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The most important investment leaders have to do

By Oktober 7, 2024No Comments

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