If You Don't Have Trust, You Don't Have a Team

Leading people is a delicate balance. You have to implement the rules, but you also want to connect and learn about the people you work with every day.

You want to make a difference in their lives and build a cohesive team, not just get your salesfloor covered by any human in a t-shirt.

Trust is tricky. It's difficult to build and easy to lose.

The minute someone doesn't feel like you truly care about them or you're only at this job to make numbers or make yourself look good, forget it. You've lost them. You're probably not getting their trust back, either.

How do you gain trust? How do we keep it?

Genuinely care for the humans you work with

I know this sounds obvious, but most leaders don't care. I hate to say that, but I do think it's true. Most people are too insecure or selfish to care about the humans on their team.

People get dazzled by job titles and promotions, and that's cool and everything, but that's not it. When you're eighty years old, do you think you'll care about what job title you once held? No, you'll care that you made a difference in someone's life.

When you genuinely care for other people and want them to succeed, it is a feeling that cannot be described. The team members know it and will put forth their maximum effort to help you get your job done.

This is how the team begins to come together.

Show up and do the work alongside them

I cannot stress this enough. I talk about this all the time. Plan an office day and get out of your office outside of that.

When you work next to people, you learn from each other. The team understands shortcuts and best practices from you, and you learn about them. This is equally important. I learned all kinds of stuff from my staff.

On one very slow day, I learned how Depop, the online clothing resale site, worked. One of the team members sold her clothes there, and I was so fascinated.

When you're part of a team, education goes both ways. It doesn't matter what your job title is.

Laugh at yourself & don't hide your flaws

Most people are pretty bad at this. I happen to be great at it, so I can tell you that people feel connected when you are transparent in your failures or struggles. They feel like they have the opportunity to get to know the real you.

Because they do!

When I made mistakes as a team leader, I owned up to them and shared what I learned. This shows the team that it's okay to make mistakes. They can mess up and tell you about it, and it won't be the end of the world.

Laughing at yourself takes a good deal of confidence. It also takes perspective. There's a great big world out there, and our mistake is tiny in comparison. Grant yourself grace. Grant it to your team as well.

Finally

Gaining trust and building a team takes time. This won't happen in a day or week, and that's okay. Teamwork at its core is relationship building. No good relationships come together quickly.

Trust is built over shared experiences and late nights. It's built over mistakes, accidents, and weird encounters.

If you genuinely care for the people on your team, if you work alongside them, and if you can muster the ability to laugh at yourself, your team will be brimming with trust.

And that, friends, is what we all strive for as leaders.

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