Control and Trust

I have been thinking recently about control and trust. One of the organisations with which I work is keen to build more trust as part of its culture. That follows the retirement of a CEO who was very controlling.  He was highly competent, very knowledgeable, and normally had the good of the organisation at heart - but he ruled with a rod of iron, and that had some unfortunate side effects (as well as keeping things running very smoothly). One, it seems to me, is that many people were infantilised.  

Even senior people, with large personalities seem to struggle to take on responsibility. And managers throughout the organisation struggle to trust others (peers or subordinates) to do anything beyond the routine.  In a fast-changing industry, that is problematic.

Discussing this with some senior people, it became clear to me that part of the problem was a failure to distinguish between control and controls.

Jane in our GP14 on Ullswater

When I was challenging them to trust more, it kept coming back to a fear of losing control - and then disastrous things might happen. They accept that they need to be able to delegate more - and to trust more - but the c-word keeps coming up.

But if one thinks about controls, rather than control, things change. The analogy I like is sailing my dinghy on Ullswater. One of the joys of dinghy sailing is the immediacy and impact of feedback: get it wrong, and you are quickly in the water, wet, cold and spluttering.

If I am sailing with someone less skilled than I am (and that's a pretty low bar...) and want to be sure not to capsize, the easiest thing is to take control, and sail the boat myself.  But if I want to be free to do other things (take a few photos, perhaps), then I need to hand over control.  And to do that with confidence, I need to teach the other person how to use the controls. These are simple enough in a dinghy: the mainsheet, the tiller...  

James takes the controls...

But I think the analogy good for organisational life: if the right controls are in place, and the person to whom we are delegating understands both the requirements of the task, and the controls and their purpose, then we can afford to take the risk of trusting them with the tasks at hand.

So rather than focusing on control (which can really be a proxy for our own ego needs) it is more valuable to ensure that we really understand the necessary controls: and then we can hand over control - and free ourselves for more strategic leadership activities.

Vulnerability and Control

I have long been a fan of the work of Peter Block, particularly his book Flawless Consulting (indeed I have blogged about it before, most recently here).  One of the points he makes is that most resistance to change, or to consultants' recommendations, spring from concerns about control and vulnerability.

I have often found that to be the case, and when I get an unexpected reaction from someone to a suggested action, I often find that considering issues of control and vulnerability is helpful to understand it.

This week, I have noticed these two issues cropping up in a number of other situations, and I am now wondering how universal they are, in relation to a range of difficulties we face. 

For example, in a recent episode of The Why Factor on the BBC World Service, they were discussing Self Harm. And guess what: vulnerability and control emerged as key issues. Vulnerability, perhaps predictably; but control? Yet what come through is that when a young person is cutting himself or herself, being in control of the pain, and then of the response to that pain (and indeed switching from enduring pain to looking after oneself) are a very important part of the satisfaction that some report from the process.

And then I reflected on something much closer to home: the degree of mental and emotional energy I have expended thanks to one of my clients deciding (contra all my other clients) that I fall under the IR35 regulations. I won't bore you with the details, but it is clearly a wrong decision, and one that is very much against my interests (and I think, finally, we are making progress towards a potential better decision). But the features of the process that caused me to expend so much energy were precisely those: I felt a decision was being taken that was both wrong and very damaging of my interests without my having any say in the matter: I was losing control. And the damage to my interests (if all my clients took the same approach, I would have to close my business...) made me feel very vulnerable.

So it has been an interesting week, and I will continue to consider other issues that I and others find difficult and explore the degree to which vulnerability and control are major factors.