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The Trust Breakers


SUMMARY

Do you find yourself continually needing to rebuild the trust that you've built with your people?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, emotional intelligence speaker and trainer of the year, and master coach trainer. And today, I want to continue our conversation around trust by helping you to identify the trust breakers.

Last week, we took a look at the things that we could do to build trust, the trust makers. So today, we want to switch gears and want to have a look at the behaviours that you could be doing right now that are roadblocks to you building trust.

Here are the key things to avoid when we're working with our people.

1. Failing to deliver on commitments.
2. Withholding information.
3. Betraying a confidence.
4. Blaming others for your mistakes.
5. Taking credit for other people's work.
6. Micromanaging.

Now we've looked at the trust makers and the trust breakers. So it's a balance now of making sure that we understand both of those.

The thing with trust is there's a trust tank, a reservoir, and there need to be way more trust makers to keep the trust to go against even one of those trust breakers.

Well, that's it for me for another week. I enjoyed having a look at trust. What did you learn? What did you notice? What would you like some more help on? Making sure that you reach out and that you connect. Share this with others. Share it with the team and together we can raise the level of trust. In high trust relationships, more gets done. There's less wasted energy in not trusting people and together we get the results that we want to get.

I'll see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you find yourself continually needing to rebuild the trust that you've built with your people?

Well, stick with me because in this episode, I'm going to show you what you could be doing that is causing the problem.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, emotional intelligence speaker and trainer of the year, and master coach trainer. And today, I want to continue our conversation around trust by helping you to identify the trust breakers.

Over the last few weeks, we've been going on a journey around trust. We've been looking at what people look for to be able to trust you as a leader, those behaviours that they want to see, the mindsets, the attitudes.

Last week, we took a look at the things that we could do to build trust, the trust makers. So today, we want to switch gears and want to have a look at the behaviours that you could be doing right now that are roadblocks to you building trust.

Now, once again, just like I said, last week, this isn't an opportunity for you to beat yourself up and go, “Oh no, I'm doing all these things wrong.” This is something for you to have a look at and see if there are some things that you could be doing differently.

It's also an opportunity for you to not use this just for yourself, but to talk about this within your team.

It's not just learning from a list that's going to help you. It's being able to discuss that. Allow people to have their own perspectives.

It's like we talked about last week in building trust, having people in an environment that's open for them to have an opinion for them to give feedback that goes a long way to escalating your trust.

So, let's have a look at these key things to avoid when we're working with our people.

1. Failing to deliver on commitments.

Nothing erodes trust faster in that know-like-trust continuum.

When you say you're going to do something, when you commit to doing it, and then you don’t. People go, “There we go again.” And they link you to other people that haven't lived up to their commitments. And therefore, they judge you based on that.

And very quickly, it goes from a behaviour that you did or didn't do to “I can't trust that person. I can't trust them to do what they say they're going to do.”

So, the key around this if you look at it firstly at the foundation level is to commit to things that you can do.

When you're operating out of the performance trap and self-approval isn't high, what you're going to do is over-promise and under-deliver.

So, there are some root cause behaviours that you could work on to help you with this first trust breaker.

Making sure that the commitment is clear, and that there's an understanding that is the same for both of you on what that mutual commitment is, and then delivering what you say you're going to do.

2. Withholding information.

When you bottle everything up, because you want to make sure that you have all the power because the information is power, right? And you're not sharing that with the other people, there's a tendency for them to think that you're hiding something.

And when people feel you're hiding something, how can they trust you?

So being liberal with information, making sure that you share more than what they need to know just to do that task. Make sure they understand why. Make sure they get a bigger picture.

And obviously, there's going to be times when there are things that they don't need to share because it's not appropriate.

But making sure that they've got every bit of information that they need so that they can make a decision based around all that is going to help them to trust you more.

It says “I've got nothing to hide. Here are all there is. I'm an open book.”

3. Betraying a confidence.

Nothing breaks trust faster and make it more challenging to get back than betraying confidence that you have in someone else.

