Trust is the foundation of every relationship, and it is especially important in leadership. Research shows that organizations and teams with a climate of trust simply achieve better results. Employees who have a high level of trust in their immediate manager are more productive, creative, committed, and proactive. Trust is the foundation of good leadership and collaboration. In practice, it is almost impossible to achieve strong leadership results without sufficient trust.
How Does a Lack of Trust Show Up in Frontline Leadership?
Let’s look at three areas that are central to leadership results: setting goals, recognizing one’s own development needs, and identifying the kind of leadership that is needed.
Setting Goals
When a person has sufficient competence, the best way to set goals is to allow them to suggest the goals themselves within the given framework. However, people only set sufficiently challenging goals for themselves when they trust their immediate manager. If they do not trust their manager, they set goals they know they will achieve anyway.
Recognizing One’s Own Development Needs
People are more open to assessing their competence and commitment when they trust their immediate manager. People rarely reveal their weaknesses if they fear those weaknesses may later be used against them.
Identifying the Leadership That Is Needed
In an environment with low trust, people may easily interpret a manager’s directing leadership style as over-leading or “micromanaging”, even when it is appropriate for the situation. Similarly, a delegating leadership style may be interpreted as under-leading. This happens because people do not recognize their own development needs or the kind of leadership those needs require.
How Can You Build Trust in Practice?
Trust may seem like an abstract concept, something that is difficult to grasp in everyday leadership situations. But it does not have to be that way. Trust is built or broken through behavior, just as good or poor leadership is.
Building trust is, in the end, fairly straightforward — like leadership in general — when you know what to do. This is where I can help you. I can teach you a practical model and tools for building trust, as well as for restoring trust when it has been lost.
I will teach you
Blanchard’s trust-building model, which is based on research on the topic and decades of experience in building trust in leadership. Including breaks, you will need 4 hours and 45 minutes. You can join my training in Turku, Tampere, or Vantaa, or we can meet remotely online.
See the upcoming trust-building trainings here.
Janne Annunen
The author is the CEO and entrepreneur of Educo Valmennustalo, as well as a Blanchard® Global Partner. Janne is also the host of the popular leadership podcast Hyvä Paha johtaminen.
