During these challenging times, people are experiencing uncertainty and ambiguity as it pertains to their work and working relationships. It is at times like this where Trust becomes essential. The 7 tips shared in this video will support you in creating effective, productive relationships.
Do you make it safe for yourself and others to screw up sometimes?
Ever experienced doubt about the level of trust you’ve built at work?
Do you wonder where you stand? Not just with your boss, but with other key people?
Unsettling, isn’t it?
You’re not alone.
Doubt. Unsettling, isn’t it? Like a rock sewn into your shoe.
We hear a lot about spotting and escaping toxic bosses. Bosses who behave in ways that cripple trust, bog down progress, and hold people back from achieving their best work.
You want to run away from these people.
But what about the toxic boss in your own head? Are you willing to recognize the ways you hold yourself back?
Do you remember when you learned to read a stop sign? Probably not. You were pretty young.
But now that you know, you can’t go back to seeing just a bunch of white squiggles on a red background, right? You’re aware.
This awareness is potent. It keeps you from hurting other people or yourself when you’re behind the wheel.
Self-awareness keeps you from hurting people, too.
Here are 3 ways to develop it:
The manager who took his manufacturing plant from lowest to highest producer nationwide within 18 months.
The VP of Finance who increased engagement by 25% and got a faltering $30 million initiative back on track.
The Nursing Director of a renowned research hospital who spearheaded a controversial, hardline “no gossip” policy…and saw employee and patient satisfaction scores increase by double digits.
The team leader who stepped away from a meeting to call his wife, and ended up having the best conversation he’d had in 10 years.
What do these people have in common?
They know their success and satisfaction – both in business and in life – depends on trust. They know trusting relationships are built by making certain choices. Specifically, choices around how they show up in their relationships with other people.
In other words, their behavior.
Are you willing to make different choices about your behavior? Choices guaranteed to build trust in your ability to lead, both at work and outside of work?
After all, you don’t need direct reports to be a leader. You’re already accountable – to yourself. You lead your own life, right?
My partner Michelle and I built a new tool for you. It’s an online trust quiz, it’s free to use, and it only takes 60 seconds. Can a 60 second quiz actually help you become a stronger leader…both of others, and of yourself?
We’ll be straight with you: building and sustaining trust is hard work. It’s not a one-and-done, plug-and-play exercise. To become a high trust leader – a high trust person – you’ve got to work at it. We all do.
But that’s what leadership’s all about, right? Working at it. If you agree, you’re in the right place, because we‘re here to support you.
We built this quiz for you – to help you take on trust, build trust, and sustain trust in the relationships you most value.
The quiz is scientifically proven. It’s actually a thumbnail sketch version of our statistically reliable valid and assessments, which are backed by 25 years of trust-focused research and global application.
Take the quiz. It’s free, and it only takes a minute – literally.
You’ll learn key behaviors you already practice to build trust. You’ll learn how to do more of what you’re already doing right!
And, you’ll learn where you can make stronger choices in how you behave. You’ll discover where to devote your focus, energy, and attention.
You’ll come away with scientifically proven tips, steps, and tools to dig in and take trust in your leadership to the next level. You can’t find these resources anywhere else. Why?
Because we’re the only trust experts around who’ve devoted our entire professional lives to trust building.
Take the quiz. Invest 60 seconds. Learn what you can do to truly connect with and bring out the best in other people…and in yourself.
Yours in trust,
Dennis Reina
I was just in Manhattan facilitating a trust workshop. Women leaders from all over the metropolitan area had rolled up their sleeves, ‘gone to work,’ and stepped into real conversations about trust.
In a powerful truth-speaking moment, one woman asked a provocative question about trust – or, rather, the lack of it:
Astronaut Scott Kelly just spent an unbroken year in space, setting a U.S. record. TIME Magazine chronicled Kelly’s time aboard the International Space Station in its documentary, A Year in Space.
As I watched Kelly’s story, I was riveted. Not just by his passion and commitment, but by his remarkable capacity for trust. Trust in himself. Trust in his fellow astronauts. Trust that a million moving parts would get him safely into space and back.
Trust that when he returned, everything he left behind on Earth would still be here, waiting for him.
Among the many tools Scott Kelly gave us to develop our own capacity for trust, here are the 5 most critical:
For 11 years, tennis player Maria Sharapova has been #1 on Forbes’ list of highest paid female athletes. During a recent press conference, we learned for the last 10 of those years she’s been taking Meldonium, a medication the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has now banned as a performance-enhancing substance.
Telling the truth can be difficult.
In my work, people ask me to help them strengthen trust in their relationships. I work with individual leaders; other times with teams or entire organizations. Regardless of the scope of the engagement or place in the world I’m working, however, I’ve found that when it comes to trust, the same core issues surface. Among the most challenging of these issues?
How do people develop into transformational leaders? Is it through coaching? Training? Educating?
According to Bank of Maroda Chairman Ravi Venkatesan in his insightful piece Building leadership: Unleash the disrupters, it’s none of those things:
Your trustworthiness is your most powerful asset — both in business and in life.
Think about it.
What are the gains you experience when people trust you? What can you count on when your trustworthiness isn’t in doubt?
Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Montersino
Under CEO Marissa Mayer, in the last year more than one-third of Yahoo’s employees have parted ways with the company – either voluntarily or involuntarily. In the coming months, another 15% of Yahoo’s workforce is slated to be fired.
Or, as Mayer prefers to say – “remixed.”
