Trust Me, Talk to Me, or Fire Me
I've been having a tough day for a Monday - not that all days aren't tough, but this one is really getting on me for a lot of reasons. It's probably all about childhood - isn't everything? But this morning I was really in no mood to listen to people essentially question my honesty. If I'm new at a job, and you don't trust me - and believe me, I can certainly understand that, then don't give me responsibilities that are outside your comfort zone. Make the trust and comfort of the task and the person match.
As I do more things for you, and prove myself over the course of many projects and many months, then you can either increase that trust - or decrease it as the case may be. But at no time should you as a manager feel like you have no control over the situation. You are the manager, after all. If you're uncomfortable, ask questions until you are comfortable enough to make decisions. If you never get to that place, then you have, by default, made a decision - that you can't trust me. Then I need to go. Period.
But if you talk to me and I am able to make you feel comfortable about the work, or the time or whatever it is that's bothering you, then we both come out ahead - you for asking the questions to get the understanding necessary to extend the trust, and me for taking the time to do the same. It's a win-win every single time. If I can't answer your questions, then your fears were founded, and if I can't make you feel better, then I need to be cut back - managed more closely, or even let go.
All this I'm very comfortable with, because I've been on the other side of the management table as well. It's not easy to walk the fine line of managing and allowing creative people room to invent and create. But it's all about trust. Nothing more, nothing less. If I trust you, then whatever it is that you do for me, good or bad, I'll trust that it's the very best you could have done, and no amount of second-guessing is needed. Things happen, and this is one of those times.
But if I don't trust you, then even if it's on-time, maybe you padded the times and had some of this done already. No trust means that I can't believe a good outcome even when it's a genuinely good outcome.
What's bothering me today is the fact that I feel I'm existing in an atmosphere of a near complete lack of trust. It's not something that someone will come up and talk to me about - it's about the setting of near crazy expectations of the work I have been assigned to do, and how those expectations have made it so that I simply can't be believed. If the project I'm on should have taken two man-years, there's no way I can say that now without people thinking it's just "excuses time" by me. I made the horribly niece assumption that people would know what it is they asked of me, and adjust accordingly. But they didn't.
My mistake.
I'm going to finish this project, and when it's all done and delivered, and everyone is happy, I'm going to talk to those in power and have a frank discussion about the promises made, promises broken, and these expectations. All will be taken into account in what we choose to do going forward.