Trust & Expanding My Conscious Leadership

by Joel Wright
2021

My trust quest surfaced while watching the 2021 Disney film, Raya and the Last Dragon. This magical fantasy shares the tale of how dragons and humans once lived together in peace and harmony, until an evil entity threatens their world. The dragons sacri fice themselves to save humanity and banish the evil force. 500 years later, the same evil returns to a divided world where humans are siloed by tribes. It’s an adventure, a journey of trust and teamwork to save the world.

Had I read this description prior to the movie, I doubt I would have paid much attention to the phrase, “a journey of trust and teamwork.” But by the end, trust was firing connections and questions across my brain, leaving me pondering what part trust plays in leadership.

I have learned that whenever leadership is brought up, the next series of questions should be:

• How do you define effective leadership?
• How do you know when effective leadership is happening?
• What’s the difference between “leader” and “leadership”?

Knowing how an individual or group of people thinks about leadership is critical, because it informs their worldview and influences their practices, their ways of being and doing. When different leadership beliefs are at play, competing practices disrupt deci sion making, systems, operations, culture, and more. For example, if one person believes that all leadership decisions go through one leader and an other person believes that leadership is a collective process, this discontinuity can result in disagree ment, disengagement, and lack of trust.

There it is again: trust. It’s no surprise that trust con tinues to surface; just consider our everyday reality: maskers and anti-maskers, vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, polarized politics, news or fake news, all impacting family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors. How does our current context negatively or positively affect trust in leadership relationships—how we lead with others, and tackle everyday and seemingly impossible challenges? What’s your experience?

The film, Raya and the Last Dragon, had me wonder ing what part trust plays in a revolutionary and rela tively new (2008) relational leadership framework from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). (Disclosure: I worked at CCL for almost 13 years). This newish leadership framework exploded within our Leadership Beyond Boundaries work, informing and powering our global effort.

To really get to the essence of my question about the role trust plays in leadership you have to under stand that I view the world through this leadership framework from CCL. It was first published in the Leadership Quarterly by Drath et al, in 2008.

The article makes the case for why a new ontology, a new way of thinking about leadership, is needed. It suggests a more integrative framework is needed because the common understanding of leadership centers on leadership being about leaders, follow ers, and goals. Based on an extensive literature review, the authors suggest that this way of thinking about leadership isn’t serving us in our increasingly peer-based, collaborative, interdependent work and world.

The article is a must-read. Every time I apply or share it, it deepens my conviction that this integrative framework has the potential to empower every one everywhere. I’ve witnessed how it’s empowered young and old, leaders at all levels and sectors, from boardrooms to individuals living on the street in different corners of the world.

Let me briefly describe the framework and its implications. In their article, Drath et al. explain that leadership is a collective process that produces the out comes of Direction, Alignment, and Commitment (DAC).

In an updated article, McCauley (one of the original authors) defines the outcomes of effective leadership as:

When the definitions of D, A, and C are shared, they are often coupled with the image of a three-legged stool or a three-sphere Venn diagram (above) to show the dynamic and interdependent nature of D, A, and C. Each leg of the stool, or sphere of the Venn diagram representing Direction, Alignment, or Commitment.

Three key points to understand about DAC are:
1. D, A, and C are the outcomes of effective leadership. This focus on outcomes helps us expand our thinking, helps us go beyond the limiting idea that an individual has to be at the center of leadership and it acknowledges how a group contributes to the process of achieving direction, alignment, and commitment. Thus ultimately giving the group a better chance of achieving results.

2. Leadership is a collective process. Thinking of leadership as a collective process is empowering and inviting. Often leaders think they need to know it all and be it all. When we acknowledge it’s a collective process, more people can be included, increasing engagement, ownership, and creativity.

3. Leadership is relational. For a long time people have thought about leadership as influence. That’s always felt manipulative to me, but thinking about leadership as relational, as relational theory suggests, helps us understand how an organization, team, or community culture can inform and reinforce how we interact and lead with others.

All three of these (outcomes, a collective process, and a relational reality) point to the interdependence of the world. They acknowledge that work and life is collaborative.

How is trust not part of every dimension of DAC?

That is my question and my mind-bending moment following Raya and the Last Dragon. Further, what has been written about trust being central to Direction, Alignment, and Commitment? Had I missed something?

That night my mind continued to turn trust over and over. I recalled a conversation with a Leadership Forum Community colleague years back after a team presented on DAC. He pulled me aside and said, “Where is trust in this framework?”

I didn’t have a good answer at the time but he was onto something then and my mind was only now catching up. My mind was triggered — new insights and questions were surfacing across projects and conversations. I couldn’t sleep.

In the end my brain began crafting a mental email. Surrendering, I got up, typed it, and sent it to some trusted friends (some of whom were the authors of the original Leadership Quarterly article). In essence I asked, “What research exists about the role trust plays in achieving the leadership outcomes of D, A, and C?”

I explained that I always knew trust to be an important element but I think it’s much more central than I once realized, especially in achieving DAC. For example, trust had to exist between leaders and followers. If it didn’t, it would all break down.

Now as I consider trust in conjunction with DAC I think of it as the seat on the stool, or the arms that join the legs together. After processing this, I now find myself believing more strongly that trust is central because it’s part of D, A, and C:

• D: sustained agreement about direction can’t happen without trust
• A: Alignment – all the interdependence of A is about trust: systems, roles, teams…all working on trust.
• C: making the work and well being of the group a priority is all about trust, all about having each other’s backs!

How is trust not central to this? What have I missed or am I just reaching a new level of consciousness or awareness?

