TrustBUSTER™ #8 – Shows little concern about me a person
When I stand in front of a room of leaders and ask the question “How many of you care about your people?”, 100% of the people raise their hands. I believe that 99.9% of leaders care about their people. (I will save a discussion about that .01% for later)
Recently, I led a group discussion around trust that divided 30 people into four groups based on personality type. I provided them with the TrustBUSTER™ list and asked them to identify one behavior on the list they saw most frequently from the other three styles. One group received feedback from all of the other groups that #8 was the behavior that tripped them up. The group receiving this feedback was the task focused/achievement oriented group. This is the same group that 60+% of executive teams fall into based on my past experience.
Why does this happen? A manufacturing supervisor once shared this wisdom with me, “Intentions without action equals SQUAT”. In his book The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey makes the point that “We judge ourselves on our intentions. We judge others based on their actions.” Both quotes lead to the same conclusion, if people don’t see it they don’t believe it.
As a leader, how do you bridge the gap between your actions and the perception of the people reporting to you? Here are three ways to keep this TrustBUSTER™ from tripping you up:
- Self Assessment: Test your knowledge of your people by asking these questions. What are the names of their spouse/children? Where do they live? What non work activities are most important to them? What is the biggest event going on in their life right now? Take a moment to evaluate how you answered these questions. This is pretty basic stuff, so if you missed anything you need to spend more time with your people.
- Monday/Friday rule: Spend time on Friday connecting with people to hear about their week or upcoming weekend activities. Spend Monday hearing how the weekend came together or what they are looking forward to during the week. (take a few notes after each conversation if you are like me and forget things)
- Find a partner to help: If you are an executive chances are you have way to much to do and connecting with your people is not a strength. Find someone around you that will remind of key dates for your people(birthday, anniversary) and keep a pulse on what significant things that are happening with those in your team or department. Enlist their help to remind you of opportunities to connect.
Related Articles
- TrustBUSTER™ #6 – Criticize decisions AFTER the team made them – How to handle the 3 most common situations (trugroupscott.wordpress.com)
- TrustBUSTER™ #3 – Slow to extend trust to others (and Why onboarding matters) (trugroupscott.wordpress.com)
- Who me? TrustBUSTER™ #4 – Does not communicate and explain changes/decisions well (trugroupscott.wordpress.com)