Trust: An Asymmetric Advantage

As he neared the end of his life, George Shultz sought to distill 80 years of leadership and public service into one enduring phrase. Having led Marines on Tarawa and Palau, taught economics at MIT and the University of Chicago, and served in two presidential administrations as Secretary of Treasury, Labor, and State, he undoubtedly had much to share. Trust, he said, was the most essential principle of leadership drawn from his lifetime of service: “If it is present, anything is possible. If it is absent, nothing is possible.”¹

Trust is also the foundation of Navy and Marine Corps doctrine and culture. It is the basis of mission tactics and mission command and is foundational to the concepts of commander’s intent and command by negation. It allows leaders to delegate, decentralize, and act faster than their adversaries and, therefore, is the asymmetric advantage in the age of great power conflict. Sea Service leaders must understand and embrace this core concept and develop a keen ability to gauge, build, and maintain trust if they are to navigate the complex and daunting challenges of the modern battlefield.   

Today’s Battlefield

Two modern battlefield realities are apparent. First, adversaries have used the United States’ 20-year involvement in Middle Eastern small wars to level the technological playing field. Examples are myriad and range from fleet expansions and developments in electronic, cyber, and information operations to the introduction of hypersonic and other weapons. Second, because of these technologies, the battlefield is becoming faster and less opaque. Aircraft and missiles are ubiquitous and precisely directed, low earth orbit satellites and unnamed aerial systems saturate the skies, and information is transmitted, received, and actioned with unprecedented speed. The fog of war can be mitigated, decisions can be made, and targets destroyed in ways never before seen.

These realities have critically altered the environment in which young naval leaders must operate. They must be smarter and faster to effectively compete. Yet, they have one significant advantage over their adversaries: trust. Trust, and the decentralization of action it enables, is the Navy and Marine Corps’ asymmetric advantage over authoritarian adversaries.

Evolution of Trust Tactics

History reveals the role trust has played in determining tactics and driving technological developments, command and control, and training. First-generation armies, mobs of warriors verbally commanded and led by heroic nobles, gave way to lines of pikemen and then riflemen directed by colorful standards and mounted officers. These regimented second-generation armies gave way to smaller and faster third-generation militaries. These more modern forces used cover, concealment, mechanization, and long-range communication technologies to rapidly disaggregate, coordinate, and then close with the enemy. Over time, the increasing lethality of weapon systems and tactical organization required further disaggregation and distribution of forces.² This caused a command-and-control dilemma: How could commanders direct their forces as they operated at greater distances and further from each other?

Solving this dilemma drove the adoption of increasingly longer-range communication technologies. More important, however, it drove the formulation and adoption of innovative tactics, educational endeavors, and training that further professionalized military forces and built higher levels of trust. For example, every Marine is aware of the German Auftragstaktik or mission tactics. German leaders sought to maintain centralized command and delegate tactical control by encouraging decision-making at the lowest possible level. In essence, train and educate and then let go. Fundamentally, what professionalization and mission tactics enabled was rapid, informed decision-making and action that, in aggregate across a force, could out cycle an adversary and render their decisions impotent.

Sea Services and Trust

Marines and sailors are steeped in doctrine that demands trust-centric leadership. Marines, indoctrinated in maneuver warfare theory, are intimately familiar with the concept of mission tactics. Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication (MCDP) 1, Warfighting, extols its benefits. Mission tactics unleashes subordinate creativity and decision-making. It empowers subordinates to execute as they see fit based on local conditions and circumstances, while also “freeing time [for commanders] to focus on higher-level concerns.”³ In essence, mission tactics generates speed.

Yet, mission tactics as a command-and-control tool cannot function without trust. Trust is an “essential trait among leaders—trust by seniors in the abilities of their subordinates and by juniors in the competence and support of their seniors.”⁴ Without trust in the skills and aptitude of the executors or faith in the planning, direction, and tasking of senior leaders, mission tactics falls apart.

