Becoming a Trusted Leader

As leaders, we are only as good as our team performs. And trust is to a team what oil is to a car engine … without it, everything seizes up. Team trust means we trust each other, we can talk freely, and we can agree to disagree.?

Here's your leadership behaviour, action and coaching question ...?

Leadership Behaviour

To what extent do I: Build trust with my team > 1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5 < Great

Taking Action

Here are a few tips to build trusting teams.

Be transparent: … and do it about the hard topics, like salary, why a bonus isn’t in the cards this year, why one person advanced and one didn’t, etc. Be open about work but also about yourself, blemishes and all.?

Link the execution-level work to the bigger picture: … in enterprise companies, employees often get burned out because the goal of the decision-makers is always tied to money and growth. But what if their job roles don’t immediately generate revenue? It can become depressing. As a leader, if you can link their work to the bigger goals, that’s empowering — and your team will trust you.

Create effective, safe space meetings: … we’ve all sat in update meetings where everyone drones on about their projects and you just wait for your name to be called, say your piece, and tune out again. Those meetings are awful. Be a better meeting leader for your team. Have an open discussion about a topic. Then, instead of everyone updating, have people bring up their areas of concern about what they’re working on and get solutions from teammates. Encourage them to speak freely and even agree to disagree. Now it’s truly collaborative. Now you’re building trust.

Coaching Question

What's one change I can make to improve team trust?

p.s. Want a visual summary of this content? Grab the infographic here.?

p.s.s. If you or others in your organization want to benefit from becoming more coach-like, check out my asynchronous video course The Coach-Like Leader Experience?.

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