Recently I attended a seminar on business-coaching where István Szabó, the Hungarian director awarded the Academy Prize for his film ”Mephisto”, told us a story dating back to his early years in the business. It happened during the shooting of a film about a young couple in the 1960-s’ Budapest. The dramatic effect of one given scene required that after the first few moments, when both actors were to be visible, the camera gradually closes in on one of the two stars, the other person vanishing from the angle of the shot. Szabó was determined that this should be a no-cut scene, meaning that no “jump” is allowed from one angle to the next. However, he had no idea how to make this happen in a way that would be unnoticed by the audience. He felt totally helpless, and not one single solution came to his mind. The shooting, well underway and progressing fluently until then, abruptly stopped. All eyes turned to him, the Master, as if asking: “What now? No instructions? No guidance?”
He now felt awkward, to say the least. Just as the silence was becoming intolerable, and he was about to admit that this is a situation and task beyond his capabilities, one of the experienced dolly grips, an elderly man having worked in many a production and having served many a director in the preceding 30 + years, turned to him and said softly: “You just give me the sign when to get moving, and I’ll do it for you.” After momentarily hesitating, Szabó accepted the offer with a “nothing-to-lose” attitude. He gave the sign at the appropriate moment, and the old helping-hand moved the dolly with the camera, with such expertise that the movement was practically unnoticed and subsequently the scene was considered to be perfect. Szabó openly thanked the old chap in front of the whole team. At the same time, he didn’t fail to mention when telling us the story, that any leader can only assign this sort of empowerment if otherwise he himself is a recognized and respected person, whose judgements and decisions are correct in the vast majority of the cases.
What happened here? What was the underlying decision that Szabó made that finally solved his – and the whole team’s – problem? Shortly put: he
decided to trust his dolly grip. He provided him the authority that he needed then and there. In other words: he practised the sort of subsidiarity that is a vital form of trust. Charles Handy and Robert F. Hurley in their respective articles and books describe these phenomena as integral elements in the structure of enterprises. More and more gurus are conveying the message that 21st-century companies can only be successful if they realise the value of the human factor. Within this, the idea of trust is undoubtedly one of the key components.
Years ago, I myself have already had the pleasure of experiencing the atmosphere where the lack of trust prevailed. That company had everything nicely laid down in job-descriptions and handbooks, and if you wanted to see your colleague sitting in the office next-door you had to e-mail a memo to him one week in advance. You could simply feel that the lack of trust provided the ground for this high level of control. Where “trust is in the air”, you don’t need written guidelines and job-descriptions. Employees will feel they have the authority to act, and leaders will be real leaders, not just managers doing their thing. Risky? Yes. But then, all investments with a high win-rate are risky.
Companies involved in aviation, from airlines to aircraft-manufacturers and the dozens of sub-suppliers in this highly complex chain, are facing enormous challenges today and are constantly making a balancing-act on the verge of survival vs. failure. It would be very interesting to take a look at how they handle the issue of trust amidst their immediate problems, and whether their top-notch executives realise that company-results are influenced not only by factors that can be measured and incorporated in a nicely-prepared Excel-sheet, but also by human factors and trust-based relationships that cannot (and must not) ever be translated into figures.
This is where the role of a professional business-coach becomes important. He or she may well be the only person a top executive can speak to when he feels alone with a mountain of problems and is looking for a solution. The business-coach is there to help him – not by delivering a ready-made solution, because that’s not his job. What the coach can do is to convey the fresh ideas of the gurus, and thus implant new seeds of thought into his coachee’s mind, helping him change the way he looks upon the human relationships within his company.
If an executive succeeds to build up mutual trust within his company, he will certainly have much better chances of validating his own leadership-qualities. This philosophy has perhaps never been better expressed than what basketball-coach Frosty Westering once said: ”My players don’t care how much I know until they know how much I care.”