Trust building: A key skill for leaders
Trust building: A key skill for leaders
By Stephanie Oley and Eleanor Shakiba
Trust is a hot topic at the moment. Over the last six months, leadership experts at the university have fielded more questions than ever about how leaders can build trust, or create trusting workplace cultures. Questions such as:
- My team has complained I am a micromanager. Why?
- I’m a relationship manager in an engineering firm. How do I get customers onside more easily?
- My senior manager won’t listen to me. What can I do?
- I’m a faculty manager in a university. My direct reports don’t listen to feedback. What can I do?
- How do I get my clients to trust, accept and action my advice?
Each of these questions stems from an interpersonal or team dynamics issue, which is being impacted by low trust. Trust is the belief another person has benevolent intentions towards you. Learning to build trust means understanding some key psychological principles. Slick techniques (such as mirroring body language or matching verbal patterns) won’t build trust if they are used incongruently.
Instead, leaders need to actively shape the dynamics of trust over time. Here are three strategies that all professionals can develop to build trust.
Boost your positivity ratio
In communication contexts, this is the ratio of positive to negative emotions that another person experiences during their interactions with you. According to relationship dynamics researcher, John Gottman, the magic ratio for a flourishing relationship is 5:1. In other words, five positive encounters to offset every negative encounter. If you want your team, customers or senior manager to trust you, work on this element first.
One way of boosting your positivity ratio as a leader is to flip negative situations into positives. A challenge could be viewed as an opportunity; problems can be a chance to formulate constructive solutions. Good leaders give their teams confidence that every negative situation can be changed for the better.
Another tactic is to create a supportive environment. Here, team members are confident they can ask questions, try something new or admit mistakes, without being blamed or judged.
High positivity ratios are tipped to be among the winning factors behind high-performing teams such as Google, Patagonia and Adobe, so applying these tactics definitely puts you in good company.
Respond in active constructive mode
This is a way of amplifying others' positive feelings, by reinforcing them. When you hear a conversational partner expressing an enjoyable emotion – for example, joy, excitement or pride – acknowledge it. Then ask for more information about the event or situation which has prompted the feeling. For example, "You sound really happy about that customer’s feedback. It’s wonderful she took the time to thank you in writing. What do you think you did best in your conversation with her?"
The same applies when delivering constructive criticism. Instead of focusing on the problem – whether it’s team members skipping meetings, missing project deadlines or adopting toxic attitudes – try steering the conversation towards an end goal you’re both aligned to.
For example, “I noticed you haven't been at the last few meetings, and I'm concerned you're missing out on information. How can we resolve this?” Or, “I felt there was some tension between you and Michael yesterday. Are there any issues that we can work on resolving?”
Instead of arguing, enquire
Your people won’t trust you if you invalidate their opinions. Even if you disagree, it’s important to communicate respectfully.
Pause before saying, “That won't work because…” or, “Yes but…” Then ask a probing question. Explore the other person’s perspective, before using influencing skills to gently challenge or redirect their thinking. This builds rapport and maintains trust – not only in relation to discussing this issue, but within the relationship overall.
Ultimately, trust is critical to building influence with teams and resolving conflict. Sometimes, different tools are required, depending on that leader’s personal attributes – such as being a female leader, when moving into coaching or team-building roles, or simply if coming from a place of lower confidence.
Remember that trust grows over time. It will survive challenges or breaches only if you have built positive psychological capital. This is why smart leaders see trust-building as a daily activity. Every conversation contributes to your relationship dynamics. So make every conversation count.