How Successful Leaders Build Trust with their People

As a leader, you build trust the same way anyone else does: by making a conscious effort to walk your talk, keeping your promises, and aligning your own behavior with your expectations of others.

When you keep up that core, you’re constantly growing your team’s trust. The most trusted leaders add on to the basics with an additional set of trust-inducing behaviors.

Here are the most important:

Being accessible           

Successful leaders understand the importance of being approachable and accessible when you’re building trusted leadership.

Being confident

When a successful leader has confidence in themselves and their team, people trust them in return.

Being credible

Successful leaders acknowledge their mistakes and limitations as well as their expertise and successes. People have faith in that credibility and follow its lead.

Being honest

Simply telling the truth, even when it’s difficult, goes a long way in strengthening relationships and building trust.

Being supportive

When a successful leader shows support and encourages others even when they make mistake, people will have faith in them.

Being dependable

People trust a leader they can count on to do what they say they will do.

Being consistent

When a leader’s words and actions match—not just some of the time or even most of the time but all the time—they’ve achieved a key pillar for building trust.

Being open

When a successful leader actively listens, asks questions, encourages others to share their concerns, and then takes what they hear into account, people trust that their voices are being heard.

Transparency

Transparency is another competency that should come naturally. Yet so many businesses have trouble coming to terms with what it really means.

Being empathetic

Successful leaders know how to balance the need for results with consideration of their team’s needs and feelings. This perspective shows a deep understanding and builds equally deep trust.

Being appreciative

Give credit when people do great work and you’ll set the stage for an appreciative culture.

Lead from within

Successful leaders understand the importance of trust and take it seriously. They make it a daily habit to keep their words and actions trustworthy. 

Example to illustrate

Here is an example from a recent personal experience. It illustrates that an absence of communications represents a means to lose customer trust. Let me elaborate.

On the recent weekend, we expected family and friends would be dropping by at irregular intervals with their various activities — making regular meals less likely.

I decided to stop at a favorite sandwich shop near our Cayuga home in upstate New York to pick up some bite-size deli sandwiches so we would have some easy snacks available whenever anyone was hungry. However, we are not fans of their lox and cream cheese sandwiches which are part of their pre-made party platters.

I asked if I could get a selection without these sandwiches and they confirmed this was possible — but would require a wait while they made up the platter. No problem. I placed my order and said I would be back in the recommended 15 minutes.

When I returned to pick up my order they rang it up and I was surprised that the price had increased by 50% versus the posted price. When I questioned the accuracy of the bill, I was informed that mine was a custom order and this resulted in the surcharge. This was the first I heard of any surcharge. It was also something never charged in the past.

I asked to speak to the manager since I felt they should have mentioned this when I placed my order so I could have decided whether I wanted to; 1) pay the surcharge, 2) take the standard platter, or 3) not order at all.

The manager claimed he was unaware of the surcharge and would look into it — but was unwilling to take any action.

I left wondering what function this manager played. He claimed ignorance of a policy that a cashier was implementing — yet was unwilling or unable to do anything about the policy.

More importantly, I was surprised by his complete lack of interest in the issue. It was simply, “I don’t know and I don’t care”.

The bottom line

Nothing speaks louder about leadership than a leader’s actions, and nothing is a more direct reflection of those actions than their team’s level of trust.