Are You A Leader Your Sales Team Can Trust?
“Respect yourself and others will respect you.” Confucius
People I respect are people I can trust. And trust is essential for a healthy workplace.
As a manager, it takes intention and consistency to earn and maintain trust from your team members.
The folks at Oxford define trust as “(the) firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.”
Trust nurtures healthy relationships and healthy relationships encourage improved personal and group performance. I’ve experienced three important facets of trust in the workplace. If any one is missing you risk losing the respect, and ultimately, the productivity, of your employees.
- Honesty: This is not simply telling the truth. It’s about people believing your word.
- Reliability: This involves being accessible, responsive, and dependable. It’s doing what you say you’ll do, when you say you’re going to do it.
- Supportiveness: This involves proactively looking for opportunities to acknowledge a job well done, to provide opportunities for professional growth, and ‘having their back’ when one of your sales staff faces a challenge.
It’s important to understand that these three facets of trust are distinct and all require your attention.
For example, I had a manager who was always dependable when I needed him (reliability). He was helpful by setting me up with coaching and giving me positive, constructive feedback on a regular basis (supportive).
But when he made a mistake, he was quick to ‘throw me under the bus’ to save face. He was dishonest, so I couldn’t trust him.
I had another manager who always told me the truth (honesty). He had an open door policy and kept the team ‘on the same page’ while encouraging personal autonomy (reliability).
However, he refused to provide input on my performance – be it constructive criticism or a pat on the back. I never quite knew where I stood, and didn’t feel supported in my career development.
As time passed, I eventually lost motivation because I didn’t trust that my manager knew how – or even cared – to help me grow (supportiveness).
Here are some lessons I’ve learned about trust in the workplace:
- Recovering trust after being dishonest is very difficult. It’s possible, but genuine remorse, humility, and transparency (over time) are essential keys to reparation.
- Reliability is challenging when an employee’s expectations are unreasonable. Once, I had a direct report who wanted to check in with me every morning to help clarify her task challenges. It was an unrealistic expectation and I should have adjusted my availability to maintain my dependability.
- Using the same example, I should have expressed support for this employee by communicating my confidence in her abilities, providing a training program to strengthen her skills, and challenging her to develop a new level of self-management. Then we could develop a revised communication schedule that would provide accessibility with reasonable boundaries.
Think back to a relationship that failed to develop or didn’t end well. Whether it was professional or personal, it probably involved a failure to cultivate or maintain trust.
And someone you can’t trust is someone you can’t respect, which takes us back to Confucius.
I can’t control the behavior of others but I can choose to respect myself enough and be the kind of person others can trust and respect. Make being personally respectable your goal.
You’ll be happier with yourself and you’ll also make an impact on your workplace.
