Five Simple Things You Can Do Every Day To Build Trust With Your Team
- Practice Humility. Admit when you don’t know. Own it when you’ve made a mistake. When you let others see how you can embody confidence even as you confess fallibility, you give permission for them to take bigger risks, fail, and feel safe.
- Demonstrate Competence. Be good at what the team needs to you to do well. If you’re a coder, write flawless code. If you’re an HR pro, know the law and keep confidences. And if you’re a leader, it matters less that you understand THEIR job than if you can inspire, communicate well, coach, and get the team the resources they need.
- Keep Your Promises. When you make a commitment, do it. Consistently and over time.
- Walk Your Talk. Demonstrate honesty and integrity and behave in alignment with what you say is important.
- Care. Prioritize relationships with your team members, as people. No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care about what’s important to them.
People will work with those who are incompetent, unreliable, insincere, uncaring, and/or self-centered. But not very well, and not for long.
Remember, Leadership is not about a title. Anyone can be a Leader who models trustworthy behavior AND makes the workplace a little safer and happier for others.