The open door principle or "give it to win it"
Something clicked when I heard Jocko Willink’s podcast, it was a discussion related to trust, how do we decide to trust the people around us, now, trust is key, starting with family, friends, colleagues, spouses’ comrades even with your pets, as most of the important decisions in life will be related to it, how does one decide to trust the people around them.
A few weeks after, I had a chat with one of my friends, who was telling me their flatmate, although, they share the same house for the last two years, they lock their room door every time they leave the house, either at work or shopping or just out, apart from the times they are in the house, as I left home almost ten years ago I immediately related to it as I also shared a few houses along time, and, one of the one most important, if not “the most important” thing was, do you trust the people you live with.
Why trust, because no matter if at home or at work, it makes a great impact with your daily vibe, it’s not where we are, it’s who we’re surrounded with, our tribe, our daily vibe has a direct link with our decision process and the outcome we all know can either be good or less good, and the first word we can think is “do we feel safe” around the people we live and work with, trusting someone is practically offering people control over our emotions.
Jocko’s advice about trust is just remarkable, I totally agree with it because I have followed the same, I wouldn’t call it strategy but the path that always leads to a great relationship, as a leader of the SEAL team this demonstrates first of all leadership, in his podcast he says that in order to win trust “you have to give it first”, and there is a great example of giving someone a task, and, in the example, the person is making a mistake, instead of blaming and correcting we can say “my apologies, I should’ve given you better directions”.
Now, the outcome of this action is, when the person that made the mistake sees that they are not punished, instead, they are encouraged to do better and given a second chance, they will trust you going forward because they have been given the chance in the first place, and this is one of the mistakes I have seen in management, which is actually micro-management, the first action taken, is to find, and put someone to a wall, when all this action is making the situation worse than it is.
My personal philosophy about trust started a way back and it follows the same principle “give it to win it” and it’s called “the open door rule”, if you want to win someone’s trust, and strengthen a relationship always leave your doors open, and metaphorically speaking, “the door” has many meanings, it means always leave room to say hi to someone, what most of us don’t realize is for a house, a school, a workplace, a friendship or any relationship to work people got to work together, life is short and guess what, the world too.
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