Manila, 27 May 2020 — Three steps to building trust for engagement.

It starts with using the right key to open the door. That’s what connecting is all about. When you can open the door, you have started building trust. It’s what President Nelson Mandela discovered when he set about building trust in order to rebuild South Africa after apartheid. 

Connecting with the heart

Mandela said that we connect to someone’s heart when we speak their language. He learned and practiced for several years how to do that. Connecting with the heart is the key to enable change and collaboration happen, as described by researchers Kotter and Cohen in their book The Heart of Change.

This month in Grow3Leaders we explore how leaders invest in building trust with people. And today, we’re exploring three steps to do that and overcome the Three Trust Barriers.

Step 1: Making the Connection

First impressions count, and you only have one shot at making a first impression with people you are meeting. Research of psychology reveals that our minds will make quick decisions about whom to trust. Hearing a person speak and connect to our heart is what often opens the door.

Other ways of saying this would be connecting with people where they’re at, getting on the same wavelength, and using language that resonates with them. Making sure our value frames match those of our audience when we speak, as Floor de Ruiter, a change management expert and one of my mentors, might put it. 

In Grow3Leaders, we explored the Connect theme in October, with tools to practice making better connections with people and overcome the Language Barrier. 

Step 2: Communicating effectively

In this second step, specific skill sets, practices, and behaviors come to the fore which, research has demonstrated, help us in building trust with people. To a great degree, these are value-neutral and can be used in healthy and unhealthy ways. That means that they are effective regardless of what you want to influence people to do.

Keep in mind that the practice of improving our communication skills can enable many results, including influencing people’s commercial buying decisions, or to join a company or political party. There is no shortage of extreme examples. Consider that Adolf Hitler was an effective influencer, and so was Bernard Madoff, a swindler who broke records for the number of people he persuaded to invest in his fraudulent schemes. 

You might think of people in high places today who use their communication skills to influence people in favor of policies, beliefs, and decisions that you don’t approve of (at all). That’s why we review three steps here, with the third practicing to build relationships that are based on values of empathy, integrity, and sustainability.

Back to skills and behaviors that effective communicators learn to practice in their work. A classic you don’t want to miss out on is Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology and marketing. His six principles are practiced every day in countries around the world, and he recently added research on pre-suasion. 

In Trust in Conversations, we looked at the work on Conversational Intelligence by Judith Glaser, an executive coach and one of my mentors.

Asking powerful questions is another key skill for effective communication, and in Grow3Leaders we explore that in our November theme. 

There are many more skills to learn and explore to communicate more effectively and these will always be a priority for leaders who want to make a difference in their workplace in service of the passion that drives them. Effective communication is a lens (perspective) that we reflect on continuously in our Grow3Leaders community.

There’s always something more and new to learn in the quest of becoming an effective communicator and overcoming the Power Barrier.

Step 3: Building a relationship

This third step is about the importance of building trustful relationships. Learning how to do this better has many dimensions too. Here are some of my favorites.

Life is about giving and taking, about value exchanges. In this step, we reflect on how important it is to become known as a giver, a multiplier, rather than a taker who tends to diminish others. Generosity matters in building trusting relationships. Give first. 

Trust in relationships is built over time, and needs frequent attention, like a good gardener who tends the garden frequently. Trust can start small, and build over time. Psychologists can tell you that the skills of spotting signs of distrust early on will help to manage or repair the trust. 

We are all different with our unique personalities, and self-awareness is critical to how we engage with others in a trusting manner. Psychologists discovered that some people are more trusting than others from their mental programming. That can be good or bad. 

In Rethinking Trust, Roderick Kramer, a contributor to the Harvard Business Review, prompted us to ask ourselves if we are too trustful or too distrustful. If there is no middle choice, which of these would you self-identify with? That’s a valuable input to understanding how we trust and overcome the Care Barrier.

Leaders will always practice self-awareness, and who and how we trust is a critical part of that. Our own level of trust, and what we put our trust in, will depend on our situation also. In Colors of Trust, we asked what the color of our trust is when we’re relaxed and when we’re stressed, referring to seven colors that represent the worldviews we encounter in our workplaces.

Using the Key

What are you doing to invest in building trust with people in your workplace and what are you learning so far? In Grow3Leaders, we practice growing our leadership skills together with colleagues in our workplace, and we do so in a practical manner that integrates leadership growth with our regular work. Becoming more familiar with trust and investing in trust is a key part of that challenge.

We are a private community of leaders from countries around the world, and from different generations, who are committed to learning and practicing effective leadership behaviors ‘out loud’ and together to create positive change in our workplaces.

Joining us is free of charge—not free of commitment. Send us a request if you feel that you are up to our Grow3Leaders challenge and are ready to join together with three of your colleagues in your workplace.

We look forward to learning together with you and your team.