Like salt, everything gets better with trust

I love a good metaphor so this article hooked me instantly. In ‘Understanding Trust: The Salt Of Leadership’, behavioural statistician Joseph Folkman shares his observations from a career studying leadership and trust.

He uses a childhood memory of sharing a melon with his father to illustrate the elusive power of trust: ‘the salt does not add a new taste of its own, but it changes the chemical structure of the melon to bring out the flavor that otherwise would be locked in the cantaloupe’s cells.’

Analysing data from ‘over 400,000 direct reports who reported to 75,000 leaders’, he discovered that when trust is present the effect of these four leadership skills are dramatically enhanced:

• Developing a strategic perspective
• Connecting to the outside world
• Establishing stretch goals
• Championing change

In a sense, trust is the je ne sais quoi of transformation, innovation and experimentation. It’s how the magic happens. Make time for it.