In my career to date I have always had a slight (common?) distrust of those higher up in the organisation. Trust on a personal level is gained through interactions, Rarely do most people in a workforce get to know the boss. I have heard all sorts of rumours of things that I am alleged to have said that I didn’t. Or someone will have second-guessed something I did and assumed a different thing. Our worldviews may be different and the sum of “assuming or guessing” can make gaining high levels of trust a problem.
Knowing this has made me really think how I can reduce this problem. When I started 16 months ago I regularly shared a slide which showed a graphic of a battery that was half charged with 2 of 4 bars. Enter the Trust battery. Tobi Lütke who is Shopify CEO has talked about the concept that when you start a new role people probably trust you about 50%. With each interaction you either charge or discharge the trust battery.
So over a year into my role I recently had a moment where someone really took a leap to trust me. Yah. But that being said mostly people I feel are at 50%. One of my objectives this year is to see if I can get more people in the higher side of the battery than the lower side.
How?
By doing what I say i’ll do and showing through actions and transparency. Doing but then not sharing is def one piece of the puzzle as unless folk see/hear actions they can be left unsure and that battery fails just a drop more.