polls or public opinion of the moment

For a while the mood overall seemed one of a death watch over his own presidency. Dwight Eisenhower had defeated Adlai Stevenson by a landslide. New poll results showed that only thirty two percent of the people approved of the way Truman was handling his job, and forty three percent thought it had been a mistake for the United States to go to war in Korea. But polls meant no more to him now than ever before. “I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt,” he wrote privately in an undated memo to himself. “What would Jesus Christ have preached if he’d taken a poll in Israel? It isn’t polls or public opinion of the moment that counts, it’s right and wrong.”

David McCullough
Truman Simon and Schuster. 2003. p.1086, 1087.

suffer by comparison

To no one was Marshall’s presence more reassuring, or inspiriting, than to Truman. “The more I see and talk to him the more certain I am he’s the great one of the age,” Truman wrote not long after Marshall’s swearing in. Marshall is a tower of strength and common sense,” he noted privately another time. It was admiration such as Truman felt for no other public figure, no one he had ever known, not Roosevelt, not Churchill, not anyone. Nor was he at all hesitant or concerned over having such a strong-minded man as his Secretary of State – Marshall, Harriman, Patterson, Forrestal, Lilienthal, Eisenhower, they were all strong-minded. Conceivably, Truman could have worried that someone of such immense reputation as Marshall in so prominent a role would diminish his own standing with the country, that he might suffer by comparison, and Marshall be perceived as more the sort of man who ought to be President. But Truman was neither jealous nor intimidated. He was not so constructed. “I am surely lucky to have his friendship and support,” he wrote, and that was that.

David McCullough
Truman - Simon and Schuster. 2003. p.637,638

cannot lead strangers

...you cannot lead strangers, you can only coerce or bribe them.

Orson Scott Card

Ender in Exile. Tor Publishing. 2008. p.100

as things forgot

Men must be taught as if you taught them not,

And things unknown propos'd as things forgot.

Alexander Pope 

Autobiography and Other Writings by Benjamin Franklin, edited by Russel B. Nye. 1949. p.15

how to build trust

So how can you do this? It requires a few qualities.

• You’re willing to get experience doing the work of your team. This doesn’t mean giving rousing speeches, putting out strongly worded press releases, or releasing polished promotional videos. This means you actually spend time with the people doing the work.
• You honor those people by listening and responding in earnest.

When I was at Medtronic, I gowned up and saw between 700 and 1,000 procedures. I’d put on the scrubs, met with the doctor, and watched an open-heart surgery, a brain surgery, or a pacemaker implant. And that’s how I learned the business.

When I was on the board of Target Corporation, the former CEO, Bob Ulrich, explained how he walked about 14 store floors a week. He didn’t tell them he was coming. He just put on a sweatshirt, walk around, and watch the store run.

And take Dan Vasella at Novartis. He’d be down in the labs all the time with the researchers asking, “What are you working on? What are the barriers?”

Instead of being the invisible entity who spends his or her time at black tie CEO events in DC, this is a leader who delves into the real day-to-day functions of the business. And that’s the type of leader who builds trust.

To maintain that trust, you need care about your team, want to be out there with them, and love the business. You really do have to love it! I can’t stress that enough. If you don’t love it, don’t do it.

Daniel Goleman

How Leaders Build Trust. Linkedin Pulse. 8/9/2015