Episode 39 What is the Fastest Way to Earn Employee Trust?

Earning trust from your team is incredibly important. It helps bring your team along your side as you are trying to grow your business. When trust is mutual, amazing things can happen.  

If you want to earn their trust quickly, the most significant behavioral change you can make, is owning up to your mistakes. All of us make mistakes. While you might find it weak or undermining to confess to mistakes in front on your team, the truth is that doing so makes you relatable.  

How can your team trust you with tough information, hard conversations, or come to you with delicate questions that could be a make-or-break moment for the business… if they can’t trust you? 

If you’re a person that’s humble enough to own up and apologize when you do make mistakes, then your team will know they can trust you. Humility is one of the greatest traits you can have as a leader, as it makes you a trustworthy person.  

Set an Example of Moving Forward 

Not only should strong leaders own up to their mistakes, they need to move forward. It’s natural after making a wrong decision, or if something doesn’t turn out the way you expected, to sit and sulk for a while.  

By moving forward and getting over it, you’re leading your team by example to follow suit. Establishing this practice as a history, means your employees on their own will become the type of people that both humbly acknowledge when they’re wrong, but can also move forward to focus on the next productive task.  

As you exhibit this behavior, trust will be developed. The goal you should have when leading your team, is to make them the type of workers that can continue on to support the mission of the company.  

This Week’s Take Away 

Look for an opportunity to apologize. It could be something small, or something big, but we all make mistakes— and we make them often. So, don’t think about this week’s call to action in a passive manner.  

You can’t simply say to yourself “the next time I make a mistake, I’ll be sure to apologize for it”. Be self-aware and humble enough to acknowledge you’ll probably make a mistake later this week, even if it’s insignificant.  

Write down an apology that you can use, knowing that you do make mistakes. Search for an opportunity to act on it and connect with your team in an honest way when you inevitably make that apology.  

This will create trust that will blossom into a beautiful relationship between you and your team. That trust will ultimately yield tremendous business results.