In building your team, building trust is absolutely essential! One of the challenges of leadership is to successfully, routinely, and reliably transfer responsibility to someone else. Great leaders identify those in their orgranization who have these qualities and who not only are very reliable and trustworthy themselves, but are able to identify and develop similar qualities in those they work with.
We've discussed the need to build depth in an organization. Depth is the result of trust and the successful transfer of responsibility. Failure to transfer responsibility will greatly constrain an organization. How productive can a team be if everyone is waiting on one person to make decisions, or even a team of owners who can't come to a decision due to lack of management structure, definition, and transfer of responsibility to those who are closest to what is being done?
Successful teams build trust. Owners define roles and expectations in writing. They also define specific achievable objectives to which their team will be accountable. These might be cost limits on purchases or labor, for example. They then let their teams work together to accomplish the stated objectives. At the end of a specified time period, the team reports to their manager(s), and adjustments are made for the next time period.
All of this activity is based upon trust. Trust is crucial. Build trust, and build your team.
