Trust and Inspire, A Story

In our last blog, we began taking a look at what Trust and Inspire and Command and Control leaders look like in action by telling the story of Rachel and John.

Rachel was a new hire, and John, her boss, was a Command and Control leader (though he believed otherwise). He believed he was doing the right thing by giving his team members a checklist and trusting them to figure it out. Unfortunately if you don’t educate your team members using the EDGE Method, you’re truly setting them up for failure. John suffered from a lack of self-awareness and clarity.

How would that same scenario look in a true Trust and Inspire (T&I) organization? Let’s see how that might play out.

It was a Monday morning and a new hire, Rachel, was ready to get started. Her manager John had seen her resume, interviewed her, and was completely satisfied that she was a smart and capable team member.

“Morning Rachel,” John greeted her as she walked in. “We’re so glad to have you here! I know from our interviews that you have a lot of experience, but before you jump in, I’d like to do some training so you’ll have a clear idea of the expectations of this role, as well as why we do what we do, and why we do things a certain way.”

Rachel nodded. “That’s wonderful. In my last role, it was sort of ‘learn as you go’ and my teammates and I experienced a lot of failures that could have been avoided if we’d just been fully educated about the process and expectations.”

“Unfortunately I hear that a lot from new hires,” John said as he led her to her desk and indicated she could put her things there.

“Here, we use the EDGE Method to train our team members, and that process starts with ‘E’ – Explain. You and I will spend the next couple of days looking over all the machinery—and the processes and checklists associated with them—and we’ll talk with our team members who have been on the job for a while so they can explain the ‘why’ behind these processes. We’ll take a quick tour of the machinery first so that you can write down questions you may have before you start talking to your teammates one on one, does that sound good?”

“That sounds great, that way I can have a high-level understanding of everything before we get into more in-depth explanations,” Rachel said as she grabbed a notebook and pen from her desk and began to follow John to the nearest workstation.

Mike was the technician running this machine, and he walked over to greet Rachel as they approached. “John said you’d be joining the team today, it’s great to meet you! I’m Mike.”

Rachel shook his outstretched hand with a smile. “You as well. I’m Rachel.”

“Hey Mike!” John said warmly. “We’re doing our initial walkthrough and getting an overview of what we use each machine for before we start really digging into the why behind it all. Can you briefly explain how this one fits into our manufacturing process? Rachel’s going to jot down questions and we’ll come back later so you can really explain the details.”

“Sure thing!” Mike then began to explain what the machine did and how they used it in their organization. Rachel and John repeated this with each station in the production center until they’d covered them all.

“I hope we didn’t throw too much at you too fast.” John chuckled as he and Rachel began to get ready to leave for the day.

She laughed. “I think my brain might explode. But seriously, as an overview, it was perfect. I’ve got my questions and I’ll go over them again tonight to make sure I’m clear on everything before we start moving to more intricate explanations.”

“Tonight?” John’s eyebrows rose. “I appreciate the initiative, but this can wait until tomorrow morning during normal work hours. And take as long as you need. If you want to take all day tomorrow to absorb all this and write down more questions, please do. We can start with our in-depth interviews on Wednesday if that’s better.”

As an experienced T&I leader, John knew the importance of not rushing any steps. Even though today had only been half of step one, Explain, it was still a lot of information to process and absorb. He’d been through this with enough team members at this point to know how crucial this first portion was to Rachel becoming competent and successful in her job.

Rachel sighed in relief. “I’m so glad to hear you say that. Most managers want me to jump in as quickly as possible and start being productive, and not waste company time.”

“Time spent learning the process is never a waste, and you can’t rush understanding. You also can’t really learn well if you don’t have downtime to rest at night. I trust you to take the time needed before we move on.”

Never having worked in a Trust and Inspire organization before, this concept was pretty foreign to Rachel. Her managers had always said they trusted her, but it was clear John really did trust her to take the time needed to understand what she’d learned today, and also trusted her not to take advantage of the situation by taking more time than was needed.

When she came in Tuesday morning, Rachel started going over her notes. It really did take all day to get through the information she gathered the day before and by the end of the day, she felt very confident she understood.

She flagged John down as he walked past her desk on his way out. “Hey John! Are you ready for me to start the rest of the explanation process tomorrow?”

“The more important question is: are you?”

She smiled. “Yes, thanks to you I had a wonderful evening yesterday and a very productive time today. I can’t think of anything else I need to do before moving forward.”

