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.
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.
Collaboration: Working together. The act of working together with one or more people in order to achieve something.
The more time spent in the corporate world, the more I realized how true collaboration is an art – an art only certain people have the talent to hone, encourage, use, and execute.
Much like a painter learns through experience how to use a brush to make scenery and images jump off the canvas, a business, through the hiring of key staff can put together a team.
A team that not only works together beautifully to carry out daily enterprise goals but painlessly can switch gears from every-day practicality into innovations. Innovations to keep the company moving forward.
The key to this is truly understanding the dynamics of the people on your teams.
You see, true collaboration doesn’t just happen because you throw a group of creative people in a room with a whiteboard, bad delivery pizza, and a pep talk challenging them to change the business.
It happens when the elements align – knowledge, passion, creativity, and vision collide (and yeah, pizza is sometimes involved) and everyone sitting around the table feeds off the ideas of one another to come up with a business-changing plan.
Not only does this leave much to be desired in the ‘collaboration’ area, it often leaves a team feeling they have no say in the direction and aren’t invested in their success – but only in the success of their manager’s ideas. And there most certainly is a difference.
Mature leadership understands the importance of collaboration and more importantly, the environment needed to encourage and allow it to thrive.
What is collaborative leadership?
Collaborative leadership is a way of managing people across functional and organizational boundaries. In collaborative working environments, managers aren’t simply there to oversee projects and make sure goals are met; rather, they work alongside employees and in collaboration with other teams and departments to accomplish shared goals.
It takes collaborative leadership.
This can mean a few things, depending on the organization:
Information is shared freely, across alllevels of the organization
Leaders bridge gaps between departments and play a major role in preventing silos
Unlike a traditional top-down org structure, where information is often hoarded among the upper echelons of the organization, collaborative leadership encourages a more open culture.
Each employee understands what’s happening in other departments, recognizes the shared purpose of their organization, and sees how their role fits into that overarching purpose. In this structure, it’s the role of leaders to facilitate collaborative relationships between departments.
The benefits of collaborative leadership
There are too many to list here, but a few advantages to this kind of org structure and management practice are as follows:
Here are a few tips and tricks needed to get healthy collaboration going and growing.
Explore your team’s strengths.
With the daily grind taking up most of the employees’ office time, it is often difficult for leadership to get to know their team members well enough to understand their unseen strengths. Chances are the people you’ve got out there doing the day-to-day are capable of so much more.
A good manager who yearns to build effective collaboration knows how to use them sometimes hidden talents of the team in such a way it benefits the individual, the team, and the company.
Build trust with your people.
While it is always difficult when friendships take place between management and employee, it is by no means frowned upon to be a leader your team can talk to. If a leader is receptive to ideas, takes the time to listen and genuinely appreciates his/her employees, then collaboration is natural.
There is still a boundary there, but it is not a looming, intimidating one. It doesn’t hinder innovation but encourages and rewards it.
Realize no one likes a one-way conversation.
Do you want to know why most employees HATE meetings? It’s because they have become the unwelcome stage for management to flap their jaws about anything and everything without listening to a word their employees say. The best meetings EVER are those where management gets the meeting started and team members take the topic and feed off of it.
What many managers don’t understand, good collaboration starts with management’s ability to talk to and communicate with their people.
The idea that management is a club unto itself kills a staff’s ability to collaborate with anyone other than each other; therefore making game-changing differences within the business becomes impossible.
Realize it takes a village.
When every single person feels he has a stake in the community, then every action and decision is poised to help the village prosper. The same thing happens in business.
When an employee feels important, listened to, and vested, then he finds himself thinking of alternative ideas to save time, creative ways to increase business, or even better product outcomes. If management makes employees feel they’re important then
Give ‘em something to talk about.
While management holds up at a meeting or a retreat trying to solve the problems of the world, a wise leadership comes back and shares some of the problems with the team to spawn ideas.
A collaborative leader is a strong leader and understands the power of teamwork. Get your team talking and see what happens.
Know when to quietly leave the room.
Sometimes, leadership’s insertion into a collaboration is indeed a hindrance. It doesn’t mean employees don’t respect you, it indicates they aren’t quite ready to speak freely because the employee may not want to come off as ridiculous.
Regardless of how close you are with your team, there is always a line some employees won’t cross when the person who holds their financial future in their hands is in the room.
Collaboration is not a competition. A collaborative environment does not incense competition. It isn’t about one-upping another team member. It is about every team member feeding off each other’s ideas and making it better.
No criticism. No hounding. Just ideas getting bigger and better every single second.
Find the kernel of sanity hidden in the crazy.
Some ideas may seem ludicrous. Some, absolutely insane. But remember, the most laughable and insane of ideas could have a grain of brilliance in them. A great manager can dissect those ideas and find the kernel that will help the business grow.
Remember what your momma said.
It’s as true today as it was when you were on the playground – words hurt. When you are leading a collaboration or trying to foster it among a group, guide the conversation and nurture it. Nothing good will come of it if negativity enters the equation.
Momma said.
Whether it’s pulling together brilliance from a team that has worked together forever or gathering a bunch of misfits into a room to brainstorm greatness, leadership is key. A manager who understands the importance of full team participation in collaboration is one who is setting the business up for success, as well for himself and the employees he manages.
Collaboration is the key to innovation and the future of every business out there and management that understands this realizes the next best thing that’ll take the business into the future is possibly sitting out there in the mind of an employee. And it’ll just take a little coaching and collaboration to get it to see light.
