The Tech Leader's Toolbox
The Tech Leader's Toolbox
Six Ways to Build Trust on Your Team
Trust is a lynchpin of building team rapport. Without trust, nothing works! Paul Simkins, The Values Coach, shares some ways you can build (or rebuild) that trust with your team or organization.
Plus, Paul shares a recipe for Easy Chicken Fricassee. You can find the recipe, and many more, on the Smoke and Ash Facebook group or by emailing TLToolbox@BoldlyLead.com.
You can get a copy of Paul's eBook 15 Innovative Ways to Show Employees You Care and Not Break the Bank by emailing him at paul@BoldlyLead.com.
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You can learn more about Paul Simkins on his website.
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The Tech Leader's Toolbox podcast is brought to you by Paul Simkins and the Boldly Lead program, focusing on helping tech leaders like you, and the frustration of low performing teams, and losing excellent employees, so they can increase productivity by 50%. Go home on time, and sleep better at night.
Paul Simkins :Hello, and welcome to The Tech Leader's Toolbox. I'm Paul Simkins. And we're here because how you lead today determines how your team succeeds tomorrow. And this podcast is for all of you, business owners, executives, and managers and technical industries, who know that you need to become a better leader. And better leaders get there by a commitment to grow and become better each and every day. Now, this is episode number 36 of the podcast. And you know, no individual, no team, no organization ever makes significant and sustainable progress without a very key element. So if something seems amiss, this might be why today, let's talk about how trust is currency for a leader. Are you ready? Let's go. Have you ever been in a situation with other people where well, something just doesn't seem quite right? You know, something seems to be missing, somehow, there's an uneasiness in the air and in all the conversations, and it just really stands out. And is really stands out among teams. discussions about work and assignments just seem to have this error about them, which strange, something just doesn't quite quite feel right. And then it hit you. There's a lack of trust. Either you don't trust them, or you get the eerie feeling that they don't trust you. It may even be both. As a result, things are not flowing. Work is not nearly as productive as it could be the team is not effective, they're not working together. Well, they're not working with you, well, you may even be missing deadlines, communication suffers, the team just doesn't seem to mesh together. And until that is resolved, don't we're gonna get worse. It can mean the death of a team or an organization. Now, some years back, UCLA did a study of 1300 executives around the country. And they asked them for five traits that were keys to advancement for employees. All 1300 of them included integrity. Somewhere in that list. All 1300 of them, hundred percent included integrity in the list. But here's the real kicker. Out of that group 71% of the executives rated integrity as the number one trait. And integrity comes from trust. You can't have integrity without others, trusting you. So obviously, being trustworthy, is a critical character trait. If you want to move up the corporate ladder, keep your employees or build your customer base. Bob Berg, the author of the go giver, and also endless referrals will tell you that all things being equal. People will do business with people they know like and trust. I harken back with this too, when I was a boy scout and I'm still a scout leader within the program. But back when I became a Boy Scout, we had to learn the scout law. 12 points of the scout law, the first law of the boy scout law, which defines how a scout is supposed to live their life is a scout is trustworthy. And here's the explanation a use. A scout always tells the truth. He is honest and keeps his promises. People can depend on him. See, our trustworthiness is also quite obviously, a key to any of our relationships with others both in business and outside of business. If your spouse or significant other can't trust you The relationship is destroyed. Once your friends learn not to trust you and count on you, they simply will no longer expect anything from you. And eventually will stop being around you or having you around. When your coworkers can't trust you, and you're not gonna be able to function as a team, if your employees can't trust you, they're going to become disengaged, productivity suffers, not to mention the bottom line, and your turnover will be high, because people will go elsewhere. It's been said before and actually established in some studies, people don't quit companies, they quit bosses. And a lack of trust is one of the primary reasons they'll do that. And another thing you need to remember about this, is that there's no such thing as being sometimes trustworthy. You know, there's some things in this world that are do have gray areas, but trust is not one of them, you're either trustworthy or you're not. And so I mentioned earlier how trust is currency for a leader. And this is what I mean, when you you put your trust on the line, there you are spending that currency. And every time you betray a trust, you are, it's instead of investing your currency, you're wasting your currency. And when that currency is gone, when the trust is gone, that currency you have as a leader is gone. And you will no longer be