The currency for healthy relationships every leader should invest into its team daily, is trust. How can trust be built — or shattered?
As a first-time founder and COO back in the days, unexpected team dynamics and ever-rising workload heavily weighed on me. 5 years into that startup, I burnt out.
Years later and until today, I am regularly asked as a speaker on stage: “How did you get into and out of the burnout slump?”
Answering this curious and crucial question marks the important moment the audience gains trust in me:
I completely open up.
I share what truly happened.
I become vulnerable.
Vulnerability is no weakness at all. It’s a fix to broken, suspicious relationships.
Still, there are corporate cultures and behavior dynamics of leaders towards teams that stop us from being vulnerable — as we don’t feel emotionally safe to share:
A leader that controls everything and everyone, at any time. Putting her/his will into action – and by that killing the self-initiative, creativity and self-confidence of others as “s/he knows the best plan to succeed”.
A leader that needs her/his ever-growing success and acknowledgement by others. S/he pushes a team “up to the summit”, hyper-achieving along the way. The team feels used over time. Trust is shattered too, as promises made “to get to the summit“ didn’t come true.
A leader that is stuck in her/his hyper-rational mind and logic — running facts, numbers and figures about a problem, being unable to be present and engage. This leader doesn‘t feel emotionally available to a team — it doesn’t feel seen. Lacking intuition, these leaders miss out on a key-ingredient for decision making as well as trust by others.
What do you take away on the topic of trust?
Share along, hi@evagruber.org.
Photo credit: Kasia Sosulski / aws First Incubator