Welcome back!

Foundational to your success as a leader is your willingness and ability to build trust with your people. First, you must value trust as a fickle commodity that takes diligent effort to earn and is easily shattered by carelessness or ill will. In fact, trust is the only currency that matters. If your people don’t trust you, they won’t talk to you. If they don’t talk to you, you won’t know what’s really going on. A day will come when one of your people makes a mistake, or something bad happens, and you will need to know about it in real time. Your people will not come to you with the news unless you already invested the time and made the effort to build trust with them. If they don’t trust you, you will miss out on important knowledge that can massively blow up in your face later on. Set a goal to build trust with every interaction. This means really listening to your people, especially if they are upset. Don’t take the upset personally. We all have different frustration tolerances and stress thresholds. Don’t get offended, or insulted, or have a weak ego by being too fragile to listen. Don’t retaliate. Hear them out. Work with them to discuss a solution. Don’t try to hurry up and get the conversation over with, or cram your rigid opinion down their throat. They feel how they feel. They think what they think. It is absolutely your job as the leader to be the bigger person and demonstrate respect and caring. It is your job to model problem solving skills, especially under pressure. You’re the one with the authority and the power to solve problems, so man up and get to it!

Your team will be a reflection of you. Do you want them to learn great skills that make the workplace better for everyone, or poor skills that make any tough situation that arises even worse? Remember, your behavior sets the tone and then you get to live with the consequences of that. Why wouldn’t you want good outcomes in every situation you face? You are 100% responsible for being legitimately trustworthy as a person and as a leader.

Until next time, I’ll be praying for you to have fruitful introspection about where you are on the spectrum of trustworthiness.