Earning Employee Trust It’s no secret that being trusted by team members is critical to any leader’s success. And that fact leads to an all important question: How can you earn your people’s trust … what can you do protect and maintain that most important leadership characteristic? The answer: By exhibiting the following four behaviors …
1. Keep your promises. You don’t have to promise things just to make employees feel good. They’re more interested in being able to depend on what you promise than in feeling good. Just keep the promises you do make and your team will trust what you say.
2. Speak out for what you think is important. Employees can’t read your mind. They don’t know how you feel. If they have to guess about what’s important to you, they may guess wrong. Save them the trouble. Tell them how you feel and why. They’ll respect you so much more.
3. Err on the side of fairness. Be fair to everyone. Employees really do know that things are not always clearly right or wrong. Sometimes you have to make difficult decisions that affect many people. Sometimes those decisions include having to dismiss team members. All your team can really ask for is that you be fair at all times – regardless of the type of decision you have to make.
4. Do what you say you are going to do. Just let your “yes” be yes and your “no” mean no. When you tell people you are going to do something, they should be able to “consider it done.”