123. How can I build trust with my employees?

Transcript – Episode 123: How can I build trust with my employees?

Joe: Are you consistently using all 12 of the behaviors I’m about to share to build trust and nurture employee commitment where you work? [Music]

Joe: Welcome to Boss Better Now, where we teach business owners and leaders how to activate employee commitment in today’s everchanging workplace. So, how do you build trust with employees? Well, we know trust is an essential ingredient to employee commitment. If it’s not there, if I don’t trust the person that oversees my work and have some trust in the people leading running my organization, it’s going to be a lot harder for me to be emotionally and psychologically committed to the work and to stay long-term with you as an employer. We also know that trust is difficult to earn and easy to destroy. It takes time to build and nurture trust between an organization and an employee and a direct supervisor and an employee. But it can be fleeting. One wrong move and you can wreck what has taken years to build. We also know that trust is a two-way street. As a leader, we have to think about it that way. Trust is something that I have to both grant and earn. I have to grant trust to others to nurture employee commitment. And I have to earn trust from others through a handful of behaviors that I use consistently as a leader. So, let’s dive in. I’ve got 12 behaviors for you to use to build employee trust. Number one, tell the truth. The truth works pretty darn well most of the time. People want to know where they stand. They want to know what’s happening. They certainly don’t want someone that they work with to withhold information out of a sense of power or secrecy. If you’re a leader in an organization, tell the truth to your people. If you don’t know the answer to the question, say I don’t know. You have to observe policies around confidentiality, but wherever possible, transparency is what you want to reach for. It builds trust. Number two, give credit and own blame. When something good happens, that’s not because of you, boss. That’s because of your team. It’s because of the efforts of a particular person or a set of teammates. And you want to trumpet that. You want to broadcast it loudly. You want to say other people’s names in rooms that they are not in and credit them for the work that they’ve done. But when things fall short or don’t go well, that’s your fault. That’s you stepping up and saying, “You know what? I could have done a better job here making sure you had this information or checking in or giving you resources.” It may not always be 100% true, but as leaders, we build trust by giving credit and taking responsibility for the outcome. Number three, notice talents and effort. It’s really important that we are explicit when we see other people doing things well or trying to do things well. For example, we know that believing we get to do work that aligns with our strengths is really important. So, if you notice somebody has a strength, give voice to it. Pull that person aside and say, “Hey, has anyone ever told you that you’re really good at deescalating angry customers?” In fact, at an upcoming uh team huddle, would you be open to just kind of talking through how you approach that and what your mindset is? I think others would really benefit from that. Give voice to people’s talents. In fact, you might be in a leadership role right now because somebody pulled you aside and said, “Hey, I think you’d be really good at this.” Have you ever thought about a management position? I don’t know, maybe you’re still mad at that person for getting you into this mess. So, we have to notice people’s talents and their strengths. It’s also important to notice effort. Even if the outcome isn’t perfect, to pull somebody aside and say, “Hey, I know you put a lot of time and effort into this, right? It’s like I always think about professional hitters. When they started learning how to hit a baseball, they weren’t a 400 hitter from day one. They weren’t jacking home runs their first week. You have to break that down, a good swing down into pieces and parts. They have to get their weight transfer right. They have to get their setup right. They have to get the bat across the plate in the right way. They have to think about what pitches to swing at. And we can praise progress around each of those pieces as a way to build trust and keep people moving forward. Number four, use your power carefully. We all have different kinds of power in a leadership role. One of them is positional authority. We are granted power to tell people what to do, to set schedules, to enforce policies, and to hire and fire just by the title alone that we have been given. And we’re granted that that uh positional authority from the day we take our leadership job. But there’s also something called relational authority. And that’s the influence that we earn by building quality relationships with people. And if you really want to build trust, you have to earn relational authority. And you have to be careful about overusing positional authority. Be careful about flexing your power. And what I mean by that is, you know, don’t make jokes about, hey, if you don’t get this right, I’m going to be collecting your keys. Those are subtle reminders that I have power over you, and you shouldn’t forget it. That actually undermines trust. Number five, care about what they care about. It’s important in order to build that relational authority that you care more about the tasks and duties of someone’s job. That you care about who they are outside of work, their life outside of work. Do the people working for