Building Trust - Lesson 4

Now that we've talked about the behaviors and the mindsets and how they have a significant impact on trust, I want us to be able to recognize trust and distrust. What I want to share with you in this session is what are the signs of each in your ministry or in your workplace because you need to have an awareness of distrust in your team. Why? Because when we started these sessions, I reminded you of the fact that when distrust exists, you will not know it.

You may be able to see it, but you will not know it because it's not out there on the table. Because it can be very difficult to address the state of trust or distrust in our teams, even when you address an issue that requires trust. Distrust is insidious and it's quiet, but it manifests itself in multiple ways that can be identified by paying attention to the interactions between your team members.

Now you may not like this, but it's up to you to spot these signals of distrust because if you don't, it will spread like a disease. So let's begin to develop an awareness of distrust in your team. When someone on your team has a problem with someone else, they tell an office mate or manager or pastor instead of addressing the issue head-on because it's easier for them to make decisions than it is meeting one-on-one.

Because when the full team is present, there's a hesitancy to speak our mind because we know that other people may not agree with us. You see, the decisions in your workplace get made slowly. Even on smaller teams, we check with several different people to make sure that any changes will be all right.

And if we don't, then we find ourselves behind the eight ball not willing to say anything. But meetings are a big deal in your organization. Everyone attends a lot of meetings, especially the larger your ministry is.

Even ones that don't really lie in their specific job responsibilities. So when someone messes up or fails to do something that they said that they would, we don't really confront them about it, especially in meetings. It's more important that we avoid hard feelings or actually have an impact on what other people think about us, especially the more introverted a person is and the more subjective they are.

So here's what I want us to think about, and that is the fact that you may be surprised that agreeing to statements suggests that a lack of trust is there on your team. And you say, "Wait a minute, you mean if I agree, I am actually promoting distrust?" Absolutely. Absolutely.

If you do not bring out the information, then you are displaying a nature of distrust by not presenting the actions or interactions that need to be dealt with to bring an issue to the surface. You see, we are taught in everything from medicine to the way that we interact with people to deal with the surface rather than core issues. And that way we avoid dealing with good conflict.

And conflict is good because the good conflict actually addresses the core issues, but good conflict can never happen or occur if we just sit there with our arms crossed, mouth shut, and don't deal with the issues that bring things out. You see, we have to have confidence in the people that we work with and that we interact with and know that they love us and we love them enough to be truthful. This is what happens when employees don't trust their management enough to express their problems in a constructive manner.

You see, you have not because you ask not. You die from a lack of knowledge. This is scriptural, folks.

We have to bring these things to the forefront because when we express those differences in the form of good conflict, we are illustrating our love for the ministry and our desire to help that ministry. You see, if you don't, what's going to happen? The tension is going to build up and build up and build up until it leads to some sort of either disaster for the ministry or an internal feeling like I'm out of here. The second aspect is no accountability and that is when failures are not addressed.

It suggests that a team is fragile in its relationships and if that team is fragile, core issues will never be addressed and when they're not addressed, I can assure you at some point or another, we're going to get off track and all it takes is being a little bit off track and we don't have accountability because accountability builds intimacy within the team and when we are intimate with each other, we can actually have good conflict. We can actually support another person by helping them grow and develop. Number three is decisions are made slowly and or by a fiat.

If everyone has a hand in the pot, people are going to lack faith in their peers. Someone has to present the idea. Yes, it can be discussed but as a leader in ministry, we have to work through that collaboratively but the leader must make the decision because if you don't, there's going to be communication breakdowns and we know that we must communicate in multiple formats on multiple occasions to ensure that that communication does not break down.

Otherwise, people interpret things the way that they think they need to be done and they start getting off track. Fourth, everybody's at every meeting. What does that have to do with trust? Well, it shows that people are afraid of actually getting ambushed or have something taken away or put into their agenda that they don't want to do or be involved with or that they feel incompetent with.

You see, employees that try to be everywhere all the time are running scared and that is a massive indicator of distrust. Now, with these things in mind, what questions do you have? Have you ever yourself or known somebody to test the idea of how people agree to statements? Have you ever seen a leader say something untrue or outrageous to find out if anybody will stand up and disagree with it and use that as an object lesson to say how important it is for people to have that kind of input in those situations? First of all, there's brilliant insight in what you just asked because a leader that will not push the envelope a little bit with the people in their ministry will never really know whether they are yes people or whether they are there to support the cause of the ministry. Now, here's what I will tell you.

Most leaders have two issues. Number one, they're either authoritarian and they never give the opportunity for people to speak into the ministry or they refuse to deal with hard issues or core issues, both of which are going to immediately invoke distrust. So, what am I saying? I'm saying that a leader almost has to be intentional at times, not on a regular basis, but he has to give a preface to a statement and identify where the heart and soul of the people are in the ministry and say something that may be errant and be willing to tell them afterwards, "I need to make sure that you're on my team."