The bottom line
In the end, collaborative leadership is all about flattening and opening up an organization—to new ideas, perspectives, skill sets, and a greater awareness of what’s working and what isn’t.
It’s not necessarily an outright rejection of traditional org structures, either. Think of collaborative leadership as an upgraded version that reflects the way people work nowadays.
Do you have a lesson about making your leadership better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find him on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on teamwork from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Customers don’t care what you do. They only care what they are left with after you’ve done it. Do you notice the customer experience you receive at a business you frequently visit? With most customers, the answer is yes if the experience is bad. The extreme endpoint of the service experience. Occasionally, however, customers make note of a customer experience design that is just average. And average experiences won’t help your business, will they? So businesses should be continually looking to using customer satisfaction as creative marketing, yes?
For example, we often get questions and comments on delivering great customer service and experiences. From clients and customers commenting on our blog.
Many relate to customer service actions that are reminders of what we already know (but we occasionally forget). These are big enablers of customer service.
They usually won’t create Wow service on their own, but their absence is noted by customers and lowers excellent customer service to just good enough or less.
I often take note of the local company’s customer experience design and think about the changes I would make if I was in charge. My wife and I will visit our local Home Depot store and discuss our experiences. This blog is all about a discussion we had after a recent visit.
See our article on the Random Acts of Kindness for Customer Experience Improvements
For instance, what are the ways this Home Depot was just average in its customer experience design? Consider Home Depot’s explicit operations and design:
Using customer satisfaction … saving time
One of the most important needs of most customers is time … no one ever has enough and if you are a customer like me, you hate waiting for service in anything. There two big-time wasters at the Home Depot.
The first is trying to find what you are looking for. This is almost always an issue for us. Usually when we ask directions we get a prompt answer to an aisle, which certainly shortens the search, but not enough in our mind.
The second is trying to find someone to help you. That also includes someone who can handle 90% of the answers. That rarely happens on the first try.
In their store, as well as on their website, you can never find product value statements or recommendations. If you want recommendations on the best value you must ask.
And when you do you rarely get a convincing answer. No real unique selling points were obvious for the store as a whole, at least that was obvious to us.
Using customer satisfaction … store to web site integration
I visit both Home Depots and Lowes quite often and use their website even more frequently. In all those visits, I have been shown a terminal where a clerk actually used it to answer my question.
My bet is that there only 2-3 computers in the entire store where a customer clerk could look online to get information and answers on products. And service for products is even a bigger issue. An area where small changes could provide big improvements
Home Depot does a decent job in educating their Do-It-Yourself customers. This is most often achieved by adding a learning center in both the store and online.
The online service is still better than average, but again, they could do a lot more by integrating online and in-store customer education. Many of the employees are just clerks and know very little about products and do it yourself activities.
Customer experience variation
Have you ever walked a large retail store and noticed how one area is outstanding while another is barely holding its own? This is always what we notice at this Home Depot.
And if one area or department can have a great customer experience, why can’t they all? The simple answer is they can and should.
Using customer satisfaction … employee knowledge
Not all employees will be the superstar, will they? But you really notice when they are not motivated to try and be great. Give me an employee that really cares and I can build the superstar in short order.
And so should Home Depot. The trick is hiring employees that are motivated by working with customers.
Importance of customer satisfaction … stand tall on customer issues
Being a customer advocate is often tough for many businesses. Many companies will overcome this by defining a customer bill of rights and displaying in the store and online.
No way to not follow these as they are predominantly displayed. This would be very useful for Home Depot.
When you save your customer time, deliver quality service, stand tall on customer issues, and always show your value, you definitely build trust.
And trust is the basis of great customer relationships and follow-on business. A definite win-win. Lots of additional ways Home Depot could improve their performance in this critical area.
Looking for customer feedback
Have you ever seen a suggestion box at a Home Depot? We haven’t, and there have been occasions when we have looked. How about an employee wearing a badge asking for your inputs or suggestions?
Does Home Depot just not care? They care, but not that much, do they?
Immerse customers in brand
At many brands, you can’t look in any direction without seeing the branding all around. In the store or online. It works to surround you with the customer experience at every moment.
And we are not talking about hammering you with sales slogans.
Related post: Building a Customer Experience Strategy for Business Success
This type of customer experience design certainly shows the business appreciate the importance of customer experience, doesn’t it? It’s a culture they seem proud to stand behind.
Companies that are proactively managing all elements of their customer experiences are most successful in achieving customer loyalty.
Here’s the thing, social isn’t just a new way of marketing, it’s really a new way of running a business. Many small businesses certainly have figured this out and are using social marketing and improved customer experience to rapidly grow their business.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative, social marketing and customer experience efforts. Lessons are all around you.
In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
The bottom line
It’s always good practice to meet customers’ expectations and ensure they are satisfied and happy with your business — but if your strategy ends there, you’re missing out on all the value you can drive back into your business.
Make an effort to leverage that superior customer experience into new and repeat business, and pretty soon, you’ll reap all the rewards of satisfied, long-term customers.
Remember one simple thing here: all employees need to view themselves as customer advocates, period.
Customer experience actions that are remarkable get talked about.And getting talked about in this light is a great thing, right?
No question.
Do you have a lesson about making your customer experience better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer experiences? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
Call today for aFREEconsultation or aFREEquote. Learn about some options to scope your job and pay for results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas to make your customer experiences better.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
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