Being able to generate and maintain trust is arguably the most essential skill for effective leadership. Trust binds teams together, is essential for innovation to flourish, and inspires people towards ambitious goals.
In a volatile world where organisations are having to flex and respond to all sorts of challenges, trust is one of the key components that will keep your organisation thriving.
Yet, many leaders don’t know how to generate trust. Others assume they have it when they don’t. Rarely do leaders actively plan actions to create trust. Most organisations don’t effectively measure trust.
There are many ways to build trust. Several will be context and leader specific. However, three essential components interact like alchemy to create high trust environments and a belief in leaders, whatever the context.
The triangle of trust
Congruence
Congruence is the bedrock of trust, where a leader’s words, actions, and values align. This alignment reassures others that what leaders say, they mean and will follow through on, whether that be actions or behaviours.
Without congruence, colleagues become cynical, look to keep themselves safe, often at the expense of organisational goals, show up in ways they believe are required and are unable to be their authentic selves.
In this context, by “authentic” I mean bringing all their talents, insights and skills to work.
The more you can reduce the gap between what people believe it is safe to say and what they actually think, the more effective your team or organisation will be. Leaders’ congruence is key to reducing this gap.
I recently read research that showed leaders who are consistently awful (my words, not the researchers’) had a LESS a damaging effect than those who are sometimes great to work with and sometimes terrible.
Self-awareness is key. Too many leaders tell themselves they are congruent when they are not.
Communications
It is a cliché, but true that trust thrives where open, honest, and empathetic communications are the norm. Leaders who listen actively, share information freely, and encourage dialogue create environments where people feel respected and understood.
Where many leaders go wrong is thinking:
- Communication is about sharing information
- If you communicate once, everyone will “get it”
- People receive messages in the way you intended
The purpose of effective communications is to foster understanding. It requires listening as much as speaking – obviously. More than that, it involves checking in to see how things have landed and the extent to which people have understood. It is also about ensuring that understanding extends to people knowing and being able to act on the implications.
Some things leaders cannot share for confidentiality or legal reasons. However, it never ceases to amaze me how much leaders could share that they don’t.
E.g.
- Their thinking behind strategy
- What their personal values are and how these align with organisational values
- How they took feedback on board in arriving at decisions
- The implications of decisions for the organisation or specific teams
- Implications for the organisation of changes in the world around them
The job of a leader is to create an environment where everyone can do their best work. For that, we all need psychological safety. Communication is crucial for psychological safety, which in turn is crucial for trust.
Competence
Recent research I read analysed the performance of British and American companies using high profile successes and failures as case studies.
The research argued that US companies were generally more successful than UK ones because of their leaders. This is because in the UK we don’t invest nearly enough in developing leaders, and certainly not as much as Americans.
Many in the UK are promoted into leadership due to their functional competencies, e.g. finance, product development etc.
In my work I come across so many teams that are badly managed and led, not because leaders don’t want to do a great job, but because they simply do not know how, and/or they believe they are already doing a good job.
We assume leadership competence should be about sound judgement and the ability to deliver results. It is. However, those results would be exponentially better if leaders focused on being great leaders and getting the most from their teams.
When people believe in their leader’s abilities as leaders, they are more willing to offer their trust, and with trust, SO much more is possible.
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