Six Tips to Build Trust

In a previous video, we talked about why people don’t trust leaders, and why they don’t trust you. In this video, we’re going to give you six great tips to build a relationship built on trust.

1. Be honest when it costs you something to be honest. In the business of leadership, you get zero points for being honest if it doesn’t cost you something to be honest. For example, one of your employees comes to you and says, “Hey, I want to ask you a question. Are you happy with my performance?” You look at the employee, who is a hothead, and you say, “I am really glad you asked me. Although I am happy with a couple of aspects of your performance, when it comes to your ability to work as a team member and specifically to work cross-departmentally, I have really strong concerns that I want to ask if you see that also as a problem?” Be honest, especially when it costs you something to be honest.
2. Hold all employees equally accountable. Every leader has people who are easy to lead, and people who are more challenging to lead. To be successful as a leader and to be trusted, you have to hold all people to high standards and ensure they deliver on both results and in the respected timeframe. That means sometimes you’re going to be holding accountable the people who are the easiest for you to lead, because they weren’t accountable in this one particular area.
3. Don’t be friends with your employees. I highly encourage you not to be friends with your employees. If you want to be trusted, remember this: the team members who report directly to you are your colleagues, not your friends. So many people have told me “I totally disagree. I go to happy hour with my friends who are my direct reports, I do things with them on the weekends” and I want you to know this – if you do this you better hope your friends are the highest performers in the organization. They are the superstars who make you look like a stellar star, they never create a problem of which you would have to have a coaching or counseling session. I want to add this: if you want to be friends with your direct reports, I highly encourage it because it’s great for our business, it’s not great for you and your business, but it creates great work in the management consulting world. So if you do want to go to happy hour, I encourage you to invite all your team members. I encourage you to pay for the first round of drinks, and then I encourage you to get out because nothing good happens for a leader after the second drink.
4. Be fair when it costs you something to be fair. What does that look like in real life? I give one of my employees a “meets expectations” and my boss says “I totally disagree, they should not be meeting expectations.” I build a case for my boss that supports me in meeting expectations. I am going to tell you this, almost always employees know when you’re fair and they also know that when you take the responsibility to ensure fairness. It confirms that they trust you and they trust with you with their personal and their professional life.
5. Genuinely care. I work with so many leaders who sometimes ask, “Why do I need to care? What if I don’t?” Employees know. They know when you genuinely care about them, both personally and professionally; they can feel it. I stop by every morning and check-in with my team and ask, “How’s it going? Is there anything I can do to support you?” On Mondays, I always check in and ask, “How was your weekend and what did you do that was fun?” I spend maybe one or two minutes listening and it’s probably the best one or two minutes that I can spend that day communicating to my team that I really do care.
6. Guard for Work-Life Balance. I work hard to make sure that my team members are able to get all of their work done and we can meet our client’s deadlines between 7:30 and 5 each day. Why is this important? Because when people work really hard and for example, we send emails at all hours of the night, which your employees know that they have to respond to meet your expectations, it indirectly says that you don’t really value their personal time and it indirectly says that you don’t genuinely care about their work-life balance.

These six tips will make a difference, if you put them into play, that will build a relationship where your people truly do trust you.