Trust grows through the ordinary encounters that show people how much they matter.
By Keith Burton | Leadership Is Personal
A conversation with a FedEx delivery driver in Memphis has stayed with me throughout my career.
At the end of his shift, he was cleaning out his truck, something he routinely did before clocking out. A manager approached and abruptly told him to stop and clock out immediately.
The driver asked why. The response was another instruction to stop.
He went home that evening wondering what he had done wrong. He talked it over with his wife. The following day, he learned that a new procedure for cleaning vehicles had taken effect, but no one had explained it to him.
As he recounted the experience, he became tearful.
“It made me feel like a little man.”
That sentence has stayed with me.
A few moments of explanation could have helped him understand the change and finish his day with his dignity intact. Instead, he carried the uncertainty home.
For anyone responsible for leading others, there is a great deal to learn from that encounter.
The person closest to the work
Early in an assignment in Seattle, Jerry Calhoun, then head of human resources at Boeing, encouraged me to seek answers to leadership questions among the men and women working in the factories at Renton and Everett.
His counsel was practical: spend time where the work happens. Listen to the people doing it. Learn what they understand that you may be missing.
I have returned to that advice throughout my career.
People experience leadership through encounters close to their work: how a manager responds to a question, explains a decision, acknowledges a mistake, or handles a disagreement.
Those encounters teach people what to expect. They learn whether asking for help is welcome. Whether a concern will receive a fair hearing. Whether their judgment matters.
Over time, those experiences shape trust.
Experience needs reflection
My friend and colleague Ron DeFeo, who's been a top comms leader at The Home Depot and CCO at Darden Restaurants and American Airlines, once reminded me how much early leadership development happens through trial and error. We make decisions, stumble, watch others, listen, and gradually learn what responsibility requires.
Experience gives us material to learn from. Reflection helps us understand it.
That is one reason mentoring matters so much. An experienced leader can help someone examine a difficult exchange, recognize an assumption, or consider how a decision affected another person.
Consider the conversation that might have followed the encounter with the driver:
What did the employee know about the new procedure? What did the manager assume he knew? How could the instruction have been explained? What would it take to repair the relationship?
Those are useful questions for a rising leader. They are equally useful for someone who has led for decades.
Communication carries responsibility
When a decision changes someone’s work, explaining it is part of carrying it out.
A leader may understand the operational reason for a new procedure and still overlook what employees need to know. Under pressure, an instruction can become abrupt. A question can sound like resistance. An opportunity to build understanding can disappear.
The responsibility remains: explain what is changing, make room for questions, and treat people with respect.
This requires humility. We have to recognize that our intentions and another person’s experience may differ. When an exchange goes badly, we need the willingness to return to it, listen, and take responsibility for our part.
Trust grows when people see that willingness in action.
What the next generation learns from us
Senior leaders have another responsibility: recognizing that others are learning from how we behave.
An emerging leader watching a difficult conversation is learning what authority permits and what accountability requires. They notice whether we listen before deciding, share credit, explain our reasoning, and acknowledge when we get something wrong.
We should give them meaningful responsibility and room to exercise judgment. We should also make time afterward to talk about what happened: the decision, the consequences, and the people affected.
That is how the lessons of experience become something we can pass on.
The driver in Memphis gave us a clear reminder of what is at stake. A brief encounter at the end of a shift reached into his home and affected his sense of worth.
Leadership carries that kind of weight, even in moments we might otherwise forget.
A question for the week: Think about a recent decision that changed someone else’s work. Did you explain it in a way that helped that person understand—and feel respected?