“Ms. Mayer has steadfastly refused to use the word “layoff” to describe the thousands of jobs eliminated since she joined the company,” reported The New York Times. “She even forbade her managers from uttering what she called “the L-word,” instructing them to use the term “remix” instead.”
Mayer’s termination policies have caught the attention of courts in California, where Yahoo is headquartered. Under California law, companies engaging in mass layoffs are required to give employees 60 days advance notice. Despite the large numbers of employees it’s forced to leave its ranks, reports are that Yahoo has provided no such notice.
If the courts determine Yahoo’s been conducting mass layoffs under the guise of performance-based terminations, thousands of former Yahoo employees will be eligible for back pay and damages. If the courts decide in Yahoo’s favor?
Clearly, Mayer – and by proxy Yahoo – have a trust problem. When it comes to the viability of an organization, compromised trust is the canary in the coal mine. Why?
The question is, can Mayer rebuild trust in her leadership and throughout Yahoo? In our nearly 25 years of experience in rebuilding workplace trust with leaders around the world, the answer is yes…if Mayer demonstrates a sincere commitment to leading her people through the following steps:
Turning around an environment struggling with trust starts with honest reflection, courageous examination, and assessment. It takes courage to take stock of where trust stands and acknowledge the specific behaviors that caused trust to erode and for relationships to head south.
This isn’t the time for generalities and labeling. It’s not the time to attack character. This first step is to assess and acknowledge the behaviors that broke trust in the first place, and how those actions impacted people’s lives. After all, what’s not acknowledged can’t be restored.
Trust is emotionally provocative. When people experience trust being eroded, they feel it. Consider the last time your trust took a hit at work. What emotions surfaced?
People tell us when trust is compromised they feel everything from frustration, to anger, to devastation. They feel loss – the loss of their energy, focus, and productivity. And, in cases such as this, the loss of their relationships, particularly with people they’ve worked closely.
Often, the people who’ve been laid off are people others have cared about. People they’ve collaborated with…gone to the wall with…been with through thick and thin. When those people leave, it hurts. There is a loss, and with loss comes emotion.
In an environment of layoffs, people also tell us they feel vulnerable and fear for their jobs. Instead of stepping up to meet current demands, they withdraw. In these situations, people need a safe container to vocalize their concerns and discuss vulnerabilities constructively. They need support to move through the impacts of eroded trust, embrace the changes, and prepare to move forward.
We’ve seen people rebound, grow, and even prosper through broken trust…with support.
People can actually benefit from what disappointed them and took them down.
When trust is compromised (whether at work or at home), people – you – need support from impartial and objective confidants. Judging, criticizing, or heaping blame on the person who made trust vulnerable isn’t what’s needed. While those actions may be an easy default in the short term, they’ll only trap people dwelling in the past.
What’s most valuable at this time is perspective…exploring options…gaining an objective understanding of the bigger picture and working through doubt, confusion, and frustration.
With objectivity comes the ability to reframe experiences of broken trust within a larger context. Through looking at the extenuating circumstances that contributed to the break down, people can begin to shift from blame to problem solving. They can see options to move forward.
They may even begin to view the person who broke their trust through the lens of compassion, rather than blame.
Reframing helps people transform their traumatic experiences to opportunities for learning and growth for everyone involved. People can look at what they have, what they’ve learned, and how – as a group – they’ve even benefitted from what’s happened.
In our work, we’ve seen it time and again. When people are appropriately supported to reframe, they discover fresh appreciation for one another, both as colleagues and as human beings. They gain greater insight into what they truly need to from one another to do their best work, and learn how to deliver on those needs.
Instead of trying to trying to distance themselves from their situation, they step into it begin to leverage it.
When people are suffering within a lower trust culture, it’s normal for them to project their negative feelings onto others – to lay blame and sidestep responsibility. However, people who successfully rebuild trust take ownership of their behavior in response to the conditions they are facing.
They ask themselves, ‘what can I do now to take charge of my situation? What I might be doing to contribute to a downward spiral of trust? Am I pointing the finger? Am I painting other people in black-and-white terms, as ‘all wrong’ or ‘all bad?’ Am I talking about – rather than with – people when I have concerns?’
The truth? Even if not responsible for what happened, we all have responsibility for how we respond.
When people don’t forgive one another, they cling to their anger, resentment, and bitterness like a security blanket. We often hear people talking about a breach of trust that happened 5, 10, 15 years ago.
No matter how egregious they were, hanging onto past hurts doesn’t help you…or anyone else.
Learning to forgive releases people from this pattern of negative behavior and allows them to approach others with a sense of compassion. Forgiveness is less about letting the other person “off the hook,” and more about freeing oneself from the baggage of negativity, bitterness, and blame.
Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.
In this final stage, people are supported to accept the situation without blame. They look back over their experience, reflect on the lessons they learned, and think about what behaviors they can practice to ensure a healthier, more productive working environment in the future.
We are not here to judge or criticize Mayer’s decisions, words, or actions. However, we can use the impression of broken trust as an opportunity to learn.
The truth?
We all find ourselves up against a wall at some point in time as the result of what has happened either to us or around us.
Final note: Using these Seven Steps for Rebuilding Trust, we’ve seen people in a multi-billion dollar communications firm completely transform their relationships – both within top leadership, and throughout the company. Through taking responsibility to rebuild trust, these people repaired severely damaged management/employee relationships in time to successfully navigate a major change initiative.
In their own words:
Yours in trust,
Michelle Reina