So, this kind of leader is willing to test the waters to make sure that the people on their team are aligned with the culture of the organization. When you talk about the part of accountability and making sure that failures are addressed, is it also important to celebrate successes so that people, when they do the things that they're tasked to do, get positive feedback on a regular basis as an incentive to continue that so that the overall culture is positive? One of the best things that I think is neglected in organizations is the fact of catching people doing something right. My background includes being one of the founders of the Balfour Motivational Research Institute that studied employee motivation.

Recognition is critical to the success of engagement, productivity, performance, and profitability of any organization, whether it's ministry or whether it's secular. Without recognition, at some point, the employee will feel undervalued. Now, most employees feel undervalued anyway, so what we have to do is identify times to praise and applaud their efforts, regardless of what another department or another team or a ministry and even a congregation may deem important, because without that, an employee will not perform, they will not go the extra mile, and they will not be considered engaged with the organization.

Those organizations that have a structured and a situation-based recognition program in the secular world are up to 147% more profitable, have higher levels of performance, have almost double the retention that regular organizations have, and to be quite honest with you, I think it's even higher in ministry, because the burnout rate in ministry is higher than the burnout rate in secular organizations. Absolutely great insight. I think this is just one question, but I need to ask it in two different ways.

Let's say you're a leader and you think that decision A needs to be made, and so you bring the staff in and you talk about it. How do you know when to say, "Okay, thanks for your input, this is what we're going to do?" If the leader's going to lead, the decision has to be made. 

Student: Is there any clues you can give us as to when is that point in time? 

Dr. Coker: That's a very good point, and I think the important thing for us to remember is that each person needs to have individual input.

Now, whether we do that by a survey, which is the easiest way to do this, to where they can get that individual input, or whether you do it through an interviewing process, if you have the time to do that. But allow the person to speak individually. Once you have gathered input from everyone, if the objective that you are set out for is agreed upon by the majority, I would actually give the statistics for what has been decided on.

If they do not agree, we can say that after consideration, here is what we have decided will be the best focus and attention to making these changes for the ministry. But we go back to, as I mentioned in previous lessons, the Hawthorne theory. As long as people feel that they have that input, they will go along and accept the decision much more readily.

But I think the key, in most cases, is individual input, separately, so that they are not swayed by other people's opinions. I notice that you switch from singular to plural, from I to we. So the leader would say, after the discussions, "This is what we have decided to do."

That's absolutely correct, and it's critical, because any time that a leader uses that word I so much, they automatically move, in other people's minds, to authoritarian rule, rather than collaborative rule. Let me ask the same question a different way. I assume that there is a point in time where if the leader wants to do A and the staff wants to do B, you say, "Okay, we'll do B." Especially if the leader has a strong commitment to something, but hasn't been able to pull the staff or the elders along.

I assume you just say, "Okay, we'll do it your way." Okay, now, that is going to happen, especially when you have a high IS type leader that is very subjective. It's going to happen from time to time.

So when you have that situation, the best way to approach it is this. I've given you my thoughts on this, and I've actually shared with you the fact that I tried something similar in the past that did not produce the results that I was actually after. However, the consensus of you as a staff who are actually working in the trenches is extremely important to me, and here's what I would like to do.

I would like to follow your direction for 90 days. I would like to follow the way that you think this needs to be done for this time period, and then I would like for us to reconvene at that time. And if your results are what you believe they will be, I'm all in.

I'm all for it. But at that point, if we find that this is not the direction that is bringing about the results that we want, I would hope that you would be open to further discussion. Let me follow that up with another kind of scenario where the leader feels really strongly that something should happen, and in fact, there's warrant in how the ministry was put together that this is the sort of thing they should be doing, and the leadership doesn't want to do it.

Because they don't want to take the risk of whatever be the case. What do you do in that situation? Well, that's a very good point, because there will come times that there will be differences. In particular cases like that, we have to go back to the Scripture.

And the question has to be asked of whether it's a board, the elders or the congregation. And when Paul said, "I become all things to all people." And when the Scripture tell us that God is not a respecter of persons.

Who is our ministry designed for? I ask you as elders, I ask you as a congregation, who is our ministry designed for? And if they answered, "For the world," then are we actually ministering to the world? Or are we ministering to our friends? And if we are ministering to our friends, I'm struggling with that. Because God called me to minister to whoever was there and available and willing to hear the message of salvation. So therefore, I'm going to ask you to think about, are we a closed church? Or are we a church with open arms? And if we are a church with open arms, we have to welcome everyone.

If God's not a respecter of persons, I have no choice but to love everyone. Because if I don't love everyone, I'm arguing with God. And I can assure you from my experience, you don't want to argue with God.