Trust & Caring are the foundation of all relationships!
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Click here to view and download the Discussion Guide to utilize with your Group and/or Team over the next 12 months. The Guide and questions will be updated each month to reflect the TOTM concept.
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“Leadership is first being, then doing. Everything the leader does reflects what he or she is.”
Warren Bennis, page 134, On Becoming a Leader
A leader’s first and most sacred responsibility is to build trust by demonstrating caring. Who we are being, while we are doing (to others), is the foundation of our degree of effectiveness. We believe leaders are the vital mechanism in organizations that help guide and establish the culture, which creates decision-making and behavioral boundaries throughout the organization. The second most sacred responsibility of a leader is to set people up for success and create environments where each person can be and become the most effective version of themselves. This can only be done when trust and caring are established.
We believe trust and caring are the cornerstone and foundation of all relationships.
Trust can be defined as the firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. We define trust bestowed or conferred on another, as an individual’s willingness to rely on the promises, behaviors, and integrity of another to act or not to act.
Caring can be defined as connecting to others in a manner that is meaningful to them. Putting the needs of others ahead of your own whenever “H-H-A”, healthy, helpful, and appropriate. Caring is not about whom we like or love.
Frequently, leaders characterize the culture of their organization in familial terms. We hear phrases such as “welcome to our organization, we’re going to treat you like family!” Organizations are their own unique organism with a variety of dynamics, constructs, and organizational norms and behaviors. They consist of unique individuals that form a Team, not a ‘family.’ Family comes in all shapes and sizes, functional and dysfunctional, and may be filled with nurture or abuse, love or abandonment. Families may have rigid and/or unconditional behavioral expectations. As such, it is best to not apply the family paradigm and construct to our workplace environments and teams!
Leaders are called to deeply care about the quality of work and quality of life of each individual on their Team. Trust is built when others feel they are heard and their needs are met, as evidenced by caring. If we do not care about the quality of the lives of others and the quality of our collective work, we won’t take the time necessary to build trust. This demonstration of care includes being considerate of the real or perceived needs, fears, wants, goals, and desires of others, without judgement.
As we all know from one experience or another, the trust relationship is fraught with consistency pitfalls, gaps in caring and communication as well as situations where, as noted in the book, Crucial Conversations, opinions differ, emotions are strong, and the stakes are high. Leaders and Team Members alike assume responsibility when they do not provide others with the benefit of the doubt and when their decisions are rooted in feelings and perceptions rather than facts and reality, all of which results in diminished trust.
The irony of trust is that it takes the longest amount of time to build but can be lost in the “blink of an eye” – one comment, one email, one choice, one decision, one moment of anger can erode or obliterate trust. At the end of each day, others get to decide if they trust you with the quality of their lives and the quality of their work. It is the responsibility of the leader to build and earn trust.
If we want to build trust in our role as a leader, it is helpful to develop three types of awareness:
· Intellectual awareness
· Emotional awareness
· Situational awareness
In order to develop awareness, it will take:
· Self-examination/reflection – identifying self-limiting thinking and behavioral tendencies
· Behavior modification
· Focus shift – from self to others
Each of us undoubtedly engages in some degree of self-limiting beliefs and behaviors, about ourselves or others. Those self-limiting beliefs and behaviors, whether intellectual, emotional, psychological, spiritual, or rooted in a lack of self-awareness in terms of how our behavior may impact others, create barriers to our effectiveness and limit our ability to build trust and demonstrate caring.
To do the real work of being and becoming more effective, take steps to detach from your paradigms and preferences and objectively examine what your constituents need, and or think they need. Assess and evaluate while avoiding judgement. People believe they know their needs, understand their needs, and further, seek to fill their needs in their own unique way/manner/method. Understanding their needs and their perceptions will provide you with the “answers to the test” of how to demonstrate caring and create the pathway to meeting people where they are, with the goal of never leaving them where you found them!
Warren Bennis provides an overview of “four ingredients leaders have that generate and sustain trust.” We encourage you to use the Discussion Guide attached as a tool to help grow and develop as a leadership team and to personally reflect on what behavior modification may be helpful to you in your role as a leader. Far too frequently, we meet with teams of Leader Managers responsible for growing people and organizations who find themselves at a stalemate. Trust is low, criticism is high, silos abound, and results are spotty and sporadic.
Fingers are pointed at others highlighting ways in which fellow Leader Managers are failing or have performance and communication gaps. Leader Managers on the team are convinced the key to achieving results, growth, and success lies in the behavioral change of their team member rather than themselves. They will absolutely make a change if, and only if, their colleague will change first.
Recently, the 1953 classic Abbott and Costello Who’s On First? comedy skit came to mind. If you are not familiar with one of the funniest and most historic comedic vignettes, you may want to view it here. Sadly, far too many Leader Managers are like Abbott and Costello, waiting for someone, somewhere, sometime to go first, or make the first move so we can get off first base. There is a book entitled Leaders Eat Last intimating leaders put the needs of others first. I heartedly agree and would add, leaders need to go first in putting the needs of others first.
Effective leaders are the first to take initiative to move toward others and to examine their motives, actions, behaviors, and communication style to determine how they can open doors and build relationships. Trust must be voluntarily given by inspiring and connecting with people. If we seek to compel action or results through force (for example, compelling involuntary acts or strict adherence to rules), we will not achieve desired results and efforts for growth and development, and progress will be stalled or stymied altogether. Trust cannot be demanded or expected, it can only be earned.
At trust’s core is the habit and discipline of making and keeping promises to others each day. One of the most effective ways to build trust and demonstrate caring is to make and keep promises; promises rooted in meeting the needs of others. Leaders do not determine the amount of grace, patience or development others need in order to be and become the most effective version of themselves. They can only choose to discern how to provide or invest in an individual without regard to whom they may like or have a personal affinity for. Leaders provide dignity, respect, affirmation, and clarity to others and have developed the ability to dispassionately engage with others regardless of how they “feel” about an individual.
Team members, and certainly you and I, can be challenging to like, or love even on our best days. May we all be compelled to care deeply about the quality of the lives of others, the quality of the work we do with and for others, and the results we achieve together. We wish you the courage, willingness, and initiative necessary as you take the first steps in seeking to build trust by demonstrating caring, leading to the achievement of the highest quality of life and quality of work possible, both now and in the years to follow!
Group Discussion Guide
Click here to view and download the Discussion Guide to utilize with your Group and/or Team over the next 12 months. The Guide and questions will be updated eac
Recommended Quarterly Reading
2022 Managing From The Inside Out Dates
Winter 2022
February 2, 9, 16, 23
March 2, 9, 16
Spring 2022
May 4, 11, 18, 25
June 1, 8, 15
Fall 2022
October 5, 12, 19, 26
November 2, 9, 16
Classes are held weekly and in person from 8:30-11:30 A.M. in Lancaster at the Cork Factory Hotel. To view and download the 2022 flier with additional session information, please click here.
Register today to engage in professional growth and development as a Leader Manager and join us for Managing From The Inside Out! Simply email Katie Williamson at katie@lauraschanz.com to reserve a seat for yourself or a Team Member. The 2022 Registration Fee is $1,195.