3 Trust Eroding Behaviors Leaders Should Avoid
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As leaders, we hear all the time how important it is that your team trusts you and you trust them. Although teambuilding exercises and similar activities are a great way to build team trust, the way we behave in everyday interactions and treat each other is the most important factor when building trust. I’m going to focus today on 3 behaviors that erode trust, and another 3 that will help you build trust during your everyday work.
Why is Trust Important?
Trust is the building block for any relationship - including professional ones. As leaders, we want our teams to be able to come to us for help, be honest when anyone makes a mistake, and be open-minded when we give and receive feedback. Achieving a team culture where everyone thrives, grows, and connects with each other is the key to effective collaboration and innovation.
3 Trust Eroding Behaviours Leaders Should Avoid
Lack of Empathy
Lack of empathy means not treating your team like what they are: humans with feelings. If they don’t feel like you see them for all their parts: feelings, emotions, struggles in and out of work, they are not going to trust you as a leader. If you demonstrate that you do not take into account these aspects of their lives when making decisions, they may begin to distrust your judgment. Our ability to empathize with others is what connects us as humans, and without that connection, we fail to form trusting relationships. This is not to say that you need to always drop everything to accommodate how they feel or what’s happening in their lives, but being able to acknowledge and speak to them about it makes you a great leader. Leaders who lead without empathy typically end up with rotating teams that are overworked, underpaid, and burnt out.
Lack of Accountability
As leaders, we need to have the emotional intelligence to acknowledge that we made a mistake, accept it, and take responsibility for it and any consequences that follow. Not being able to do this can erode trust and respect because as leaders we often expect this from our teams: lead by example. Lack of accountability can look like brushing over a mistake you made, blaming it on someone else, or coming up with excuses for it - this is made worse if these things are not acceptable behaviors from your team.
Lack of Transparency & Communication
Having to press and ask and beg your team leader to know whats going on at a business level can be excruciating - it can feel like managers believe they are better than everyone else, like only they get to know what is actually going on, even though it affects the whole team. Whilst I’m sure there is a section of managers that are indeed on a power trip, most of the time this lack of communication is unintentional. Leaving your team out of conversations or not telling them the full story (or even worse letting them hear it through the gossip grapevine) is a sure-fire way to erode trust. They may start asking themselves why you won’t just tell them: what secrets are you keeping and why are you keeping them?
3 Behaviours that Build Trust as a Leader
Staying Consistent
In everything you do, be nothing if not consistent. The way you address people, projects, handle conflict, mistakes, and decision-making - be consistent. This consistency makes you reliable and your team can trust that you will behave the same way today as you did yesterday. That being said, we are human and our feelings influence our decisions. Being honest about them will help you stay clear-headed in times of tension or high-emotion settings and help your team understand where you are coming from.
Mastering Feedback
Feedback is a two-way street. It’s a skill that requires empathy, active listening, and owning your language in order to be effective. By practicing receiving and giving feedback in this manner, you become better at those skills and you also build trust with your team. Being able to sit down with anyone in your team and speak your mind (or have them speak theirs) about something that happened is an incredibly powerful tool for building trust. Not only that, but your team will grow professionally and socially.
Authenticity
Most people are very good at picking up when a person is not being open or real with them. In any relationship, including work relationships, it is very hard to trust someone when we can feel they are holding a part of themself or something back from us. Bringing just a little bit more of your authentic self to work can go a long way in building trust with your team. Think of a hobby, something you enjoy outside of work, or maybe open up a little bit more emotionally. Bring some humor and vulnerability when you interact with your team - make them laugh or let them see you for who you are as a person, not just a boss.
Conclusion: Trust is a Human Thing. Be Human.
We trust in what we know, and what we can see and feel. As leaders, we need to be humans that our teams can trust by allowing them to see us and interact in a way that is familiar and, to an extent, predictable. To effectively build trust as a leader, you need to bring your humanity to work.
