All you need is trust…

Trust might not be the only thing you need but if you don’t have trust, nothing else matters.

To be able to help others you need them to feel comfortable expressing the things that bother them. They need to feel safe to open up to you and they also need to feel like it is worthwhile putting themselves in the soft spot together with you. To make this happen they need to trust you. Building trust is therefore the first thing I work on when being new as a manager for an individual or a team.

There are a few things I believe are crucial to become and stay a leader that people trust:

• Always keep your promises. By following through on your promises you’ll establish that you can be counted on, and that leads people to believe the things you are saying.
• Show that you count on them. Enable people to take decisions and support them in the decision making process. Failing is ok but not trying is not ok.
• Show that they can count on you. You listen carefully to get all perspectives and you try to make things better. You dare to take a fight even when it’s difficult (but you don’t pick a fight just because you can).
• Protect their integrity. Keep the things they say to yourself and be transparent about when you share something with others. We work in a collaborative environment which is amazing but it requires us to be extremely thoughtful around what we share and how we share things to make sure people’s integrity gets protected.
• Protect your integrity. Make sure to say the same thing to everybody and be honest and clear about your opinions (or don’t share your opinion if that is the best thing to do). While it’s never ok to lie it is sometimes better to not be totally transparent – but I always strive to be as transparent as possible.
• Be relevant. You need to know what you are talking about and admit when you don’t know. For instance if you give too much praise to something that was not that hard people might think that you are out of touch and don’t know what you are talking about which will not be good for their trust in you.

First and foremost I always try to keep my promises. I want people to know that they can count on me, if I say something I want people to trust it to be true. If I constantly fail to deliver on my promises that will not happen. Keeping my promises is something I always try to practice in small and big things.

Sometimes I fail on keeping my promises and, when that happens, I am open with my mistakes. I share both the reason for my failure and the learnings I bring with me from that experience. This is important since I want to live up to my values but also because I believe that leading by example is a powerful thing. People don’t do what you say, they do what you do. By admitting to failure and communicating learnings I help build a culture where failure is ok as long as you learn from them.

The quick win…

When being new as a manager in a group I try to find small improvement areas that I can act on as soon as possible to show that my intention is to make a difference. It could be asking office management for new trash bins or organizing a team lunch. I try to pick up the things that people seem to care about. The reason I do this is that I want to start our relationship by showing “I am here to help, I listen to your needs and try to help”.