How to Build Trust as a Leader

Are you a leader in your organization? You may be one of many depending on the size of your organization. Recently I was promoted to Editor-in-Chief of our parent company, Peake Media, so I’ve been spending a lot of time diving into leadership concepts.

One area that has been weighing on my mind is the ability to develop trust among your team. In life people won’t always agree with final decisions or the strides you make as a leader. If you begin to focus more on sales, your operations team may become annoyed. Likewise, if you focus on operations too much, your sales team may suffer.

One of the most difficult aspects of leadership is the multitude of ways you have to look at a business. You can’t just think of one area and expect the others to also function properly.

Additionally, as a leader, it’s important that you define roles and establish people with experience in those roles. In the book “Traction” by Gino Wickman, it discusses the wrong people in the wrong seats. As a leader you have to be able to identify your staff members’ strengths and put them in their roles.

For example, if you have a person that is really great with people and is always spending time with new hires to get them on-boarded, but you have that person in sales … you probably have the wrong person in the wrong seat.

You need to realize that person would be great in an operations and HR position, as opposed to a sales position. Additionally, if you have a person in sales, but is terrified of talking to people they don’t know, they are greatly in the wrong position.

One of the most difficult aspects of leadership is getting those people in the proper roles and then establishing trust with those individuals. We live in a society where everything and everyone is challenged.

Personally, I blame Apple for teaching everyone to challenge the status quo. I’m just kidding of course, but if you’ve been in leadership long enough (a day or so) you’ve probably felt some backlash and been challenged by your team.

It’s important as a leader that you can establish trust. Your team must realize your deep care for them and the corporation. Your intent isn’t to make their lives miserable, or be a slave driver. You are to lead the organization, make decisions that grow and benefit the organization and help your team function at high levels.

Sounds easy, right? This is not an easy task, nor is it something that you can accomplish overnight. People don’t naturally fall in line with a person in leadership. Trust is something that is established over months and years — something that you have to earn from your team. As a leader you must stay focused, open your ears and make good decisions. Not every decision you make will make you popular, but when your decisions help boost numbers, give raises and bonuses to those team members, they will begin to see that your purpose isn’t to necessarily ruin their lives, or the integrity of the company, but to actually help the company, and themselves, grow.

Tyler Montgomery is the editor of Club Solutions Magazine. Contact him at tyler@clubsolutionsmagazine.com.