking with them as human with another human, not as lawyer with another lawyer.

    There are people who you don’t trust much, maybe you just don’t know them or they let you down before. When doing business with them you’d focus on formal agreements much. There are those who you don’t trust at all and you won’t do anything with them even if they’d pay you well. Of course there are also people who you trust much and their word weights even more than signed paper.

    Which kind of people do you work for now? Which kind would like to work for? If answers differ think about it.