you have children? Are they the primary caregiver to an elderly parent? Do they have hobbies or other commitments that are really important to them? For example, if you have somebody on your team who is really active in their local uh school board, that might be something that’s really important to them. And if working for you negatively impacts their ability to participate in that, their commitment is going to go down and they’re not going to trust you as much. You have to care about what they care about. And guess what? We ask about what we care about. And so, we should be asking questions. Hey, how was your weekend? What did you do this weekend? How did the schoolboard meeting go? I know you were really nervous about that. Hey, you told me that you were taking your oldest son to visit colleges this weekend. What was that like? Where’s he leaning? What’s he interested in? How are you feeling, mama, about him getting ready to leave the nest, so to speak? And that doesn’t mean that you expect people to overshare with you. You’re going to meet them where they are. That some folks are going to be an open book about that stuff and love that you care about that stuff and some people may hold back a little bit and not want to get into all of that with you. And all of it is okay. You’re going to care about it and let them share about it in as much as they want to. Number six, keep your promises. One of the fastest ways to build trust is to do what you say you’re going to do. One of the fastest ways to damage trust is to not follow through on doing what you say you’re going to do. So, if you’re having a meeting with someone and you say, “I’ll follow up on that and check on that for you.” Do it and circle back as quickly as you can. If you have a conversation with somebody in the hallway and say, “Yeah, I’m going to get that information for you.” Then do it. Make sure it happens quickly. Whatever system you need to create for yourself as a business owner or as a leader, whether it’s voice notes on your phone or typing in reminders or carrying a little notebook with you in your pocket or writing on your hand for goodness sakes, whatever it takes for you to remember the promises that you make to your people. Make sure every one of them includes for you a deadline and a follow-up task to make sure that people see you keeping your promises. It is both crucial to building trust and when we don’t do it, it can be harmful. Number seven, say, “I trust you.” You heard me say a few minutes ago that trust is a two-way street and that we need to grant trust. And once we have people on our team who are properly trained, they understand the systems and the software and the steps and the protocols that we want them to take in their jobs, we need to trust them, which means that we need to not micromanage them. We need to actually explicitly say, “I trust you.” I had an employee come to me recently and say, “Hey, would it be okay if I spend $180 on a marketing idea?” And I said, “Yeah, sure.” And she said, “Don’t you want to know what it’s for?” And I said, “No, I trust you.” I’m going to get way more of a return on my investment for that $180 with that employee by saying, “I trust you.” than I would by making them sit down and explain to me what they wanted to use it for and seek my approval. When you treat people as capable, when you say, “I trust you,” when you use those words, you’re transferring ownership. You’re transferring responsibility for the work to them, which leads them to take on more of it, which leads them to adopt the mindset, oh, this person trusts me, and I don’t want to let them down. So, use those words. I trust you. Number eight, be imperfect. A couple of years ago, I put a poll up on LinkedIn and I asked the question, “What do you think is the most important skill for leaders to develop in today’s workplace?” And I got a whole bunch of answers. And what surprised me was the number one answer. The most common response to that question was vulnerability. Now, maybe it was because Brene Brown and all of her work and books were having a moment, but I don’t think so. leaders have figured out that we can’t put forth this picture of perfection, this picture of flawlessness to the people that we lead. We need to show them our struggles. We need to admit when we don’t have the answer. We need to acknowledge when we’ve been wrong, and we need to en engage with our teams with a curiosity that is rooted in us knowing that we are not perfect and don’t have all of the answers. So, I want you to not shy away about saying, “I don’t know.” I want you to not shy away about saying, “Yeah, I made a mistake there.” When we give voice to that, it earns trust. Now, a word of caution on this one. You can actually overuse it, and it can do damage to trust. Have you ever worked for that leader who wasn’t confident, who questioned everything, who hemmed and hawed and didn’t seem to have it together? That damages trust, doesn’t it? So, there’s a balance to be struck here between being imperfect, being vulnerable, admitting when you’re not certain about something or you’ve made a mistake and overusing it because a lack of confidence on your part will create a perceived lack of competence on their part toward you. So, be careful with this one, but it’s still important to do. Number nine, don’t micromanage. I alluded to this a few minutes ago. It’s really tough sometimes as leaders to get ourselves out of the way. When we work with people and we want them to succeed, often we want to control how things are done. We want to be right there over their shoulders. But the truth is, we have to give people the freedom again once they’re