I hit “send” on my email and waited, curious what my colleagues would say, curious if I’d missed some thing over the years.

And then the responses started coming in:

• “Since my early clinical studies I was taught that trust is the number one most essential quality in human relations. It is the sine qua non in social psychology — literally without which nothing else.” First respondent

• “Interesting question, Joel. I agree trust is essential and something that is earned. We may have a level of trust going into a team or project but that increases or declines depending on what happens.” (Suggestion to look at Reina Trust Building Institute Quiz: https://reinatrustbuilding.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/ODN-Building-SustainableTrust-wout-quiz.pdf) Second respondent

I’d been exposed to the Reina Trust model several times both through the Leadership Forum Community and at CCL. From their research, assessment tools, and case studies, they highlight the three key components of trust: Trust of Character, Trust of Communication, and Trust of Capability. Their case studies demonstrate increases in employee engagement, business performance, and decreases in trust breaking behaviors.

Another response came in the form of a phone call. We chatted each other’s ears off, philosophizing for well over an hour, making connections across D, A, and C but ultimately concluding that trust most deeply connected with the outcome of Commitment. This conclusion was later supported when I found CCL’s free DAC assessment having one assessment item under Commitment naming trust, “We trust one another to accomplish the work of the group.” As right as this is, I still couldn’t help but think trust should be more.

About a week went by before a concise simple response showed up in my inbox:

No trust –> opportunistic direction.
No trust –> opportunistic alignment.
No trust –> opportunistic commitment.

Conclusion: DAC can exist without trust, but it will be driven by lower drives and logics. This can succeed for a while! But does it fit your strategy? Is it sustainable? Third respondent

Wow! This is what I loved about having trusted relationships, trusted colleagues that I could reach out to, learn from each of them and expand my thinking. And it didn’t stop with just these emails. Over the subsequent months, my curiosity, my increased awareness and consciousness, began initiating conversations and posing questions.

A week or so later I found myself explaining these connections to a colleague who leads a fellows program for a top national foundation. Upon concluding my story he simply said, “Joel, do you know what my dissertation was on?”

No, I responded.

“Trust.”

He explained that trust isn’t the seat of the three legged stool or the arms that hold those legs together; it’s the foundation the stool sits on.

Boom! Of Course!

Trust is the floor the stool sits on.

It’s the foundation, the context, the culture of beliefs that inform the practices and processes that make D, A, and C possible…and in turn inspiring, engaging, and empowering.

By the time the 2021 “Leading to Repair” Leadership Forum Summit commenced, I kept witnessing how trust was either explicitly or implicitly the foundation or central to every leadership example shared (videos from the 2021 summit can be found on the LFC Youtube channel).

Often I would ask the question, “What part did trust have in the process?” It was in Anthem’s Health Care work, Johnson and Johnson’s example, Cairin Taylor’s Workday talk, the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village story, and Polarity Partnership’s example of the Illumination Project about shootings in Charles ton: all spoke to the significance of trust.

Beyond all these good connections and my own deepening understanding of the importance of trust, I’ve found myself integrating trust more intentionally into my work, with my colleagues, and into countless conversations. It’s powerful. It’s expansive. It’s generative. It names something we often don’t include. Why don’t we include it?

This question brings me back to considering how trust influences leadership, and more specifically how trust influences the leadership outcomes of DAC. My answer was found in my multi-month quest, email exchanges, re-reading the original DAC Leadership Quarterly article, talking with the authors, engaging in LFC sessions, and sharing and designing solutions with my new colleagues at Square. It was also affirmed in a 2020 Leadership Quarterly article: “Developing the theory and practice of leadership development: A relational view,” by Cynthia McCauley and Charles J. Palus.

My answer: Trust is an ambiguous term, we know it when we see it and feel it but we don’t often know how to break it down and operationalize it. Ego too can be a barrier: just trust me or my ideas. I believe the relational orientation of the DAC framework helps us understand leadership as a relational process, a collective social process. This helps us consider how trust is a type of currency in the leader ship process.

Given this thinking, a set of questions are emerging: what are the conditions, beliefs and practices that increase trust in achieving the leadership outcomes of Direction, Alignment, and Commitment. How do we develop:

Trust in the Purpose (Direction)?
Trust in the Process (Alignment)?
Trust in the People (Commitment)?

We already know some of the ways to foster trust in these areas: having a culture of psychological safety, applying action inquiry and dialogue, employing polarity thinking and maturing the leadership logics of everyone because we’re all still transforming. These are just a few…

In work and our world, we have some significant interdependent challenges that require a relational leadership approach – we can’t tackle them alone. How can we use DAC and trust to assess how we’re doing in tackling our leadership challenges? If we think about the one world we all live on…What do we need and what can we do to foster trust in an agreed upon Direction? How are you contributing to leadership trust? How could we agree upon a com mon Direction to save our planet? How can we foster trust across our socio-economic boundaries to create systems that coordinate our efforts (Alignment)? How do we cultivate trust in each other, that we’ll prioritize our efforts and lean in together to tackle this challenge (Commitment)? And how can we apply this in our neighborhood, with family, and in our work world? What would our life and world look like if we could garner greater trust across our leadership outcomes of Direction, Alignment, and Commitment?

Supplemental Resources:

• Leadership Quarterly article: Direction, alignment, commitment: Toward a more integrative ontology of leadership
• CCL White Paper: Making Leadership Happen
• 2021 Leadership Forum Summit Videos
• “Positive Turbulence” podcast: The Calculus of Trust. An interview with Darrly Stickel.