To be a leader build trust, sustain it
People in managerial roles often struggle between being a good manager and being a good leader. In the initial stages of your career as a manager, you often feel that being a good manager means compromising on being a good leader. If you focus on being a good manager, you can enjoy only limited short-term success. But if you strive to develop leadership qualities, you can be sure of unreserved and long standing success. So, managers must strike the right balance between ma
nagerial skills and leadership traits to pursue a successful career. And the most important leadership trait that can make or mar your success at the workplace is trustworthiness.
Trust is fundamental for leadership. Leadership necessitates influencing others to put them on the right track. But people are willing to be led only by the person whom they trust. So, a leader must demonstrate all the aspects of trustworthiness to assume the responsibility of guiding others. For this he first needs to have a proper understanding of trust and its dynamics.
Charles M. Green along with David Maister and Rob Galford explored several aspects of trust in their book Trusted Advisor. According to Green, trust is composed of credibility, reliability, intimacy and self-orientation. Credibility is how believable a leader is. Reliability is how dependable he is. Intimacy rates how safe people feel sharing information with the leader. Self-orientation is how much the leader focuses on himself compared to his focus on others. Based on these four traits Green devised a self-assessment test that helps you calculate your trustworthiness or ‘Trust Quotient.’
At the workplace, employees evaluate your trustworthiness by analysing factors like their experiences with you, your record, competence and attitude and the organisational culture, which reflect the four aspects of trust discussed by Green. So, you must use your speech and actions to make the right impression on your employees. Here are a few guidelines for you to begin:
• Keep up your promises
• Do not put blame on others for your mistakes
• Contribute all you can for the success of your team
• Keep developing your abilities
• Talk to your employees honestly and clearly
• Do what you believe is right though you have to pay a price for it
• Be confident
• Listen to what others have to say and do it with empathy
• Trust your employees and their abilities
• Praise them for their success and share their success story with others
• Accept people as what they are and respect them
• Place the interests of your team members before yours
Making people trust you sometimes takes more time than you anticipate. The reasons are the same as your taking time to trust others. To gain trust from others, you must first trust them. In fact distrust is the biggest obstacle in the way to becoming trustworthy. A politician and author, Henry L. Stimson said, “The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.” But trusting others can sometimes land you in trouble. So, you must promote a trust based work environment gradually. The initial struggles that you face in this attempt are worth it as such an environment promotes good teamwork and success.
Once a mutual trust based relationship is established between you and your employees, leading them becomes easy. The task of management is a cakewalk for a good leader. You can educate, counsel, inspire and motivate them. But you must also ensure that you do not through any action raise doubts about your trustworthiness. As Warren E. Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. says, “It takes twenty years to build trust, and one minute to break it.”
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NITYA SAI SOUMYA
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