This is a tricky question. Trust is the foundation of relationships and critical for leadership. It’s simple in theory, but can be quite difficult to navigate. The challenge is that each person is unique. (Drats!) Just when you think you have your people figured out, someone new is hired with their own unique personality, history, skills, experiences, and needs. What works in building trust in one situation may be completely different with this new person.
Luckily, we do have some guideposts. Find below guides for both identifying good potential leaders and assessing your current leaders. They center around the building block of all relationships – trust.
First, a look in the mirror
To build trust you have to be trustworthy. While you and I might think we are trustworthy, it is worth taking the time to consider our actions as a leader. For this, I like Ken Blanchard’s ABCD model of trust. You can use it to assess yourself on the four elements of trust (Able, Believable, Connected, Dependable).
This isn’t a pass fail, but a continuous improvement for ourselves. I like to take it on an annual basis. Leadership is a two-way street, and looking inward is important in our own growth.
Test run new leaders to build trust
When selecting or promoting new leaders, you need to step back and look at the facts.
Do they want to be in a leadership role or does it just sound nice?
Not sure? You can test the waters. Give them an opportunity to lead a challenging project without even discussing the promotion first. See if they really like it and how they handle it. Otherwise, if you promote and then it doesn’t work out for either of you (get tips on bridging a performance gap here), you have to demote them back to their old position. Not fun.
Develop a new leader or hire someone seasoned?
I get it. It is a lot of fun to give an opportunity to someone, but this excitement can lead to hastiness.
Step back. Look at the role. Ask yourself:
- Are they really qualified?
- Do they really have the skills, experience and temperament for this leadership role?
- If not, are you willing to invest in them to develop those skills?
- Is that best for the business and the speed of growth or do you need to hire someone who already has those skills?
Should you invest in this leader?
This question is critical. You can’t help someone change and grow if they aren’t open to it. You need to understand where they are. Are they more interested in the title and pay? What is it that they want out of leadership? Ask this question.
Ideally, their answer focuses on their team and the desire to help that team perform well for the company. Don’t get me wrong, it is nice to have a fancy title and pay to go with it. But that is earned.
And if they don’t love people… Love developing, nurturing, pushing, holding accountable, you get it – then this may not be fun for them. Things can be hard in leadership, but they need to be people focused. And again, be both trustworthy and able to develop trust.
Trusting leaders by watching how they grow
Leaders need to be constantly growing and investing in themselves. With this they need to be open to feedback.
How do they handle things when they mess up? Do then self-defend, place the blame elsewhere, deny? This says a lot about a leader. If they can’t own it, they can’t do this with their team, and they can’t grow. You can’t build relationships on that.
Finally, what energy do they bring to the team?
Do others enjoy working with them? Can they properly balance team performance with retaining their team members? Are their values consistent with the company values? Do they have the ability to develop trust with the leadership team and work collaboratively?
At the end of the day, pause to think about who you want beside you at the table.
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