“Trust, But Verify<\/em>” – Former President Ronald Reagan made famous this phrase that has origin as a Russian proverb. It turns out that this serves as a useful leadership construct, but not without some healthy debate.<\/p>\n

Is There a Single Approach?<\/h3>\n

The debate centers around whether you are truly trusting if you have to verify. That’s a great philosophical discussion, but I’m pretty sure all would agree that totally blind trust is ill-advised in the business world.<\/p>\n

In reality, there is no single approach to take. Context and implications drive the degree to which we should probe to learn more. Leaders need to have confidence that nothing was missed, misunderstood, or misconstrued. So how should leaders decide when to ‘verify’ – and when to move on? This seems like grey space.<\/p>\n

Navigating the Grey Space<\/h3>\n

While all of us need to find the right way to navigate the grey space, there are a few phrases that clearly signal the need to move into verify mode. I suspect you can add to the list below:<\/p>\n

\n
• Why plan when we know things will change?<\/li>\n
• Don’t worry, I’ve got this.<\/li>\n
• Because that’s the way we’ve always done it.<\/li>\n
• Let’s worry about that later.<\/li>\n
• It’s their fault.<\/li>\n
• That’s not in my job description.<\/li>\n
• What’s done is done.<\/li>\n
• It will all work out. It always does.<\/li>\n
• No one else needs to know this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  Each of these phrases conveys a dismissive attitude about preparing for the future or learning from the past\u2026both of which have significant implications on the performance of the organization.<\/p>\n

  Press the Pause Button<\/h3>\n

  We need to recognize when people are (or the organization is) trying to hit the fast forward button at times when the pause button should be pressed instead.<\/p>\n

  Trust, But Verify<\/em>. Ronald Reagan was asked why he used the phrase so often. His response\u2026”I like it.” No apologies. No explanation. He just knew it was the right approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  “Trust, But Verify” – Former President Ronald Reagan made famous this phrase that has origin as a Russian proverb. It turns out that this serves as a useful leadership construct, but not without some healthy debate. Is There a Single Approach? The debate centers around whether you are truly trusting if you have to verify. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,7],"tags":[21,10,172,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1130,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions\/1130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}