In episode 66, Dutch entrepreneur Jan van der Spoel tells about his upcoming book, “360 Degrees Trust”. (details of the book will be here as soon as the book has been published). Jan worked in corporate communications as a Creative Director and Concept Designer for over 30 years. In that capacity, he experienced and studies all aspects of good leadership and how we work together, one way or another, and comes back to trust. But here is the thing: trust is invisible if you don’t know what to look for. His current company, Grip on Trust focuses on bringing trust (back) into organizations. He calls himself “a problem solver for leaders and HR professionals”. He focuses on how to translate fundamental insights into practical tools that people can apply themselves (see his Whitepaper, “Grip op vertrouwen” (in Dutch only)
Six Principals
I have designed this model with six principles, and every principle exists of four aspects. In total, we have 24 aspects that influence trust in every relationship, and you can ask 24 questions and the answers will tell you the quality of the relationship. So for this question, I will pick three aspects that will create a better team spirit through trust. And the first one is intent. So what is the intent of the team? What is the purpose of the team and what is the intent? Intent is extremely important to get your people in the right direction. The second one is what method, what system do you use? System has to do with structure, we need structure to feel safe and to understand what’s expected of a team. And the third one is the power balance. Because whenever there’s a difference of power within a team, people start behaving differently. It’s a fascinating research by Dacher Keltner: as soon as someone gets a position of power over someone else, his behavior and his moral values change. So those three elements, intent, what methods you use, what system you use and how how to deal with the power balance are crucial to build a team that really, really trusts each other.
Note: see about Dacher Keltner, “Speaking of Psychology: Power: How you get it, how it can change you“.
The Story of David Marquet
David Marquet was the captain of a submarine. And when he was studying, he noticed the difference between being told what to do and getting the freedom to explore technology. And he experienced the energy he got when he had the opportunity to explore the periscope with a team of sonar specialists and he was excited when he got the freedom to explore this but he also noticed the contrast between the other days when he was really told what to do and how to do it. So later, when he became the commander of a submarine, he was thinking of different leadership methods to actually create this kind of experience. And he developed a method that’s later called intent-based leadership and he transformed the worst-performing submarine into the best-performing submarine within one year without giving a single command.