When you say it's confidential, but then you go and talk to others about it. For me, this is a big one.

As a coach, working with leaders, I want to make sure that we've got a total understanding of the confidentiality that we have within our coaching arrangement.

So that people know, even if I'm doing it as sponsored executive coaching, that I'm only ever going to share at context level with the people that have engaged me to do the coaching with them. But the content that we speak about, that's locked away in a vault and they've got the key and they're the only ones that will open it up for others.

If I were to break that, if I were to open the vault and go against that, that would break that trust.

So, make sure that you stay true to the commitment that you have to that person, that you keep everything confidential, and that you set it up in advance so that they know that there are no surprises. They know what you need to disclose, et cetera.

But keeping things within that bond of trust between you and them is vital.

Commitment is vitally important for people to go through that know – like – trust.

4. Blaming others for your mistakes.

None of us likes to get caught out. None of us likes to feel bad about getting things wrong.

As we develop our identity and our self-worth, mistakes become good things. It's not something that we worry about.

But along the journey, I found myself sometimes that I would shift the focus onto someone else rather than onto me when things went wrong. And it wasn't about them, it was about me not wanting to be judged.

But nothing breaks trust more than you not admitting that you made a mistake and therefore blaming them for your mistake, or blaming others in the team.

5. Taking credit for other people's work.

We all like to be recognised.

We all like to be patted on the back.

We all, whether we're doing it in an unhealthy way, because we have an unhealthy need for significance like I did or affirmation to validate us as a person or whether in a healthy way, we just like people saying that we've done a good thing.

When we forget to include others and we take all the glory, when you say that it was you rather than the team, that will break the trust that they have with you because that has eroded one of those trust makers and that's being interested in them.

If you make it all about you, then you're going to break that trust.

6. Micromanaging.

Delegation is one of those most challenging attributes of a leader, a skill that we all need to learn.

And one of the reasons why leaders are so busy and they fail to delegate is that they don't trust that the people they're delegating to will do the task well enough to represent them.

So once again, the focus is on you and not on the people that you're working with.

So, micromanagement, checking in all the time at every single step along the way, says “I don't trust you.”

And as we looked at when we first started talking about this, the behaviours of a high trust leader, a couple of weeks ago, actually trusting others is something that has to be done. It's a prerequisite for them to trust you.

So micro-managing erodes that away.

No matter what comes out of our mouth, no matter what you say to them about the fact that you trust them, actions speak louder than words.

And if they're constantly being watched and taken through every single step, rather than given responsibility and checking in in a more appropriate way, that says that you're not trusting them, therefore they can't trust you as well.

Trust is a journey. It's not a destination. I said that last week.

Now we've looked at the trust makers and the trust breakers. So it's a balance now of making sure that we understand both of those.

And as we work with people in our journey of imperfection, we make sure that you look into those things and go, “Where are some of those makers that I could be doing more of and where could I be making sure that I tweak and adjust over here so that I'm not breaking trust?”

The thing with trust is there's a trust tank, a reservoir, and there need to be way more trust makers to keep the trust to go against even one of those trust breakers.

So, making sure that you understand this list, you have a look at it, you work with it on yourself and pick something that could be happening in your behaviour that's breaking trust.

Make sure that you have conversations with your team when you feel like there's a lack of trust.

Ask “why.”

Allow them to tell you, and then use that feedback loop that I've taught you before to make sure that the feedback is not something that you take on personally, you take it on as something that's going to help you to grow so that you can help the team and be a better leader for them as well.

Well, that's it for me for another week. I enjoyed having a look at trust. What did you learn? What did you notice? What would you like some more help on? Making sure that you reach out and that you connect. Share this with others. Share it with the team and together we can raise the level of trust. In high trust relationships, more gets done. There's less wasted energy in not trusting people and together we get the results that we want to get.

So next week I'm going to start a new topic. We're going to talk about interpersonal relationships, and how we can work and play better with others.

I'll see you then.

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