“Fantastic! We can get started first thing.”

Rachel spent the next week and a half sitting with each team member at their workstations, learning how they made their procedural checklists and more importantly, why.

They explained to her how the machines worked, in detail, and what some of the common problems were, and how that connected to the checklist. She asked them loads of questions and they were only too happy to explain it all, because they knew that having a production coordinator who was well-versed in the workings of the machinery was incredibly valuable.

On Monday morning of her third week with the company, she walked into John’s office and sat down, a broad grin on her face. “I’m ready. I know everything about all the machines and now I can effectively do my job. Thank you so much for taking the time to educate me and not rushing the process.”

John had begun chuckling a little midway through her ‘thank you’ speech, and by the time she was done he was trying to smother a laugh. Her brows furrowed in confusion before he explained, “You are very welcome, but Rachel, there are four letters in the word EDGE.”

One of Rachel’s eyebrows went up as if to say, “And?”

“The last two weeks were dedicated to E, Explain. We haven’t gotten to D, Demonstrate, yet.”

“What?”

“Rachel I need you to be competent in operating each one of those machines. If someone is out or if someone quits unexpectedly, it comes down to you to fill the gap. If we have to hire a new team member and the previous team member isn’t around to train them, you’ll have to.”

“But I thought I already learned how to use them?”

“No, people explained to you how they worked and explained how to use them. Now we’re going to continue the EDGE Method learning process on each individual machine, starting with the printing press. You’ve done E already. Now Mike will take you through D, Demonstrate, where he shows you how to use it. Then G, Guide, where he guides you in using it yourself, and finally, E, Enable, where he has you use it yourself with no help from him, to see what gaps in understanding may still exist so he can go back and fill them.”

She was frozen for a moment, disbelief clear on her face. “But that’ll take weeks.”

“Yes.” He smiled.

“Weeks where I am getting literally no work done.”

“To be honest, all that sounds like a lot of work to me.”

Rachel shook her head. “You know what I mean, no productive work.”

“Look,” John said as he sighed and leaned his elbows on his desk. “I know this is probably really different from other companies where you’ve worked, where their focus has been on getting you moving as quickly as possible with as little instruction as they can get away with, but that’s not how we do things here. Companies that operate like that are what Stephen Covey calls ‘Command and Control’ organizations.”

“Well that sounds kind of harsh, my previous managers weren’t mean and controlling. They didn’t boss me around or go on power trips. They trusted me to do a good job, and I always did.”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean. Command and Control is just a description of a procedural structure. A simple description would be that they ‘command,’ meaning, they tell you what to do. They give you a checklist. They might tell you a little bit about why if you ask, or they might not, but what they really want is for you to take that checklist and do as you’re told without understanding all the whys, all the ins and outs of the process, because honestly, that’s a lot more work for them." He paused for a moment to let her absorb that before continuing.

"Then comes 'control.' They want to control the outcome. They think they do, because they gave you the checklist. But in reality, you control the outcome. So their method is doomed from the start. When you fail, because we all fail, you won’t even always know why you failed. But you’ll be held accountable for the failure anyway."

Rachel nodded. She'd definitely experienced that.

"Then you’ll be reprimanded and told to do better. Control. At worst, they’ll shame you and throw you back in to try again—and if they don’t tell you why you failed, it’ll probably happen again. At best, that’s the point where they’ll implement some education. Too little too late though, in my opinion.”

“Well if that’s ‘Command and Control,’ what’s this?”

John leaned over to reach into his desk before pulling a worn and obviously well-used book out of his drawer, and handed it to her. She took the book and read the title out loud. “Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others.” She then looked up at John in question.

“That’s what ‘this’ is,” he explained with a wink. “Years ago, when I landed my first leadership position, my company sent me to a convention. Covey was the keynote speaker, and I was so inspired by his leadership advice. It was everything I had always wanted in a leader when I was coming up through the ranks, and knew this was the leader I wanted to be." He smiled at the memory, then continued his explanation.

"I had reservations about accepting that leadership position in the first place because I didn’t know how to lead in a way I could feel good about. This was an answer to prayer. If you’re interested in why we’re so different, give this a read. I think you’ll like it.”

