Law of Solid ground says that trust is the foundation of leadership.

Before we dive into this topic, I will discuss some of the experiences I have.

Let’s say we have 3 leaders. Leaders A, B, and C.

Leader A is very buotan, very approachable, has sense of humor. Pero does things cramming style. Does
the project the night before due date.

Leader B is the opposite of leader A, Maldita/Maldito, not a very approachable person. Add to that is dili
pajd competent, just manages enough to fool the boss in order to keep his/her job. Lacking character as
well in the sense na muingon ug naay ani nga finding pero diay to dili sufficient ang procedure to justify
that finding.

Leader C is competent, has character and integrity. But weird personality, na murag borderline autistic,
walay sense of humor, dili kabalo mucatch ug humor.

Among the 3 leaders, which one would you trust the most in the organization?

From this demonstration we can see that:

Trust is the glue that holds an organization and its leader together.

To build trust you must demonstrate CONSISTENT competence.

(You have to consistently perform well if you’re going to lead.

You can’t say I’m a person of character, I want you to follow me because I’m true to my word, I won’t tell
you a lie, I’m a great person of integrity.

Pero diay I’m a lousy leader.

Who would want to follow that? Would you follow that?

You can’t substitute one over the other.

Note however that:

People will forgive occasional mistakes based on ability, especially if they can see that you’re still growing
as a leader. But they won’t trust someone who has slips in character.

“People will tolerate honest mistakes, but if you violate their trust you will find it very difficult to ever
regain their confidence.”

What we have to understand about the law of solid ground is that we either grow and get better in
this area and increase our trust level or we decrease it and we become worsening.

The best way to explain this perhaps is to illustrate this with you.

Building trust is like having change in your pocket.

What you do is give me an X amount of change of which I am to operate.

You feel I’m trustworthy, You hired me because of character, because you believe I am competent
enough based sa akong resume.

What I’m gonna do is either increase the change you gave or im going to decrease the change.

For example, let’ say I don’t have very good character, I lack integrity, I’m not trustworthy, I don’t always
tell the truth.

And let’s say you asked me about a report of which I make an excuse which you know is not true. So
everytime I do something that’s not trustworthy, I give up some change out of my pocket.

But it’s okay because I still have some change and as long as I have change, I can still operate because
there’s a certain level of trust I still have.

But let’s say a month later you find that I’m not trustworthy in another area.

So everytime I don’t do well, I give up change.

But it’s okay because I still have some change and as long as I have change, I can still operate.

Dayun a few more months come by. Then I do something again that I shouldn’t have done and what I’ve
been doing is always giving away change. I have been living off of goodwill, permi rako gasalig sa slack na
inyo gihatag sa akoa, dayun muadto napod ko sa office with another issue. And instead of changing my
ways I’m just living off of goodwill gasalig rako pirme sa inyung kabuotan.

Then I reach out sa akong pocket and realize wala nakoy change.

This is a picture of a leader in trouble.

Im broke, I’m in trouble, it’s over, I’m gonna have to go to another organization.

Why because I’ve used up all the change in my pocket.

Now as I can deplete it by lacking character or competence.

It is also true that if you do something that show character or competence, I increase my change.

Kung competence na matter, I can easily get bigger change.

However if character na matter, I only get small change back. Remember that if I lack character or
integrity, I give big amounts of change, If I do something that show character, I receive small amounts of
change.

In the area of character, you lose a lot quicker than you get it back.
You know you’re on solid ground if you have change in your pocket.

You cannot make changes in the organization unless you have change in your pocket.