Leadership Trust: Build It, Keep It

Trust is a mechanism of people's decision-making processes that mediates nearly every interaction in their lives. Identifying and discussing the specific issues or behaviors that increase or decrease one's willingness to trust - to be vulnerable to the actions of others - helps leaders increase their comfort in dealing with today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. Developing fluency in initiating trust conversations helps both leaders and their colleagues open up to the possibility of creating greater responsibility throughout their relationships, teams, and business units.

This book helps leaders create a common language and understanding around issues of trust that show up in the organizational environment. It's important for leaders to be clear on how they are experiencing a situation that's causing a lack of trust before they initiate discussions on trust itself. Leaders need to be grounded in the observable actions or behaviors that are affecting their willingness to interact. To identify these behaviors, this book looks at interpersonal trust through factors of perceived trustworthiness, or dimensions of trust.

Next, leaders need to prepare for and engage in trust-advancing conversations. This book provides some examples of initiating both individual and team-level trust conversations around specific issues that deal with ability, integrity, and loyalty. You'll learn to choose between sharing performance feedback and initiating deeper trust conversations.

By developing both your awareness of the causes of trust problems and your skill in engaging in focused trust conversations, you can help create clearer accountability with others, reduce discomfort for you and your team, and advance your own leadership effectiveness.

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