Rachel nodded and skimmed the back of the book as John spoke again. “At its core, this method: Trust and Inspire, is about education and clarity. If you don’t understand the WHY behind things, you can never truly become competent in them, and if you don’t understand the company’s WHY behind why we exist in the first place, you can’t be truly inspired to do the work. We invest a lot of time into our team members, employing the EDGE Method, so that each person can take ownership over their own processes. That’s true trust. You are in control of the outcome, not me. I’m here to educate and support in any way you need, but not to control the situation. My goal is that when you fail—yes, when,” he clarified as she opened her mouth to protest.

“As I said earlier, we all fail sometimes. We’re human, we’re not perfect and we never will be. We pursue excellence, not perfection. When you fail”—he smiled—“it’s my goal that you and I can go through the process and identify what went wrong, and modify the process so that doesn’t happen again. Then we move forward. We take our failures and use them to improve our processes, not to make you feel bad about yourself.”

Six months later…

“What? How did that happen?” Rachel couldn’t believe that the printing press had broken under her watch. She thought she knew that machine inside and out. She and Mike had gone through everything meticulously, and Mike had thoroughly trained Sherri when he left.

“I don’t know,” Sherri said as she shrugged her shoulders. “It got halfway through the process and stopped, then I couldn’t turn it back on. I followed the checklist we developed exactly.”

Rachel sighed as her stomach knotted in anxiety. I have to tell John I messed up.

“I figured out what happened,” the repairman said as he approached and explained the problem in detail.

Rachel frowned. “That doesn’t have anything to do with anything on this checklist.”

The repairman looked over her checklist, as well as Sherri’s. “You’re right, you needed to check the pressure on the impression cylinder after switching to printing a thicker product.”

“I’ve actually never printed on anything that thick before we added this new offering to the product line,” Sherri said.

Outwardly, Rachel appeared calm, while inwardly she was furious with herself for not knowing that. I should have investigated if any new processes were required to print the thicker product.

“Rachel, please come see me in my office.” John waved for her to come inside.

Sherri looked at her sympathetically and mouthed, “good luck.”

Rachel sat down in the chair opposite John’s desk. “John, the repairman explained what was wrong and when I showed him our checklist to ask how this could have happened, he said there was nothing pertaining to printing on thicker product on the checklist. I am so sorry, this is completely on me.” She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. John was such a great boss and it felt terrible that she’d failed.

John’s expression was bright. “Hey, this is great!”

“Huh?” Maybe he didn’t hear me. “John, I failed.”

“Yes. Didn’t I say that would happen at some point?”

She took a deep breath and blew it out of her mouth. “You did. Yes. I was just sure it wouldn’t because my training was so extensive.”

“We all think that,” he said as he laughed. “But it happens to all of us. Look, do you want to know why I said it’s great?”

“I would love to know, actually, because I’m sure you don’t think it’s great that the machine broke, and I’m sure you don’t think it’s great I failed, so please, tell me.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Actually I do think it’s great you failed. If you hadn’t failed, we wouldn’t know our checklist wasn’t complete. Now we have another step to add so this failure doesn’t happen again. And guess what, it’s not just your failure alone. Mike didn’t know, because we’d always only printed the one product. Taylor, the person who trained Mike, didn’t know it for the same reason. You’re the first person to experience manufacturing a thicker product so you’re the first person to see this failure. That’s all.”

She took a moment to absorb this information. “So, in reality, this failure has existed all along, I’m just the one who uncovered it.”

“Exactly.”

“But I also failed because I didn’t investigate all that might be involved in printing on a thicker product.”

John shrugged. “Okay, yeah. But will you make that mistake again?”

“Definitely not,” Rachel said emphatically.

“So there are two failures we’ve learned from, yes? How can you feel bad about that?”

“That actually does make me feel a lot better. And you not yelling at me makes me feel better too. Not only that, but we don’t even have to work to figure out why we failed because the repairman figured it out for us and now it won’t happen again.”

“You’ve got it.” John knew this day would come, it always did, and he always got a thrill of satisfaction seeing their faces when he said he was happy they failed. I don’t think this moment will ever get old.

John had made sure that she was educated until she was consciously competent, then gave her ownership over the process. He used the EDGE Method to do that, because he’d learned that in the Boy Scouts so many years ago, and felt it was appropriate in all situations.

After making sure she was competent and giving her ownership, he trusted her to manage the situation. He inspired her to invest herself in the area she was responsible for by making sure she understood the company’s underlying WHY—that clarity of purpose that inspired all of them to show up to work each day.