Trust Breeds Loyalty – 4 Ways Strong Leaders Build Trust

Most People Know that Strong Leaders Build Trust
OK. As a leader, you may not want to encourage the kind of never-let-go loyalty in the above cartoon. But you do want to inspire trust between you your team and among co-workers within your team.  With trust, loyalty, and employee engagement of a more workable kind will follow.

How Leaders Build Trust
Recent Korn Ferry research found that 22% of the difference in financial performance relates to trust in senior leadership of an organization.  Whether you are an experienced team leader or just out of new manager training, the following tenets for engendering trust from proven management training programs hold true:

1. Make it Personal
   Get to know your team members and let them get to know you — not just on a professional level but on a personal level too. You don’t need to become best friends, but they will appreciate knowing what you care about when you leave the office and vice versa.
2. Support and Encourage Rather than Dictate
   The more latitude you can give your team when you assign responsibilities, the more they will respect the confidence you show in their abilities. But first, you must set clear goals and performance expectations regarding how you expect people to behave and perform.
3. Follow Through
   Show that you take your commitments seriously and they will know they can depend on you.  Do what you say you are going to do each and every time.  Without a culture of accountability, it is difficult to create trust at work.
4. Keep it Fair and Open
   Encourage dialogue and questions. Respect the opinions of your team and they will offer their ideas for improvement — often the difference between success and failure.  When it comes to trust, the more transparency at work, the better.

The Bottom Line
You will know you are on the right path to gaining the trust of your team when they believe you are setting the right course, leading the team to future success, acting honestly and trust-worthily and demonstrating integrity.  You will know you are on the right path to creating trust among your team when they:

• Have a close and trusting relationship with one or more coworkers
• Feel loyal to their team
• Know they can depend on the other members of the team in both good and bad times

To learn more about how strong leaders build trust, download 29 Research-Backed Ways that Strong Leaders Build Trust