I was on a Sales Team meeting about a year ago.  We worked down the list of AEs (Account Executives) for a certain topic.  One of the new (to the team) reps started their update off with “I’ve made mistakes.  There are things I could have done better.”  They explained their status and what they were working on.  They also covered their mistakes and what they planned to do differently this next quarter.  Once complete, someone at the CxO level stepped in and was very supportive.  They offered valid/useful feedback.

I found this so refreshing for three reasons.  If your workplace is not safe enough to make vulnerable statements like this then I suggest you read on.  This will hopefully give you some visibility to deciding what needs to change.  It could be a hard decision, but a life changing one.

“I’ve made mistakes.  There are things I could have done better.“

If you’ve read Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team then you know about how lack of trust will ruin any team.  He’s not talking about Predictive Trust.  Predictive Trust is when we have a history – you say you’ll do something and I have a level of trust that you will come through.  Rather it is vulnerability based trust that he speaks of. To be able to be vulnerable and admit your failings openly.  This creates an invaluable dynamic for a team.

Three High Level Benefits of Trust

The first key value from a team perspective is that when people feel safe they will communicate more.  When communication happens the team is more effective and corrects errors sooner.  People are happier, more successful and revenue (commission!) is higher.  A firm’s employee retention will be higher too.

The second is that without this sort of trust, you can’t tackle the second disfunction of a team – fear of conflict.  If you don’t have that vulnerability based trust, conflict becomes politics.  Someone is trying to win, rather than a team trying to solve a problem in the best way for the given situation.  It is far better when conflict is in the pursuit of truth, to try and find the best possible answer.

The third is that trust overcomes resistance to change.  If your company is sprinting a marathon, change will be more frequent.  If stakeholders don’t have trust, they will be less likely to support change championed by others.

Risks

When a team’s leadership only wants to hear positive things, you will plod along wasting company resources.  Along the way you are hampering the careers and skill growth of your employees.  A prime example here is when Sales only wants to hear positive things.  When SEs can’t speak up about priorities not being a technical fit.  When quarterly projections slip and AEs complain to leadership that SEs are working “against the deal” by internally sharing feedback that it isn’t a good technical fit.

In more detail . . .

Imagine a firm with six different verticals.  Firms often break up Sales Teams to work on specific markets.  It helps keep their messaging consistent and more accurate.  One of the verticals has not been making its sales goal.  AEs are having a very hard time lining up meetings.  Discovery calls rarely lead to demos, and demos never lead to POCs.

After a year of observations, plus a lot of research, an SE tries to speak up internally.  They’ve researched a hundred firms, been on dozens of calls.  From that experience they can see how there is not a good technical fit for the company’s solution for the majority of firms on the named accounts list.  In a safe environment this would have lead to a constructive dialogue.

Imagine instead that the SE is quickly challenged by a VP two levels higher up.  So you’re saying we aren’t a fit for the entire <vertical>?  The SE clarifies that they had said “the majority of the firms (they) had researched”, but the aggressive and confrontational tone from above makes it clear the topic is not open for discussion. 

The results of the lack of trust here?   The company spends another year trying to land business in this space before giving up and shutting down the vertical.  During that time, AEs and SEs have worked hard but not seen much income.  The sales people have had months of stress over not making their numbers, and everyone has had fewer opportunities to sharpen their skills.  Several talented, but disillutioned, team members have left during this time also.

A similar example, after a discovery call the SE is now aware that the solution likely won’t work as desired for the potential customer.  On an internal call they try to explain to the AE what the technical issues are.  Despite only selling the technology for 2 or 3 months, the AE decides to voice an opinion to the SE’s boss that the “SE is working against the deal”.  The SE is there to help from the technical perspective.  And the AE is clearly too new to understand.  But when word filters back to the SE, the working environment is irrevocably damaged.  No trust.

One of the Three Choices when This Doesn’t Exist

If you can’t trust your leadership, you have three choices.  Inaction is always a choice.  I’m not going to give that much more attention other than mentioning it here.  If you choose to tolerate this environment, you have no right to complain.  Winston Churchill only worried about inaction, not inaction for a specific reason.

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”  Winston Churchill

Earlier I gave some hypothetical examples of the risks a company faces when there isn’t a safe environment for discussion.  Hopefully you’ll take those to heart and make one of the following remaining choices.

The Last Two Choices

If you aren’t going to settle for inaction, then more importantly – what can you change?

Ultimately this is a cultural item.  It has to filter down from the top through action.  Visible action.  I remember Jenn Tejada, the CEO of PagerDuty, saying during a call about company Culture “the fish stinks from the head.”  Your leadership needs to regularly admit their mistakes, and also praise (as well as protect) those that are open and honest.  Critically, they also need to make it clear that acting contrary to this value will not be tolerated.  I’ve gotten to see leadership step in and demonstrate that they are living this value.

You can chose to be more open.  Support others that do the same.  

When culture is too far gone there is only one last choice left.  This is especially true when you are too low in the chain to have influence.  The only other choice is to move on.  When you research new roles hopefully you can tell from the interview questions asked of you, as well as those you ask, how the culture is. 

Remember, culture is not an ingredient in yogurt.  It is more than a poster the wall.

Images from Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash  and Mark Stoop on Unsplash