trained properly to execute their work product in their own way. And that may not be the same way that you do it. They may get to their work product in a different manner than you would, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong. And when we allow people to do that, it allows them to unleash their creativity to work with a certain amount of autonomy. And this all leads to higher levels of employee commitment. One of the pieces of advice that I give leaders at all levels when they come through our boss hero school program is to stop assigning tasks and start delegating responsibility. What I mean by that is if you have a member of your team who’s responsible, for example, for posting on social media for your company, you may not necessarily want to give them here are the exact 10 posts written, the exact 10 ways I want them on the exact 10 days I want them to go up. A far more powerful form of trust and engagement is to say, you’re responsible for producing a social media calendar that accomplishes these three outcomes. and then you name them. When you delegate responsibility here again, you’re transferring ownership to someone which improves the improves the belief for them that they are capable and improves trust in you and the likelihood that they’re going to operate in a way where they don’t want to let you down. And that leads me to the next one, which is number 10. Let them fail. Now, this can be really hard for leaders, especially perfectionist leaders. And there are times when we can’t let people fail. If a failure would be catastrophic, if a failure would be damaging to a customer experience or create a safety issue or create a significant liability or financial issue for their company, for your company, then of course we don’t want to let people fail. But sometimes we swoop in too quickly. Here’s micromanaging again. And we say, “Oh no, don’t do it that way or here’s what’s going to happen.” Sometimes we need to let them do it that way and see what happens as a learning experience. The experience that we have getting things wrong and failing are how we remember the right ways to do things. And so, I want to challenge you from time to time where possible to let people fail. That brings me to number 11. Coach. The conversations that we have with the people we supervise every day have a great deal of influence over building trust and ultimately employee commitment. And we know that coaching conversations are one of those essential ingredients. Now, coaching is not telling people what to do. It’s not giving them advice. Coaching is helping people sort through what they know, think, and feel to determine their next step. And we do that as leaders by asking open-ended questions. When someone is struggling with what to do next, instead of telling them what they should do, consider asking, “What options do you see? What do you think would be a good next step? Based on past training or experience that you’ve had in other places, what do you think is the right way to go here? If you had to make a decision with nobody else’s input, what would you want to do? What does your gut tell you? Do you hear how all of those questions are open-ended and they’re inviting that person to sort through what they know, think, and feel to determine their next step. When we coach leaders or when we coach employees, we’re treating them as capable. We are treating them as an expert in their area and in their problem. And when we do that, it lights up certain parts of the brain that lead people to become more engaged, that lead people to part with more creativity, that lead people to engage in more critical thinking. And when my boss doesn’t just give me the answer, when my boss sits down and says, “Hey, what do you think? Hey, what do you want to do here?” I start to believe that person trusts me and it’s going to influence the amount of trust I have in her or him. Last but not least, number 12, ask the question, “How can I help?” I love scripts. We’ve talked about scripts on my podcast for years. Boss scripts, certain terms of phrase that have power, words that when we use them in the right moment, do a lot of wonderful things for us as a leader. And so, when you have folks on your team who are struggling with a problem or just in the midst of a heavy workload or navigating a variety of things all at the same time, you may not have to always do something. Sometimes it’s just a matter of saying, “How can I help?” or “What do you need from me?” It shows that you care. It shows that you’re invested. It shows that you’re not leaving them on an island, so to speak, to figure it out on their own. There are two phrases that you’ve heard in this podcast episode so far that I think are really key to building trust. The phrase, I trust you, and the question, how can I help? So, there you have it. Are you using all 12 of these behaviors as a leader or business owner to build trust with your employees? If not, pick the one or two that were newer to you or that you don’t use often and start to try to work them into the interactions that you have with your people and the work that you’re doing day-to-day and week to week. Now, I’d love to hear from you. What other ways have you worked to build trust with employees? What didn’t I say? What’s missing from my list? Drop a comment in the box below or shoot me an email at boss bettergmail.com. That’s also where you can share your questions about employee commitment and leadership, engagement, retention, teamwork, and workplace culture that you’d like to see me tackle in a future episode. Thanks for being here. See you next time.

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