The Trust-Ownership Model
In their book The Agile Culture: Leading Through Trust and Ownership, Polyanna Pixton, Paul Gibson & Neil Nickolaisen introduce what they call a “Trust-Ownership Model.” The Trust-Ownership model provides a solid foundation and an important perspective on leadership, in any organizational context.
Let’s start with this quote from their book:
If a member of the team asks the leader a question, does the leader simply tell the team member ‘what’ to do and ‘how’ to do it? Or is it better to trust the person to figure out ‘how’? What if the situation is an emergency and requires an immediate solution? Does the leader still offer guidance or is it better to quickly solve the problem? Also, what is the best way to develop talent on the team? By having the leader tell everyone how to do everything? Not likely…
To try to make sense of the interplay between trust and ownership and also to help both teams and leaders assess where they are and define a path to success, we have developed a Trust-Ownership model to make the issues clear and to help leaders understand not only ‘what’ they need to do to make their teams more effective, but also ‘why.’
Definitions of Terms
In the Trust-Ownership model, the meaning of Team and Leader is defined as follows:
- Team. Members of teams or individuals who create customer or business value through their efforts.
- Leader. Any person or process who has organizational power over a Team; that is, team leads, managers, and others who have decision-making authority in areas such as budget, strategic vision and goal setting, and performance review, along with processes/tools associated with those types of organizational decision-making.
Looking at the Model
As shown in the illustration below, what we’re focusing on is the interrelationship between the amount of trust that a Leader has in the Team, and the extent to which the Team feels they have the trust (and empowerment) to make decisions in their area of responsibility.
To summarize:
On the vertical axis, we observe the amount of Trust that a Leader has in the team/individual, where trust is the opposite of control.
— “Higher up the graph indicates the behavior of the Leader or business process demonstrates trust in those who are doing the work, allowing teams and individuals to take appropriate action as needed and own those actions.”
— “As Leaders (including processes) move closer and closer toward control, we see much more management tracking, controlling, checking, and telling teams how to do their work. Teams spend more time documenting, reporting, and asking permission–wasting valuable time the team could spend on delivering business value.”
(As a result, the lower we go on the vertical axis, the greater the likelihood that one or more Leaders’ actions are bottlenecks for Teams.)
On the horizontal axis, we observe how strong is the sense of ownership and empowerment that a Team has:
— (The) “left end is characterized by an attitude of ‘I’ll only do what I’m told’
— “While the right side represents the case where the individual is fully committed and does whatever is needed to meet the business goals that have been understood and agreed upon.’
The Model’s Quadrants
The four quadrants of the Trust-Ownership model are:
- Failure (black)
- Command and Control (yellow)
- Conflict (red)
- Energy and Innovation (green)
Failure (upper left quadrant)
When Leaders and Teams are in the upper left quadrant of the Trust-Ownership model, we tend to see the following:
The Leader trusts the team, and yet the team still feels a low sense of Ownership, and tends to wait for direction
The Team is often unsure of what their customer wants, and that uncertainty is often manifested in fear of failure, and hesitancy to move forward in the absence of concrete direction
When this situation exists, it is common for the Leader to feel the need to move to Command and Control (lower left quadrant) …
Command and Control (lower left quadrant)
When Leaders and Teams are in the upper left quadrant of the Trust-Ownership model, we tend to see the following:
Leaders acting upon/demonstrating their mindset via behaviors like these:
- I need a detailed plan for everything the Team does
- I have step-by-step instructions that lay out what the team needs to do and how they need to do it
- I need detailed status reports on a frequent basis (sometimes daily)
- I need to check in on the progress of all Team activities
- I make all the decisions for the Team
- I punish failure whenever it occurs
Teams react accordingly, and thus their focus tends to be on making the Leader happy, as opposed to on providing business value for the customer. As a result, Teams in this situation exhibit behaviors like these:
- We don’t need to understand the business details
- We’ll only do what we’re told
- We will avoid risks and are generally not going to take any significant steps that would constitute innovation
- We will not voice any concerns we have
What also tends to happen when Leaders and Teams are in the Command and Control quadrant is a self-reinforcing, negative learning spiral, which looks much like this:
Conflict (lower right quadrant)
When Leaders and Teams are in the lower-right quadrant of the Trust-Ownership model, we tend to see the following:
The Leader is acting out behaviors that indicate to the Team that they don’t have the Leader’s Trust
The Team is fully committed and feels they grasp what business stakeholders want, and are impeded in their efforts to deliver business value by the Leader’s need for activities such as:
- Frequent status reporting
- Justifying decisions they make
- Documenting options for the Leader to choose between
Note that it’s generally not possible to stay in this quadrant for very long; either the Team reaches an understanding with the Leader (and moves toward the upper right quadrant), or the Team capitulates and they end up in the lower left (Command and Control) quadrant.
Energy and Innovation (upper right quadrant)
When Leaders and Teams are in the upper-right left quadrant of the Trust-Ownership model, we tend to see the that the Leader has confidence in the Team, and the Leader’s actions express that confidence, in ways like this:
- I am secure in the knowledge that the Team understands the vision, value, and urgency of the work
- I work at at a more strategic level, addressing issues that are slowing the team’s progress, rather than being involved in the day-to-day minutia
- I help the Team take ownership for their work — and I don’t try to take that ownership back
- I help create opportunities to connect customers directly with the Team
The Team tends to exhibit behaviors like these:
- We make decisions quickly and act upon them
- We feel a sense of accountability and ownership for our work
- We feel free to make optimizations to how we work
- We succeed and we fail as a team, not as a collection of individuals
Trust-Ownership Assessment
To help move to, and hopefully stay in, the upper right (Energy and Innovation) quadrant, the authors include a set of questions which can help take a pulse on where the organization is currently operating. The questions fall under the following categories:
- Team questions on trust and ambiguity
- Team questions on ownership and alignment
- Leader questions on trust and ambiguity
- Leadership questions on ownership and alignment
