Can You Be Trusted?

In my experience, a manager that can be trusted is extremely high on the list of things that every employee desires. In fact, in relationships of any kind, it seems clear that trust is central to growth and, ultimately, success in that relationship.

In the world of sales, for example, Zig Ziglar has always preached that “people buy from people they like and trust.” In their extensive research on the effectiveness of teams, authors Carl Larson and Frank LaFasto make this observation (Teams: What Must Go Right/What Can Go Wrong, 1989):

“The absence of trust diverts the mental concentration and energy of a team away from its performance objective and onto other issues. The resulting loss of focus on the common goal is a critical factor. It wounds the team and often renders it ineffective.”

So what does it take to build trust with your team? Is it any one thing?

In an article entitled “Attributes of a Leader Who Can Be Trusted in Combat” taken from the book Leadership Lessons from West Point, the author shares the key traits that soldiers identified as building trust with their combat leaders:

A leader must be competent.

This seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Who wants to work for a boss who doesn’t have a clue? Interestingly, however, soldiers extended the idea of competence to include interpersonal skills! Soldiers judged the competence of combat leaders based on functional effectiveness and on how effectively they relate to the troops.

A leader must be loyal.

Simply put, if a soldier doesn’t think the combat leader cares as much about the soldier as himself, it creates a significant strain on the trust a soldier has for the leader. When difficult decisions must be made that put a soldier in harm’s way, he/she wants to know intuitively that the leader has their personal welfare in mind.

A leader must have integrity.

There can be no equivocation on the battlefield; the leader must have an ironclad commitment to integrity. Soldiers, however, view integrity to include a number of ideas: “The soldiers wanted their leader to behave morally and to be honest and open in discussing problems.” In other words, combat leaders aren’t judged to have integrity if they are unwilling to accept input from their troops.

A leader must share information.

Transparency in leadership is perhaps one of the most pervasive problems in the workplace. As it turns out, soldiers have the same concerns. They have “… a strong desire and need for their leaders to keep them informed about the current situation and upcoming operations.” It seems clear that no organization is immune to the need for clear and consistent communication, and employees rarely do their best work without a clear understanding of what lies around the next corner.

A leader must create a personal connection with subordinates.

In years past, managers were convinced that you couldn’t “be a boss and be a friend” so they tended to avoid the idea of creating a personal connection with employees. Years of research have destroyed this misconception about management, and soldiers in this article insisted that a personal connection is critical to creating trust for a combat leader. They wanted “…leaders who made the effort to learn about them, listen to their concerns, and understand their basic needs.”

This is great insight from an organization that relies on strong leadership – at multiple levels – to be effective. Do you have the attributes of a leader who can be trusted?