From Managers To Leaders

As I said in the over view – I want to stress that full exposure to these concepts is the best way to go. You can do that by going to the Franklin Covey site and registering for one of the following programs: Leadership: Great Leaders, Great Teams, Great Results or Leadership Foundations.

To Inspire Trust is one of the most difficult things you need to do in your personal life, as a manager and most certainly as a leader. If people do not trust you – your voice, your vision; they will not follow you. Thus, you can not be a leader. So how do you inspire trust? What is it that you can do to ensure people trust you?

It starts with being trustworthy. You can do that by extending trust to others. Let them know that you will back their choices and decisions. Show them you are doing that by not bad mouthing them or others at the water cooler (that statement alone has garnered many a management trainer’s salary). Work with them to help implement their choices and praise or give constructive criticism for growth if the choices they made did not meet the business need.

Another part of building that trustworthiness is being reliable, dependable as well as being open and honest at all times. Keep your commitments – by the deadline or before it. If you can’t, let the person know ahead of time. Show that you care and want the best for them as an employee and an individual. This will go a long away to earning trust.

These things are just the tip of the ice-burg. Trust is a huge issue; I can not state that enough. It’s a mission critical relationship maker or breaker. Trust is a topic that I could expound upon for years to come and then some. But you don’t have years and I understand that. So I am recommending a tool that will help.

If you feel inspiring trust or restoring trust is an issue you need to tackle more in depth, there are resources out there to help you. The best one I have found by far is The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey. In this book he reviles the need to trust in today’s market place and home place. Expounds and supports arguments on the statement that “nothing is as fast as the speed of trust”. You will learn about the 4 Cores of Credibility, the 13 Behaviors of High-Trust Leaders and the 5 Waves of Trust.

This book should be on every leader’s desk, it should be well read and understood. If you are looking for answers on trust, this book is a place to find them.

From Managers to Leaders (What would a Leader do?):

~ Attend one of the following programs: Leadership: Great Leaders, Great Teams, Great Results or Leadership Foundations.

~ Read and implement The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey – no other book like it!

~ Go to http://www.whotrustsyou.com/ and try it out (it is Free)

~ Start to build trust with your employees. It all starts with two questions – Do I inspire trust? Why or why not? – If this does not work the first time, keep at it. I’ve had to ask these questions several times over a period of time to the same employees before I got what I felt to be the real answer. But once they are convinced you really want to know and it’s not a flavor of the month thing, you’ll be surprised at how much they open up.