INsight/The Trust Needle

Photo Shutterstock.

Manila, 19 May 2021 — Which relationships to take into the green zone?

Story

It happened in 2017.  Over a period of 7 months, I trained with executive coach Judith Glaser on what it takes to build trust and achieve better results together in teams, projects, and the organization. The key, she explained, was to have better conversations. The lessons I learned in her Conversational Intelligence (C-IQ) program have stayed with me and have taken my coaching to the next level.

To read more about conversational intelligence, see Trust in Conversations. And for an inspiring example of a bridging leader who overcame adversarial politics by creating quality conversations in challenging circumstances, read Better Than Boxing.

In this post, let’s zoom out from the techniques for conversational intelligence to review your relationships at work, which is where your conversations take place. Consider your relationships with colleagues and also with your clients, partners, and suppliers. Where does the Trust Needle point in each of your relationships?

Challenge

There’s no doubt that improving relationships is a challenge, and that keeping the status quo is much easier. It takes curiosity and then some courage and skills to open up and make yourself vulnerable as you seek to change a relationship for the better. And that’s what leaders will do because they are not satisfied with the status quo.

In my experience, it helps to have a simple framework for measuring this process. A dashboard with a needle and traffic light colors will do the job. As you take on the challenge of improving relationships and taking them to a new level, the corresponding image is to move the Trust Needle towards, and then into, the green zone.

The challenge I put to you today is to get all of your key relationships at work, one by one, into the green zone. That means building more trust. And while it takes two to tango, I’d say that in building trust, it’s always your turn for the next step. Taking the initiative works better than waiting for the other side to act. In leadership, it’s always your turn.

Question

So the question is: Which of your relationships at work do you want to improve and bring into the green zone?

There’s no lack of resources to help you do this, and you can start with the posts I already linked. If, however, you’re facing serious or widespread trust issues, please book a Free Strategy Call so we can discuss it.

Meanwhile, many emerging leaders will prefer to look for collaborative ways to build higher levels of trust in the workplace. If that appeals to you, take the Grow3Leaders challenge to invite three colleagues into a Collab to work on this together. The challenge is to influence a positive change in just 6 to 8 weeks, get group coaching support, and earn the Collab Leader digital credential in the process. The next enrollment period for new Collabs is next week on 24-31 May, so get on it right away and book a Free Setup Call with me to get started.