Three Questions to Increase Trust

I recently completed a breakthrough offsite for a client whose leadership philosophy includes "trust, transparency, open communication, and collaboration." There's a good chance those four attributes appear in your organization's philosophy, too.

Here's my question: if you picked one of those four attributes to focus on upleveling, which one would you choose?

I bet you'd pick the one my client picked: trust. After all, "Trust is an essential ingredient for effective leadership and teamwork, great customer service, and achieving satisfaction from one’s work. The payoff goes to both the top and bottom lines." That's from an article titled How Our Brains Decide When to Trust by Paul Zak in the Harvard Business Review. If you want to geek out on the neuroscience behind trust, be sure to read Paul's work.

Here's the challenge: From Edelman's Trust Barometer to the Pew Research Center's comprehensive research on trust in government and other institutions, it's clear trust has taken a big hit. That creates a residue that negatively impacts trust in our personal and professional relationships, too.

As the team zeroed in on trust I wrote three questions on the whiteboard:

What does trust look like for you?

What happens when you don't trust?

How can you increase trust?

After a period of individual reflection on the three questions, we came back together as a group and had a very meaty conversation that generated a lot of 'picture worthy' notes on flip charts. Here's an example. The team identified 15 ideas to increase trust and included one of my personal favorites -- get curious -- with three phrases to activate one's curiosity:

Tell me more about...

I'm curious about...

Help me understand...

Whether you're a team of one or one thousand, I encourage you to spend time marinating in these questions. I also have another great resource that can help you uplevel your trust game: The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human. The playbook includes 25 "moves" -- or practices -- to help leaders be vulnerable, show up authentically, and acknowledge we are all works in progress. Here's a great reminder from one of the moves, welcoming difficult emotions:

 

"Our brain is not designed to do brave new things in an increasingly uncertain world. It's designed to keep us safe and ensure our survival."

Trust can often feel like a "brave new thing." I hope these resources are helpful. As always, I love hearing your feedback. Just respond to this email; I read every reply.

PS: Looking to uplevel your 2024 planning? I love working with individuals and teams to create winning strategies, ensuring you enter 2024 with momentum. Head over to the Work With Me form on my website and we'll set up a time to jam!