Countless times I came across the question: how do you do it? How’s business? What is the secret of your cooperation?What can a young, junior leader learn from the functioning of our community? – I asked.
Career changer – also referred to by many as second generation coaches and trainers – professionals. We also bring our previous work experience and expert areas into the community that we are now operating in.
Becoming an entrepreneur and freelancer as a coach doesn’t differ from other forms and situations of entrepreneurship in many ways. The current market situation, coaches appearing by the minute can even show us a frightening state of oversupply, where our human automation motivates us to compete to thrive, either individually or as a team.
For me – who has been involved in professional sport since childhood and then led a large number of teams in the competitive sector for 7 years – a competing, ‘wanting to win at all costs’ approach could have been obvious; it offered a comfortable, already known, well-trodden path. Yet the pursuit of creating win-win situations has been set on our flag!
Our professional community has been operating in the training and development market for almost 3 years and during this period we have been constantly cooperating with players of different sizes in the market – be it a pool of other coaches or a large organizational development company. It was a visceral decision, since this is how we operate within our professional community, why not behave similarly outwards?
The ‘why’ of our instinctive decision, the reasons for the this move from our gut preoccupied me a lot. My previous leadership experience and current leadership role also justified me looking for a rational, responsible explanation behind our decision.
In September 2011, I came across the current issue of the Harvard Business Review: Opportunity to Renew and Build Trust: Working Together. (1)
This issue has been tossed around for a long time lately, searching for its place itself after it has been read. Now reading it again, I found my own secret in it.
In our individualistic world, the lack of trust weaves through our everyday lives, it is present in our local stores, in our workplace, you could say in the last post corner too. Usually we compete, defend, attack and think short-term. Even if we have heard, read or learned about win-win situations, perhaps have experienced win-win situations, we make little effort to consciously create these situations.
Gyula Bakacsi’s article in the Harvard Business Review provides the scientific basis and answers with which we were able to justify the former instinctive choice, the steps taken through cooperation. Our managerial, entrepreneurial, or private decision can be conscious in favour of cooperation. As a team leader, we can choose a collaborative strategy, which is the key to long-term success. The strategy of cooperation rests on two pillars with different logics, yet being interdependent: synergy and trust.
§ Synergy – I quote from Gyula Bakacsi – is a game of logics: are parties with different interests but depending on each other able to find the combination of their resources that results in maximum coherence?
§ Trust is a pillar rooted in the behavioural dimension: to what extent do the cooperating parties trust that they will do well (better) in distributing the total benefits generated?
I claim that we Hungarians are typically distrustful, self-interested individualists. According to Bakacsi, our self-identity and self-image mostly suggest this too. Yet, if we look at our proverbs and our axioms, we find good examples of both individualistic (e.g., Do it yourself sir, if you have not servant. ”) and collective (e.g.,“ Many geese overpower a pig. ”) thinking.
What are the foundations of trust?
In his 2001 article Trust – The Fundamental Bond in Global Collaboration (2), Child distinguishes as follows:
“There are broadly two bases for trust. The first is traditional in nature. It relies on the sharing of attributes that derive from membership in the same social group, and it is reinforced by the past experience provided by that membership.… The basis of traditional trust is actually synonymous with belonging to the same reference groups or culture…Many traditional foundations for trust are, however, synonymous with belonging to the same peer group or culture.
Institutions provide the other main foundation for trust. Legally enforceable contracts and guarantees of competence and quality provided by recognized certification, such as qualifications and standards maintained by the ISO, are prime examples.
When people can extrapolate from past experience or take the protection of institutions for granted, trust can be offered without too many qualms. The problem is that in global business relations, both of these conditions may be rather weak. Entry into new, emerging-economy markets is a significant instance.”
In light of all the above, how can we build trust?
- I trust people because they have proven that they are worthy of trust
- I trust people because I rationally admit that with trust-based collaboration, we both do better. I maintain trust as long as I trust the institution itself, or as long as the other violates the institutional rules, thereby proving that he is unworthy of abstract trust.
Whichever way I choose as a leader, as a person, if I choose at all, there is an advance in it, which can be said to be risky. Yet the question arises, what do I risk, when I don’t risk? How “rewarding” is the path for me when choosing the lost benefit, and how much when advancing the trust for some reason?
Let us assume that everyone trusted, trusts someone or something. It’s worth thinking about how we’ve built trust in the past, how we’ve worked together so far. We also have to think about how others can work with us well, cleanly, in the long run with us, what our own “user manual” is? To what extent does this manual identify with the medium, team, segment, area that we are driving? Can my environment also identify with this pillar of our collaborative strategy?
In my own paradigm, leadership is based on trust, and only then I move on to thinking about the other pillar of the collaborative strategy, synergy.
Choosing a collaborative strategy is a conscious leadership decision. With the initial step of advance trust, we can share a bigger cake with other cooperating players in the market, regardless of the nature of the market segment, where, as a result of the cake enlargement, the portion falling on us in the division is larger than the slice we could have gotten from the original cake. Mutual value creation is also inherent in the chosen strategy.
- (1) Bakacsi Gyula – Együttműködni nem kell, hanem érdemes! – Harvard Business Review, Magyar kiadás, 2011.
(Gyula Bakacsi – You don’t have to cooperate, it’s worth it! – Harvard Business Review, Hungarian edition, 2011.)
- (2) Child J. – Trust – the fundamental bond in global collaboration – Organizational Dynamics, 2001.
Németh Bite Barbara MCC
coach, leadership and OD consultant, trainer