Building Trust in Your New Role
Have you recently been promoted or taken on a new leadership position? Often people new to a leadership role will put their heads down and focus on “doing” the work. What they fail to remember is that the “real work of work is relationships.” Without a thoughtful reminder, new-in-role-leaders forget to spend time upfront considering how they will build trust with their new team and colleagues. This blog post provides 5 tips to create trust so those that are in new leadership positions can flourish in their new role.
1. Responsiveness
Keeping an open door in business is incredibly important. Always let your colleagues and team members know that you are there for them. The worries, needs, and wishes of your people should be highly ranked on your list of priorities. It is also important to give the impression that these things can be shared with you at any time. This includes providing suitable communication channels that ensure responsiveness. High level communication is especially critical with the increase of people working remotely.
2. Appreciation
In addition to accessibility, it is important to reward and pay gratitude to team members for their efforts. Very little appreciation leads to demotivation and possibly even a strained relationship between team members and leaders. At the end of the day, everyone gets a “thank you” even if it is simply thanking them for coming to work.
3. Wellbeing and autonomy
Employee well-being should be of high importance to you (not just from a productivity point of view). It is important for the relationship between boss and team member that you see each individual as a person who has needs and concerns. In the best case, you can build a relationship that is characterized by genuine warmth and empathy. In any case, it will be good to listen to your team members when it comes to personal matters and not to base your actions on your personal and economic goals. One aspect that plays a special role in this is the autonomy that you give to your team members. Independent of their character, autonomy is a very large lever for the well-being of your people. Although the economic context leaves only limited room for this, scientific studies repeatedly point out that too little autonomy in one's own work can make one ill or at least demotivate them. Whether micromanagement or overly rigid processes, a lack of autonomy of one's team is often a problem for the manager as well. This is simply because an enormous amount of resources would be invested in following up and reviewing the work of individual team members. Therefore, working relationships should be given space and opportunities for development for or towards autonomous work.
4. Consistency
No matter whether one talks about consistent action or integrity, the core of good and successful leadership behavior is to be consistent with one's own statements. To say one thing and do another is a betrayal of trust. The same applies to punctuality. Set deadlines should be adhered to. You should also be punctual at meetings, so that your team does not sit around unnecessarily and get distracted from their work. Basically, it's modelling the behavior that you expect from team members. If you do not live by the values you apply to others, your team will quickly lose their trust in you. It may be work asking yourself each evening “Did I honor my word and walk the walk today?”
5. Patience
You do not become a leader overnight. In fact, for the vast majority of leaders, it is a process of learning that never ends. In this respect, you should show patience towards yourself and your team. With a little perseverance and probably a mistake or two, you will definitely become a good leader over time, based on a growth mindset. If, in addition, you manage to be both sympathetic and empathetic with your fellow human beings on a regular basis, then nothing should prevent you from achieving this.
These are five quick tips to building trust while in a new leadership role. What more would you add? Comment below.