effective as a leader. Because without that trust, you cannot sustain it. And you know, and we know all this, but somehow the focus on trust seems to get lost somewhere in the desire to close the deal or, or to get what we want out of a situation or out of a conversation or out of a relationship or a negotiation. When we focus on trust, however, we find that acquiring those things, and closing that deal becomes easier, because of who we are, and what we stand for. And when we're trustworthy, we're the go to person that everyone count on to make something happen. And that has value in so many ways, including financially. Trust brings opportunity. Many years ago, I was part of a training development company that had just made the Inc 500 list. And I love to tell this story. And, and I'm going to leave out other names, because it's kind of a, you know, one of those inside stories in a way. But this company just made the Inc 500 list, our development team was a very small team, we were developing, actually computer based training products, computer based and also printed training products for software. I was the third member of the team as a matter of fact, and I was actually the junior member of the team at the time. But I was given a prime opportunity to be trustworthy. The company focused again, primarily on software training. And for our particular course, we would typically produce a disc that contained two that tells you how far back it goes right? We would produce a disc that contained practice training exercises, and so forth, and files and a manual to accompany. Well, so the president of the company comes to me. And he says, okay, there's this new software coming out. And I want to for this because it's going to be big. And and by the way, this guy again, I'm not going to mention his name, because when you hear the rest of the story, you'll know why. But he is one of those people with just always has that tremendous vision to be able to see ahead, see what's going to be hot, and be able to take easy the ultimate entrepreneur knows how to see what's going to be hot and how to seize those opportunities. So he comes to me, he goes, Hey, we got a hot new product, it's going to become an I think it's gonna be big. I want to redesign the product to fit that. And so even though I was the junior member of the team, he says, I want you to work on this. And I want you to come up with a total redesign of my of the product. no restrictions, you come up with what you creative juices, which you think is the best thing, but I want it in a week. Wow, a lot of pressure on me there. But I worked hard on it. And I finally and I met the deadline and I came up in fact, I actually beat the deadline a little bit and I came up with a redesign and I turned it in and I thought nothing more of it. Because you know, I was just doing my job. I was given an assignment and I did it and that was kind of my thought process on this. Well then Shortly a few days afterwards, the president of the company comes into our office space. And he says, Paul, I need to talk to you. And he's got kind of a stern look on his face. And I'm thinking, Oh, I may I may have like, you know, really messed up here. And he says, he pulls a chair up, and put it in the middle of the floor, and he says, I want you to step up on the chair, please. Okay, this is kind of weird. But okay. And and I step off on the chair, not sure quite what's happening yet. And then he leans over. And he says, The reason I'm doing this is because I'm too old to get on the floor. And he bends over and he kisses my shoes. And then he raves about the new redesign that I did. And tell me what a great product it was. He had placed his trust in me for this new product. And I made sure that that trust was well placed, did the best work I could do turned it in on time, because I had an obligation to. And as a result, I was determined not to let him down. And I put in the long hours to get it done. And he showed trust, he showed appreciation as my leader, and I was determined not to let them down. That's the impact that trust can have for your team. I did my best to go above and beyond and exceed his expectations. And also, because he made himself vulnerable in this way. I mean, again, yeah, it was a silly thing to do to the kiss my shoe. But because he made himself vulnerable, I learned I could trust him. Because he showed respect. And therefore I knew I could count on him. And from that moment, on, until the end of my time with that company, I was prepared to do whatever he asked me to do. And part of what he asked me to do at one time was to help promote our products with partners we had in other parts of the world, is I actually traveled around quite a bit. And kind of a road warrior going around doing workshops and seminars to promote our products. We're still friends today as a matter of fact, and I still greatly respect and admire him. being trustworthy is the dealmaker, or the deal breaker. It's not enough that we're trustworthy as leaders. It's also critical, though, that we can trust those whom we serve. Trust can never be a one way street. If you want to be trustworthy. You can't expect to be trusted if you don't trust your people. And I'll ask you this. Yeah. If you don't trust your people, why are they there? I mean, let's be real. one of two things is wrong. If you don't trust your people, either you've got a problem, or they've got a problem. Quite honestly, it's probably you. The first move is always