The Navy also has adopted trust as a fundamental element of command and control in the composite warfare and command-by-negation concepts. Because maritime warfare is inherently fast-paced and both “distributed and dispersed,” it is imperative that commanders have the authority to act immediately and without approval against unforeseen threats or in unforeseen circumstances.⁵ A “subordinate commander is to take the required action without delay” unless negated by a higher headquarters.⁶ Again, trust is central. Without it, commanders could not and would not delegate such authority to subordinates. Without trust, Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson would never have been emboldened to exclaim that in the absence of orders, “no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.”

These “trust tactics” are the unique and asymmetrical strength of U.S. maritime forces. As leaders look at the future operating environment, their chief challenge will be to assess, build, and maintain trust in their organizations. To do this, contemporary studies suggest leaders focus on three primary practices.

Practice 1: Look Inward—Competence & Consistency

The first practice is to look inward at one’s own leadership and professional skills. This allows for a much-needed assessment of one’s self-mastery and consistent demonstration of technical and tactical competence. Through such humble reflection, leaders can chart their way forward to improve their knowledge, skills, and organizational awareness. These are the cornerstones of organizational trust, as noted by leadership consultants Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman. In their studies of 87,000 leaders, Zenger and Folkman identified clusters of leadership practices that are foundational to building trust. One cluster includes leaders becoming “well informed and knowledgeable,” seeking to “understand the technical aspects of the work,” and maintaining “depth of experience.”⁷

While the Navy and Marine Corps endeavor to develop leaders, individuals must prioritize cultivating good judgment and gaining expertise. Competence alone is not enough; it must also be consistently displayed. This, as Zenger and Folkman explain, is best embodied by leaders who “walk their talk and do what they say they will do” and make the public argument for why they should be trusted by their teams each and every day.⁸

Practice 2: Look Outward—Relationships Matter

To further build bonds of trust across a team, leaders also must focus on building and maintaining positive relationships within their organizations. Another of Zenger and Folkman’s pillars of trust building is a leader’s ability to create “positive relationships with other people and groups.”⁹ Positive relationships enable several ancillary trust-reinforcing benefits, including:

• Generating cooperation between leader and led

• Enhancing communication up, down, and across the chain of command

• Allowing for expedient conflict resolution

• Ensuring leaders and subordinates are open and receptive to frank and honest feedback

• Enabling leaders to keep abreast of subordinate concerns and balance results accordingly¹⁰

This does not imply that Sea Service leaders must maintain a perpetually sunny disposition, but it does suggest that positive relationships do not just happen. A leader must prioritize and work toward this goal to build trust and unlock organizational potential.

Practice 3: Tie it all together—Communication

Open, honest, and effective communication builds familiarity and thus trust within a team, but a quick look at the inverse is also helpful. Harvard leadership professor Robert Galford and The Trusted Leader author Anne Drapeau detail a number of “trust killer” behaviors and practices that erode, destroy, and stymie organizational trust. These include inconsistent leadership messaging, providing subordinates false feedback, falling prey to “Elephants in the Parlor” syndrome (pretending issues don’t exist), and allowing an information vacuum where rumors can circulate.¹¹ Each of these malpractices revolves around a leader’s inability to effectively communicate with his or her organization.

Fortunately, MCDP-1, Warfighting, details leadership practices that can foster a culture of effective communication across an organization:

• Develop long-term working relationships among teams.

• Avoid intermediaries; talk directly to one another.

• Communicate orally when possible, as tone and inflection relay meaning and emphasis.

• Prioritize in-person communications; physical presence matters.¹²

By developing communication skills and enhancing communication across a team, leaders will further tie their teams together with bonds of trust. This, in turn, enables effective and rapid decisions.

Coin of the Realm

George Shultz often noted in his speeches and writings that “trust is the coin of the realm.” Trust unlocks human and organizational potential, fosters creativity and innovation, and, most important, enables speed—speed in decision-making and action that is imperative on the modern distributed battlefield. By focusing on personal competence, consistency, positive command relationships, and healthy communication practices, Sea Service leaders will master the “coin of the realm” and can harness this key asymmetric advantage.