Leading, like a cup of coffee

A number of years ago my wife Sara and I set out to build a physical retail location for her growing tourism business. Since her business was historically seasonal with wild revenue swings between the summer and winter, we decided it would be nice to have a location that could support a small café that could keep the doors open and revenue flowing throughout her slower winter months and would justify the physical retail location.

Like most small businesses, we looked to our network to seek out some advice specifically on what the current coffee drinking market cared about. We knew what we liked about cafes and bistros – friendly, inviting atmosphere, great staff, and quality goods. Sounds simple enough? We engaged with a local consultant and equipment supplier through a referral and began the journey of understanding what makes a good cup of coffee, and what makes an exceptional cup of coffee. The only word that matters in the coffee world is consistency.

Our consultant said something which has stuck with us since the beginning – “It’s better to provide a consistently mediocre cup of coffee, than to provide a great cup of coffee sometimes and a horrible cup of coffee at other times”. As we started investigating equipment for the café, we quickly started to understand the importance of consistency in the world of coffee and the costs associated in ensuring a high level of consistency.

Coffee, and espresso specifically have an immeasurable number of input factors that can impact how the output tastes. The temperature and relative humidity of the room the coffee is ground in, the way the ground coffee is distributed in the filter, the compression pressure applied to the coffee, the temperature and pressure of the water, let alone the mineral content of the water, and the list goes on with no end in sight. The coffee industry has worked tirelessly to create high-tech machinery and equipment to reduce the variability of these inputs as much as possible to ensure the output product is consistent on delivery to the customer.

This was made abundantly clear when I asked why the espresso grinder we were about to purchase cost over $7000 – It apparently had a heating and cooling chamber surrounding the grinding burrs to ensure that external environment changes didn’t cause the titanium plates to expand or contract, changing the grind of the coffee unexpectedly throughout the day. The changes could be a few thousandths of a millimeter, but the resulting change in the coffee is dramatic. The difference between the $25k Espresso machine and the $60k machine was 2 more degrees of temperature stability in the water boilers, ensuring a more consistent water temperature on output. Every dollar spent, equated to some level of improved consistency.

At the end of the day, the same coffee was being put into the machinery and the resulting outputs could be vastly different.

With all of this focus on improving consistency, it forced me to think more about why consistency was so important to coffee consumers. The answer is Trust.

Trust is difficult to earn, yet so incredibly easy to lose. This desire for consistency is by no means exclusive to the coffee world – but it instead permeates many aspects of the human condition and is how we develop and grow trusting relationships with our leaders and the teams we lead. Consistency in execution will always be a foundational pillar of trust, so why do so many leaders miss the mark?

Trust is the foundation upon which all successful relationships, including those in a business context, are built. Without trust, it is difficult if not impossible to establish effective communication, collaboration, and cooperation among team members. When team members trust one another, they are more likely to share ideas and feedback openly, take risks, and work together towards a shared goal. This can obviously create a more positive and productive work environment.

In the tech world, many individual contributors looking for career growth into leadership roles find themselves trying to quickly understand how to be effective leaders without any real mentorship. If you ask many new leaders today if & why trust is important, they will usually mention something related to transparency and honesty within their teams. A common occurrence are references to “radical candor” – the idea that honest and open communication builds trust and therefore builds stronger teams. If you have ever been on a team that subscribes to radical candor, you can likely attest that this level of honesty does in many cases build trust. However, leaders who prioritize trust as a fundamental element of their team should not only demonstrate the value transparency and honesty within their teams, but that they also value consistency. Leaders typically set the tone for open communication and model the behavior they expect from their team members, but are they effectively modelling consistency?

I once reported to leader who subscribed to the idea of building trust through radical candor. They themselves were a new leader, leading a team of new & seasoned leaders. Communication within the team was open, honest and brutal at times, and as expected it fostered trust that you could speak openly about shortcomings to get the centre of a problem quickly and it was never to be taken personally. If you have ever worked within a Startup, this will likely sound familiar to you. However, this leader frequently made impulsive decisions that flipped and flopped directionally, they frequently overpromised and underdelivered, and when they were brought in front of customers, the results would sometimes be exceptional and other times embarrassing. Even though this leader believed they had fostered a culture of trust on a basis of transparency and honesty, they were entirely inconsistent in the execution of their duties as a leader which introduced doubt and completely eroded the team’s trust in them.

Not surprisingly, many of the leaders within the team began to function the same way and this behaviour then permeated to their direct reports. As the team grew, so did the dysfunction. New leaders were promoted and learned by example creating a challenging negative feedback loop. This leader had unknowingly and completely missed the mark on executing their role with consistency. In doing so, it introduced doubt even with a culture of transparency and honesty which subsequently eroded trust throughout the entire organization.

I have now and will always use trust as the north star when critically evaluating the teams I lead and teams I am a part of. My ask to leaders, both new and seasoned is to reconsider how you demonstrate and model consistency within your role. While both transparency and honesty are invaluable tools to create and foster a culture of trust, it is in fact more critically important to operate, execute and deliver everything to do with a level of consistency to truly empower your teams and build an immutable culture of trust within your organizations.

So the next time you get a cup of coffee from your usual spot, consider the effort and expense that went in to ensuring the level of consistency you expect for only a few dollars and consider how important it should be when tens or hundreds of millions of dollars are on the line.

How do you see consistency as a pillar of trust in the enterprise? Do you have a recent example of how consistency bolstered or eroded your trust? I invite you to share your thoughts below.