Trust and Leadership

 

In my learning this week I read a portion of a paper that was called, A Message to Garcia. A big takeaway from this paper was the idea that,” if you want to be entrusted with important tasks, you have to get the job done.” People will gain trust in you when they see that you are not all talk and no action. The application story was very interesting. Here is the story:

 “It was 1899. President William McKinley needed to deliver an urgent message to General Calixto Garcia, the leader of the insurgents in America’s war against Spain. But Garcia was lost somewhere deep inside the mountain vastness of Cuba. “There’s a fellow by the name of Rowan who will find Garcia if anyone can,” someone told the president. So McKinley summoned Colonel Andrew Rowan. Rowan took McKinley’s letter, “sealed it in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia.”

Getting the job done without being told what to do step by step is a quality that is lacking in today’s society. With the invention of the internet, we are always looking to google or YouTube to teach us or walk us through our next task. The new technology is not the problem in my eyes. If Garcia had GPS on his phone, I am sure he would have used it to traverse the mountains in Cuba. I believe that we need to use our brain along with the technology to “get the job done.”

Another assignment was to watch a video featuring Guy Kawasaki. It was titled, Aspects of Building Trust. Three key points are:

1.     Trust others, then they trust you

·       If you first trust people to do the right thing, they will trust you in return. He equated this to 3 business that have trusted people. Because of this trust in people, they are well trusted by consumers which drives return customers. You as a person or company have to trust in your customers to do the right thing.

2.     Bakers VS. Eaters

·       Eaters see the world as I have to get all that I can. Anything you have takes away from what I have. “I need to get as much of the pie as possible.”

·       Bakers see the world as shareable. “The world is an opportunity to make more pies and bigger pies. Trustworthy people are bakers not eaters.”

3.     Default to yes

·        This line of thinking causes you to ask yourself, “How can I help that person?”  Which is in contrast of the normal thinking, “How can that person help me?” By learning to help others you will be trusting in people and helping them will in the end, help you.