hours. If we don't trust them, they will not trust us. You can have a proven track track record. But if you don't make it clear, but if you make it real clear that you don't have any trust in your team, they will never fully trust you. They will always think you're hiding something, holding something back. And not being completely honest with them, they will always suspect. You may even have their grudging respect. But again, if you don't have their trust, until you first learn to trust them, you will never get their trust. So how do we build that trust on our team? What are some ways to do that. And so I'm going to give you six ways here that you can build trust on your team that I think are going to be highly effective for you. And again, you don't have to apply all these overnight. This comes in time. Some of it takes quite a time to build overall. But again, if you apply these things, I know it will be effective for you, you will be able to build that trust relationship on your team. And I will practically guarantee In fact, I will guarantee you you will be more effective, your team will be more effective, you will all be happier, because we're always happier with people we trust. So here's the first thing. The first thing and I already mentioned this, learn to trust. Start small, delegate out small task that you would normally do to individual team members and give them deadline, offer support, and then let them have at it. Just tell them what you expect, not how to do it. Not precisely what you want. Tell them what you expect. Give them a deadline, and let them have at it. And I think you're going to be surprised at the results. Learn to trust that helps develop those trust relationships. And again, it shows that you are trusting them. And again, most everybody will not let you down. Yeah, you will occasionally run into the odd person, that no matter how much trust you put in them just will not come through. Keep in mind, they're a rarity, not the norm. Here's the second thing, produce results. When you have a proven track record of accomplishing things with people, then people will trust you to do the things you say you're going to do. meet the deadlines or accomplish the task, no matter how challenging it is. Here's the third thing. And this is always a sticky one. Because we like to offer things we like to have conversations and offer things to people. But whenever you give your word whether it's to an employee, whether it's to your boss, whether it's to your customers, give your word, only when you mean it, don't ever make a promise you can't possibly keep. There's the old saying of under promise and over deliver. And the idea behind that isn't try to keep expectations lower. The idea behind that is to keep from promising things that you would be very hard put to actually do. Don't tell them they can have it in a week, when it already takes two weeks in order to do it. Don't promise it. And here's the other thing that goes along with that this is the fourth point, keep your word at all cost. This is critical. When people know that no matter what you're going to do, that no matter what you're going to do what you say you're going to do. trustworthiness grows and builds over time. So keep your word at all costs. And again, it may cost you it may cost you things you didn't expect it to cost you. Things may get in the way people don't care about excuses. Your employees don't care about an excuse why you couldn't keep the promise that you made two months ago. All they care about is is that you promised it You did not deliver. And number five is be consistent. Consistency is the key to both trustworthy trustworthiness and integrity. People need to know what they can count on. And I have worked for bosses that would come in one day and be the nicest person in the world. And the next day be a tyrant. Sometimes that would all happen within the scope of a day, sometimes it would go back and forth throughout the day, almost like they were bipolar. And again, you never knew what you could count on. You never knew what to expect, you never knew how to prepare for it. And in that case, with that kind of inconsistency. People are going to trust you less because they don't know what to expect from you. Consistency sets expectancy. And then here's the last one is respect yourself and others. When you show respect for other people, respect for yourself, and especially in today's highly charged political climate and everything else. This is especially critical. They may be on the other side of the political spectrum from you. They still deserve your respect. They don't deserve name calling. They don't deserve to be berated. They don't deserve to be insulted. When you attack people's ideals, you're attacking the people. So show respect for other people. Show respect for yourself because quite frankly, when you behave like that, you're not respecting yourself. You're lowering the expectation for yourself about how you should believe. When you show respect for others, respect for yourself. People will believe and trust that you are who you say You are and you will do what you say you're going to do. So six things there that will help you develop and build trust with your team, with your customers within your organizations. And again, I guarantee you if you apply those things, you will be highly pleased with the results. And focus on building trust first within your organization. And it's going to help you go far. We'll be back in a moment.
