Bread, Butter & Blame

On the trust dynamic between leaders and teams

There’s a conversation that plays out in organisations with quiet regularity. I’ve seen it in boardrooms and team offsites, in performance reviews and leadership coaching sessions.

The leader, usually well-meaning and genuinely frustrated, says some version of this: “My team is stuck. They won’t change. I keep pushing but nothing moves. I know it sounds like blame, but I know that they are capable of more, but they don’t’

It often takes the team members some time to feel safe enough to share a version of this: ‘Easy to point at us. But we’ve been wondering the same thing about our manager.’

Two sets of people. Both convinced the other is holding back. Both partly right, and neither entirely honest.

The tension reminds me of an old fable that I came across in the Ammaspeak column in The Indian Express today.

A poor farmer struck a deal with the village baker. The farmer would supply butter; the baker would give him bread in return. The exchange worked well for both - quality butter, fresh bread, no complications.

Until the baker began to notice the butter portions getting smaller.

He was furious. He accused the farmer of manipulating the weighing scales, of cheating him, and dragged him before the local judge in town.

‘Punish him severely,’ the baker said. ‘He has manipulated the scales and cheated me.’

All eyes turned to the farmer. He was nervous, but he found just enough courage to look the judge in the eye.

‘My lord, I have no weighing scale. I have no other means to measure. The only weight I have ever used is the weight of the bread the baker gives me. Every time, I match the butter to that.’

The courtroom went quiet. And so does the room, usually, when I tell this story to a group of leaders.

Because most of us recognise both characters.

We’ve been the baker quite often. Giving a little less, quietly, without fully admitting it to ourselves. Shorter conversations. Thinner feedback. Less genuine interest. And then, when the team gives back less, we name it as a performance problem instead of a relationship one.

The blame game is comfortable. The mirror is not.

What the farmer understood and what the baker had forgotten is that most exchanges in life are self-calibrating. People match what they receive. Not always consciously, not always immediately, but over time, the butter finds its own level.

As leaders, the question worth sitting with is not ‘Why aren’t they giving more?’

It’s simpler, and harder, than that.

‘What quality of bread have I been putting out?’

Bread, Butter & Blame is part of the #1MinuteStories series of stories you can read in a minute and use to make your point