The Scary Secrets Of Self-Trust That'll Scale Your Success Beyond Boundaries Sooner Than Later

By Brian Harman & Geoff Koboldt

What is personal leadership?

If leadership is the practice of strategy and influence, personal leadership is influence over self which means self awareness plus self-management.

In order to practice real personal leadership, one must create cycles of positive behavior fueled by self-trust. You then reinforce your self-trust with acts of self-love. 

Self-trust and self love?

That means that you need to make promises and keep promises to yourself, then perform an act of self-love to reinforce that positive action. This deliberate and disciplined behavioral cycle is what you see in the highest-performing people out there. 

But be careful. Too much self-reward can lead to addiction and self-destructive habits. Not enough self-reward and you can get burnout and fatigue. 

If you want to build an additional layer of accountability and motivation, declare your promises to someone else.

For example, I could tell my wife that I'm going to ride the Peleton bike for an hour on Saturday. Now if she sees me keep that promise to myself, she’ll see that I’m a person that practices self-trust and be more willing to trust me as a result. But I too have seen that I can trust myself and was more likely to follow through because I didn't want to let her down too.

Consider the alternative behavior. I drink too much wine on Friday night, wake up groggy and skip the workout. My self-trust dwindles and corrodes. Any further promises that I make to myself can easily become shattered with insignificance and bad habitual practices.

If you can make and keep promises to yourself with an equal dose of self-love as a reward, you're on the right track.

Once that's happening consistently, you can start making and keeping promises to other people in a strong and intentional way. That's called interpersonal trust.

Let's take this deeper.

Picture this. The water jets gently push up against your sore back as the steam of the 101 degree water relaxes you into a blissful state. The night breeze is soft and quiet. The moonlight shines down reflecting off the surface of the water. You look around with a grin. This is paradise.

It's actually my first day in my new hot tub; a gift I had finally bought for myself and my family.

You see, as I neared the end of 2020, I reflected back on my year as I normally do. While I should have been super excited and celebrating my hard work and achievements, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that all of that came at the expense of my mental well-being and a continual sore back from sitting too long working all day.

Despite 3 successful months having reduced body fat and weight, I stopped working out consistently in April. My daily meditations were inconsistent. My guitar was collecting dust. Being truly present with my family was limited.

Ultimately, I was sacrificing time for money and it was wearing me way down.

I knew it was time to forgive myself and time to recalibrate my life. It was time to reconnect to my purpose. It was time to start rewarding myself for hard work.  It was also time to make some new promises.

I made a promise to myself and my wife that I would optimize my physical and mental health and successfully integrate work so I was living more in the NOW.

More time for family, hobbies, mental and physical health, movie nights, and other fun activities with the whole family (and my own hot tub meditations to be included).

What's the lesson?

We all get off the track from time to time. Trust yourself, believe in yourself and enjoy the journey. It starts with YOU. Build cycles of self-trust by keeping your promises. First things first, make some new promises.

How can you take action now?

Make a promise to yourself for this weekend. Tell someone about it. Keep that promise. Reward yourself. 

Make a promise, keep it, enjoy an act of self-love, repeat. That's self-trust.

If you care about people, relationships, and trust, join Geoff Koboldt and Brian Harman as they continue their series of co-authored articles on the topics of trust and leadership. Make sure yo go follow/connect with Geoff for more great content.

More about Geoff Koboldt:

A world-class manufacturing and distribution, sales & operations management expert, Geoff Koboldt loves bringing his high energy to work every day while bringing out the absolute best in people. A keen listener with strong emotional intelligence, his ability to connect with others has been paramount to each organization’s success. His unique coaching methods and delineation of the traditional org chart fosters a lean environment where employees take ownership, become customer obsessed and insist on the highest standards. operations executive lean transformation

Driven by a strong sense of urgency, he thrives on massive change under fire. His calm spirit and demeanor brings peace and harmony to chaos and uncertainty. Resourceful, entrepreneurial and innovative, he always searches out new ways to improve business operations and elevate best-practices.

Geoff inherited his get-your-hands-dirty work ethic from his father who was an hourly factory worker at General Motors for 31 years. His father said to him early in his career, “Never walk into a new environment with your fancy suits acting like your better than anyone. Put your blue jeans on, roll up your sleeves and get dirty with the front-line employees; the people whose buy-in and respect you will need if you ever want to be successful.” Geoff has humbly lived by this motto.

Often pulling the team and pushing only when necessary, his leadership style reflects his genuine care for others, but more importantly in delivering incredible results.

? As a leader of the Architectural Technical Sales (ATS) team at Acuity Brands, he has helped drive double-digit sales revenue (>$100M) with numerous service advancements leading to a 9.8/10 CSAT score.

? As Director of Operations at Rose Tarlow Melrose House, hired to implement lean methodologies and turn around a weak culture, he reduced lead times by 23% and increased on-time performance by 82%, while increasing quality by 18%.

? As Chief Operations Officer/owner at BambooBuddy, he led a start-up to a multi-$million business, earning A-level grades from its largest customer Lowes Home Improvement stores for on-time delivery, fill rates, inventory turns and sales.

? As Vice President of Strategic Operations at Dark Horse Distribution, hired to lead a crisis turnaround, he turned the company in the black by identifying new marketing channels, generating new products, revitalizing old brands and completely transforming the culture.

? As Materials Manager at Milgard Manufacturing, he initiated lean methodologies to the company leading their continuous improvement efforts, resulting in a savings of $1.4M through 1 project alone reducing the material waste, earning #1 materials team among 17 plants, and positioning his $120M plant in the top 5 overall.

? As Operations Manager at General Motors, he led his team in a tough union environment to earning the #1 AC/Delco facility in N. America for 4 straight years and earning a top 5 position among 28 service parts operations plants, based on 25 corporate metrics. His toyota-based lean training led to his team championing over $10M in savings.

With a Master's in Business Administration from Pepperdine University’s prestigious Graziadio school of business and a Bachelor’s in Chemistry from Michigan State University, Geoff’s educational foundation is rock solid. His yearning to always be on top of his game has led him to also earn multiple certificates in lean, six sigma, as well as a pending certificate in project management (PMP). His thirst for knowledge leads him to reading 30 books/year. In addition, he has been coached by Brendon Burchard, as part of the Achievement Accelerator program and High Performance Academy. He is an active member of the Project Management Institute (PMI), Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) and American Society of Quality (ASQ).

He is an honoree of Pepperdine’s 40-over-40 campaign, being chosen out of 497 distinguished alumni in 2018. 

His passions away from work include reading, playing guitar, meditation, traveling, and spending time with family and friends. He and his wife Cathy, a former Presidential Club award winner in the telecom industry, have two beautiful children: Giana and Liam. They live outside of Los Angeles, California.