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Paul Simkins :All right, well, this week we have again, at the end of the show. I'm a big fan of outdoor cooking, I do every kind of outdoor cooking you can do I love cooking over an open fire. I have like my dream setup. I hope to get one day that will be a fire pit with all this equipment around it to cook over an open fire. I have a smoker and a grill. And I do a lot of that I'm a camper, as I mentioned earlier Boy Scout. And so I do a lot of cooking with Dutch ovens and cooking on camp over campfires and on camping trips, and so forth. So I love any kind of outdoor cooking, and I love it so much. I've actually created a group on Facebook called Smoke and Ash and is all about outdoor cooking. And me and all of my friends are out there and we're sharing recipes. We talk about what we're doing this weekend, what was thrown in the smoker what we're going to put on the grill, we show pictures of stuff we've made we share recipe ideas and so forth, the latest gadgets and equipment and and again, it's called Smoke and Ash and I invite you to come out and join us on that group. I think you'll really enjoy it and get a big kick out of it. It is all that all friendly. No advertising, nobody promoting themselves. Just a lot of fun and camaraderie. That's the Smoke and Ash Facebook group. And what I like to do here on the show, is every week I like to share an outdoor cooking recipe. Sometimes that comes from one of my friends, sometimes it comes from other resources, some are my own recipes that I share. What I have a guest on this show I'll invite the guests to share some of their favorite recipes and we've had some great ones. One of the ones that was really really good that I really enjoyed is when I had Tana Greene on and Tana shared a recipe for a Grilled Pound Cake and Peaches recipe is a great dessert and my wife fell in love with it. So now every time we have a cookout my wife makes me make that hope Tana hears that she'll like that. So the recipe I want to share this week is called chicken Easy Chicken Fricassee easy... Chicken fricassee this is again in the name tells that it is an easy recipe. You're going to do this with a Dutch oven. And again, this is something you could easily do inside as well and enough and if you don't like outdoor cooking, but this is going to be outdoors in a Dutch oven with coals and that's also it's good to have a burner beforehand or again, have hot lots of hot coals ready. Now the ingredients you need for this easy Chicken fricassee is you need to cut up chickens. Usually the what they call the fryer type chickens. You need two chickens cut up. You need about four onions chopped up as you might think this makes a lot you need olive oil, about a cup of olive oil. about one and a half quarts of water that a half a cup of flour. And then you need a teaspoon of salt black pepper. bunch a whole bunch of parsley they're fresh partially chopped up or you can use dried parsley and you need cayenne pepper. So what you're going to do is you're going to put the flour the red pepper, the black pepper and the salt in a gallon ziplock and mix it up good. And then put each piece of chicken in there and shake it to coat it real well. And then you're going to get yourself a cast iron skillet or again you could use if you have a large Dutch oven you can use the large Dutch oven if and put it over the coals and get it nice and hot and throw the olive oil and the onions in that skillet and then put all your chicken pieces in there. And what you're looking to do is just brown the outside of the chicken to get it nice and brown. Once it gets browned, then you're going to add your one and a half quarts of water. And you'll let that cook on the coals until that chicken is tender. You may want to occasionally stir it around a little bit. What will happen is because of that flour you put in the coating on the chicken, all of that water is going to turn into a nice gravy. And again, typically with this if you got nice hot coals going there, cooking that chicken and Hill tenders probably going to take a good half an hour, maybe 40 minutes for that chicken to get nice and tender, it helps that you're using the liquid to cook it. And then but about 10 minutes before you're ready to serve it. Now you're going to add the parsley in there. And you can season it with a little bit more of the red pepper, cayenne pepper, and even a couple of shakes at Tabasco if you want. Kind of stir that in there. And there you go. That's that's easy, easy Chicken fricassee. Take those chicken pieces out and people can just put it on their plate. And that nice gravy. If you make some rice on the side, you can put that gravy over the rice and over the chicken own it is Oh, so good. And all that chicken will just kind of fall off the bone there. It'll just be so good. And that's it easy Chicken fricassee. If you like that recipe, you can go out to the Smoke and Ash Facebook group. And I always post the recipes from the show out there. And you can find it out there and download it. Or you can just send me an email at tltoolbox@boldlylead.com. All right, well, that's it for this week. So again, we talked about building trust on your team and six ways in which you can build that trust and how trust is currency for leader. Remember, there's no such thing as being sometimes trustworthy, you either are or you aren't. If you're listening to this on a podcast app, don't forget to leave us a rating give us a five star rating. Refer this to your friends if you think they would benefit from it. I hope you got a lot of value on it. And be sure to tune in next week when we'll have another episode. And also going out to Facebook. We have a tech leaders toolbox Facebook group as well and you can find us out there and we extend the conversations that we have during the show out there on The Tech Leader's Toolbox. Alright, until next week, go on out and be the leader. You were meant to be Transcribed by https://otter.ai