Building a Culture of Trust

FountainBlue’s April 9 When She Speaks women in leadership series program, on the topic of ‘Building a Culture of Trust’. We were fortunate to have a seasoned and varied range of panelists to speak on the very timely question of building a culture of trust.Building trust has been especially important as leaders at all levels are dealing with many uncertainties and challenges with the pandemic and its aftermath. Below is a summary of our learnings from the panel discussion.
Trust is essential for leadership and management. It is something that’s slow-to-earn, and quick-to-lose, which makes the stakes high. A team, a company, an individual can’t thrive and succeed unless he/she/they/we have the trust of the many others in their circle. Below are best practices for building trust.

Be Worthy of the Trust

• Be credible. Work hard. Be clear on what’s required and consistently exceed expectations.
• Be authentic, sincere, honest and true. Your character will help you build trust.
• Own up to your mistakes, and be willing to humbly learn from them.
• Be vulnerable about what you can and can’t do, and persistent about learning what you need to do to perform well.
• Be courageous and bold, especially when you are uncomfortably doing what you know to be right by others.
• Do the right thing. Do right by others. Do this consistently. Especially when it’s hard. 
• Share a vision for what’s next, especially when so much is uncertain. 
• Consistently walk the talk and talk the walk, building a brand worthy of the trust of others.

Be Other-Focused

• Listen well and deeply to what the other is saying so that you can understand both the needs and the motivation.
• Relationships matter. Be sincere, transparent and direct with your communications and act like those relationships matter.
• Be empathetic and supportive of others. Manage and communicate with grace. We are all working and living in strange, uncertain and at times difficult circumstances. 

Be Collaborative

• Identify and work toward that common ground, in concert with an ecosystem of others.
• Set high expectations for yourself and others, and communicate how each stakeholder benefits from collaboratively working toward a common goal.
• Value those who think and speak and act differently, and invite them to collaborate. 

Keeping Learning and Excelling

• Be self-aware enough to know yourself and your own strengths and limitations. Keep reaching for stars from there.
• Never settle – keep reaching and learning and making things better for yourself, your team, your customer, your partners.
• Assertively make a stand for divergent viewpoints and input. Graciously invite others to do the same.
• Embrace the opportunities to feel uncomfortable. 
• The measure of a (wo)man is not just how they behave when they succeed but also how they learn and grow when they don’t.

Be Strategic

• Ask the ‘why’ before the ‘what’. Make sure that the ‘what’ always aligns with the why.
• Don’t let the ‘how’ interfere with the ‘what’. 

The bottom line throughout the conversation is to be credible – to provide a constancy amongst the change, the all-in support of others which helps all to reach confidently for what’s next.

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