Whole Leaders, Wild Trust

CHAPTER 12Competent: Build Trust Through Excellence

A whole and trusted leader is aware of their strengths and their limitations, and is continually turning their blind spots into deeper self-awareness.

There are few places in the world where competence and our need for trust intersect more obviously than in a hospital. On a recent trip to the hospital with my dad, I was once again confronted with my need for trust and my need to believe in the competence of his caregivers. While I could assume that every nurse and doctor who entered his room brought the same high level of expertise, it would be naive to assume that is true. But, if that hospital we are entering is going to be a place we trust, the basic competence of every caregiver is one of the most critical drivers of trust.

Trust is defined as your belief in my integrity and that I will have your best interests at heart, my ability, my reliability, and my strength, and that I will tell you the truth if any of those things are missing. Your understanding of your competence is related to almost every part of trust. How can I do what you are asking me to do, do it well, and do it consistently if I don’t understand what it is I am actually good at doing and where I am weak or untested?

When we understand our strengths and expertise and others know them as well, everything changes. The problem is that oftentimes we haven’t been given the opportunity to do an honest audit of our skills and what we know and so we aren’t even ...