Deep down we all know, that what connects us all, builds relationships and what keeps us to stay together is trust. Whereby this is seems to be a common understanding, we sometimes forget, how broad the opportunities that trust leaves us with are.
Back in the days when I lived in Berlin, I used to buy Avocados at a cute stand at the street. The owner was a very talkative and was prim full of energy. While I was picking the fruits he used to tell me the latest stories about his cousins of 3rd degree, his little freche boys or the excellent winery near his apartment. Sometimes our conversations got so engaged, I lost track of the Avocados I picked. So it did happen to me that from time to time I opened my bag at home, noticing that, in all dedication to the conversation I had picked up an overripe fruit.
One day I asked Pedro, the owner of the store to choose the Avocados for me. As a result, I gained both from the byweekly event: The most delicious avocados AND his latest family stories. By putting my trust into his hands, I achieved better results. By making him responsible for the fruits that I'd be eating the next days, I increased the quality of my food, and with it, my life. By giving him the responsibility, I allowed him to impress me, to leave me with the best fruit-experience I could get. Pedro profited in the same way from that move: He could proudly present me the best fruits while getting my whole attention for his vivid stories. By giving him responsibility over a part of my life, I increased the quality of my life and, with it the responsibility for myself.
The same lesson is applicable to teams. After I had started my job as a lead, I learned fast that the more trust you put on a coworker, the more responsibility you put on her, the more initiative you open, the greater are the results you’ll achieve. Giving responsibility means creating responsibility. As human beings we all strive for responsibility. We want to give, we are striving to show, what we can, and are eager to grow. Much more often, than the care receiver it is the care giver that finds it difficult to put trust on another person. As humans, we tend to fear, giving responsibilities away. We have wrong believes in that giving away control means giving away quality and giving away our own responsibility.
After I started my journey as a lead, I had to relearn this the hard way. As a lead, I was in search for responsibility, in search to give design a space and meaning in the big tech world. I was in search for opportunities to prove I was able to lead, and in search for opportunities to prove I was able to produce good results. Therefore I started, like I am sure many, to control what I could do best: Crafting with my own hands. Soon I realized, that it was impossible to cope with the load of results alone. I started to understand that it was necessary to give away control if I wanted to continued producing good results - and that leading means often to create an overarching frame that would allow us to speak the same product language.
The good part, is that I realized quickly that it was not always necessary to know WHO had the conditions to help me reaching a certain targets, but that building trust is a team effort. Trusting means believing that my employees where capable to reflecting upon themselves and that it was my responsibility to build the trust for them to share doubts and fears for certain tasks and topics. Since my team and myself have (re-)discovered our own and each other strengths, and have build up a net of trust, our work got way much more creative, productive and qualitative than any whole multiple of myself could’ve done alone. Today I understand that putting trust into a diverse team is creating incredible momentum, that is having affects beyond the own team structures. The same time, that momentum came out, more and more responsibility came in for me, which meant more trust, more responsibility, and more momentum for my team. „If you want to get responsibility, give responsibility first“
If you and your team are strong enough to put full trust on each other, your teammates will do the best of proving your choice to trust them.
The trust you give, will transform into responsibility they feel. The responsibility they feel will turn into quality your team produces. The quality and momentum of your team will lead to more trust coming in from the outside for you and your team.
Since I know this magical formular, every day I put more and more trust on my team - I love the fact that trust creates bonds, and responsibility. Both is necessary, to grow, as a team, and as individuals.