Trust: A Core Tenant of Leadership
Leading an engineering team is a challenge. It sounds thrilling at first, but when the rubber meets the road, it’s hard. When you are asked to run a design session, come up with an architecture, keep a team on course you can start to question your abilities. For that matter any kind of leadership tasks. You are supposed to be a Subject Matter Expert. You are the one responsible to get the job done right. The meaning of right is very subjective in and of itself as well. So how do you step into that role? It’s daunting!
I never had a solid mentor through my entire career. I came up through the ranks before StackOverflow, before Medium, before all these wonderful books that are out now. My path was an adventure over the hot coals figuring it out as I went. The points listed here came from my own trials and tribulations. They were not easy. My first major leadership role was leading a team of 7 other developers. I was the most inexperienced, but I was the actual Subject Matter Expert. Oh that was stressful! Part of achieving success in that kind of a situation is through building trust.
So let’s talk about trust. I am not defining trust based on the first thing that comes to mind either: “Can I rely on you?” A lot of self-reflection made me realize it’s more complex than that. Trust is defined as demonstrating both the competence, and follow through, to do the job. It requires both parts. With only one of them, you will fail in the end.
Quick Disclaimer: Truth be told, the referenced book here puts to words various conclusions I have grown to understand for trust. It really helped me figure out how to communicate these ideas to others: https://www.amazon.com/The-Speed-of-Trust-audiobook/dp/B001U2MTAG/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Speed+of+trust&qid=1631496909&sr=8-1
If you haven’t read it, then please read it! It’s not long, it’s clear, it’s impactful. It applies to all skill sets really. In my case, I’m thinking of engineering leadership, but it does not have to be in that field.
Back to the discussion!
Trust is defined as demonstrating both the competence, and follow through, to do the job.
“Do I believe this person can do what they say they can do, and do I believe they will do it?”
Competence
This seems pretty obvious, but again, let’s take this apart a bit. There are two areas within competence:
- Does the person actually know the craft? Can they build quality software?
- Does this person know how to lead the team? Can they drive the decisions and complete objectives?
Personally, the first bullet is a bare minimum. If you don’t have that, then you should probably not be leading by yourself. Plain and simple. It’s like putting a college graduate in charge of an engineering team when they don’t yet know what it means fully to be an engineer. Good luck to the graduate! If you notice, I said engineer, and not someone who knows a particular language. That definitely helps, but you can satisfy the first bullet if you are a solid engineer, and don’t know the language. It definitely helps though!
The second bullet is an interesting one because it delves into people skills. Yes, that oh so challenging subject for engineers! We can spend an entire essay on just this second bullet, but here’s the short version. In engineering, we are trained to have faith that we are all doing the best we can for the good of the team and the company. We naturally have a passion to do our best. So it’s easy to accept this concept and give your team the benefit of the doubt. If someone knows the material, but they haven’t led a team before, then bullet two is more challenging, but not impossible by any means. How else do we grow new leaders out of individual contributors?
So the people skills come into play because your team will help you figure out your “footing”. Just make sure you find it! Use your people skills to build up relationships, and learn from your team. Grow!
Ok, so now you have the competence side down, what about the second part of the trust definition?
Trust is defined as demonstrating both the competence, and follow through, to do the job.
Follow Through
It’s one thing to have good ideas. It’s another to actually earn the traditional meaning of trust of your team. When you make commitments, can you complete them? Can your team rely on you? Let’s hypothetically say you are a Dev Manager, and let’s say your team is adamant that the deadline you have to meet is unrealistic. You don’t want to bring bad news to your boss, but you also don’t want to totally destroy the morale of your team by forcing them to make the deadline. So, how do you break out of this? You committed to your team that you will figure something out. You better show the follow through. Go solve the scheduling problem.
Failing to follow through on your commitments tells your team you do not have their backs. It means they cannot rely on you as a leader. Trust is gone. Even if you are the sharpest person on the tech stack. They have to be able to rely on you.
That kind of a description makes it sound like there’s a very high risk in making a mistake. Fortunately, we all make mistakes. We all forgive and move on. Especially, when we are starting out as a new leader. As I started out, I totally missed this point and was stressing myself out worrying about what mistakes I was making. It created a scenario where indecision crept into my leadership. That hurt the team!
The Speed of Trust
Yes, I stole the title of the book referenced in the beginning. It is so fitting!
So, how can you recover trust when you make a mistake? Don’t repeat the mistake! As soon as you start showing you do actually have your team’s back, that trust starts building. Their trust in you starts to recover, and FAST! That’s the beauty of all this. You have the room to make mistakes. As long as you are growing from the mistakes, you will be able to grow with your team and rebuild that trust. Just be straight with everyone.
In theory, you can build trust up in a room in a matter of minutes. As long as you can demonstrate the points above. Show them that you have their backs. Show them you know what you are talking about. Trust can be earned rapidly. Have no fear! Yes, easier said than done, but still worth saying.
