Building Trust in Your Team

SUMMARY

Do you have people in your team that are really sceptical and challenging to get moving alongside you, or do they get stuck in really quick because they believe in what you're saying and what you're doing?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer, and today I want to start a conversation for this month around building trust in your team.

In this week's episode, I will give you the 5 key principles YOU need to know to build trust in your team.

1. Seek awareness.
2. Adjust your thinking.
3. Trust is earned.
4. Remain accountable.
5. Trust is breakable.

Trust is a two-way street, and it's mutually beneficial.

So, I invite you to share this with your team to talk about it, to let them watch the podcast or watch the video, whichever one you have access to, so that it's not just you that's getting this.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue this conversation and learn these practical strategies of building and keeping trust in your team.

I'll see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you have people in your team that are really sceptical and challenging to get moving alongside you, or do they get stuck in really quick because they believe in what you're saying and what you're doing?

Well, stick with me because, in this week's episode, I want to continue our conversation around the relationship management competencies of social intelligence by moving into one of the most important competencies around building trust.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer, and today I want to start a conversation for this month around building trust in your team.

Many people I speak to are disappointed by the conflicting behaviour that they see in their leaders.

They might have had broken promises.

And the challenge with that is that they have long memories. And the result is we have an impact on our team where relationships are not high in trust.

When we have low trust relationships, people stand back a little bit, and they're more sceptical, and they wait, and they see until you've proven that you can be trusted.

Once they are past that hurdle, they start moving with you.

However, when they see congruent behaviour, realistic expectations, and you and everybody else building high trust relationships, you get a collaborative team that works together, has got each other's backs, and will even go the extra mile in those tougher times.

So, what I want to do this month is start a conversation around building trust.

Trust is a word that's thrown out there so often.

I want to make sure that you look at it through a practical lens. And I want to give you strategies and tips that you can use for yourself and teach within your team that allow that trust to be built.

Every team must work on building these competencies around trust.

And as a leader, trust is all about being ethical and working with people by doing what you say you're going to do, being reliable and accountable.

So, what I want to do this week is just give you five principles that we want to understand. And then, as we go through the rest of the month, we'll unpack these things in-depth so that you've got some easy, actionable strategies that you can start using straight away.

I hope that you develop these for yourself and your people so that your level of trust increases and, therefore, your results exponentially go towards where you want to go.

1. Seek awareness.

Ask yourself the question:

“Do people trust me?”

When you ask yourself that question, you may or may not come up with the correct answer.

So, seeking awareness is an inward look at how you operate and seeing whether anything could break the trust you have with other people.

Sometimes it's even going deeper than that. And it's looking to get feedback from others around the things you do so that you get a better picture, a more accurate understanding and awareness around your ability to be trusted.

Now, I'm not talking about going to people and going, "Hey, am I trustworthy?" Because that's a little bit full-on, you're going to get a yes or a no answer.

What I'm talking about is seeking awareness in that feedback by asking questions around why people behave with you the way they do.

So, let's start this week by getting some awareness around that.

Take a look at yourself through this lens that I'm giving you today and go, "Where could I do things differently to start building that trust even greater than the trust that I have right now?"

2. Adjust your thinking.

Sometimes we need to shift our beliefs our mindsets around things before we can get into the practical side of making change.

So, the first thing to do is to get on board that building trust is a crucial competency for you and your team.

So, if you think it's one of those extras or those warm and fuzzy emotional intelligence skills, and it's not something that you've got time to invest in right now, I want to challenge you to shift that thinking.

I want to challenge you to look at it through the lens of the importance that it needs.

It's not all about technical skills or productivity. It's about people's reason for getting involved and doing things.

Trust is a major area when people think about that.

So, shift to thinking around how important trust is.

And as we go through this month, shift your thinking around getting trust and keeping it.

3. Trust is earned.

It's not a "give me that because I am the leader"; people will trust you.

Just because the organisation has put you in a position of trust, it doesn’t mean that people will automatically trust you. For you to gain other people’s trust, you need to make sure that you're doing what you need to do to earn their trust.

Looking at that the other way, the people you work with need to earn your trust.

Now, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt until the trust is broken.

However, looking at what we're starting with this month, I want us to all understand that you have to do and be a certain way so that people do trust you. It's not enough to just look at the fact that you're the leader; look at the position that you've got.

You got to earn that trust.

4. Remain accountable.

I remember in my corporate career, I had this delusion that because I was going up the corporate ladder, people would just do what I said to do and that I was now in a position of authority that stems from my military career in some part.

However, I realise more and more, even now, as I continue to lead people, that I need to remain accountable to them continually.

I'm actually there to serve them, not the other way round.

And suppose I remain accountable, and you remain accountable to your people for your behaviour, keeping it congruent with what you say you're going to do, allowing them to give you feedback. In that case, trust is going to escalate.

On the other hand, if you go “my way or the highway” and “you just do as I tell you,” then there's no accountability, and there's no trust.

So being accountable is a key element of building and keeping trust in your team.

5. Trust is breakable.

Trust is not something you earn and then you keep.

Trust is something that you earn, and then you continue to earn day after day.

There are things that all people do that can gain trust and also break it.

So, understanding that it's not a one-time deal, understanding that it's a way of being, not something that you do, will continue you working in a collaborative team that trusts each other.

Well, you have five key things to consider as we go into this month, talking about trust.

What we're going to do over the coming weeks is I'm going to pull those apart, and we're going to go deeper. And we're going to look at what to do so that you can gain trust.

We're going to look at things that help you gain trust and things that break trust.

I'm going to give you strategies to work with your team. And it's not just about you developing trust; it's helping them to develop trust within each other as well.

Trust is a two-way street, and it's mutually beneficial.

So, I invite you to share this with your team to talk about it, to let them watch the podcast or watch the video, whichever one you have access to, so that it's not just you that's getting this.

We're in a time in the world right now where the trust of leaders is at an all-time low.

Here in Australia, we've just had a government change based on a lack of trust.

People will do so much for you when they trust you. However, they'll make sure they're not doing things for you when they don't.

So, let's continue working together this month and help each other build more trust.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue this conversation and learn these practical strategies of building and keeping trust in your team.

I'll see you then.