As you develop your leadership skills obviously you learn how to lead organizations and others. What about leading you? What do you do in order to, or how do you, lead yourself? What does it take?
One of the more important parts of leadership is trust. You expect, hope, or desire the trust of those you lead. However, you must also trust yourself. When things are difficult, when you have to make decisions, you have to trust that what you decide is correct. If you don’t then that decision making becomes difficult if not impossible. I am certain that in your life you have had difficulty making a decision. It could have happened only once; it could have happened many times. Yet, you struggled with the choices you had to make. Your ability or inability to make that final decision was based solely on how well you trusted your own judgment. Think about the power and responsibility that comes with that level of trust.
Sometimes we refer to trusting ourselves as “self-confidence.” In other words, we are confident that are actions will cause the appropriate outcome. Or, we made a bad decision once, were chastised for it and now are afraid to make decisions at all – we lack self-confidence. Consequently the confidence, or lack of confidence, that we have in our abilities is a form of trust. If you don’t trust in yourself how can you expect others to trust in you?
Few of us will ever have to make literal life and death decisions. Many of us will have to make life altering or changing decisions. All of us will most certainly make important decisions. How well we do comes from trust. However, that trust is fed by certain things.
That trust is developed by our knowing we have the skills and knowledge about the activity to act. You know that you can communicate your vision about what you have chosen to do; you know that before you do that you will have listened to what those who follow you had to say.
You also know that deep inside you care about the effect, the impact, the outcome of your decision. All of those skills, attributes and behaviours are critical elements of the trust you have established with yourself.
Building trust, both in yourself and with others takes time and effort. Some simple steps are:
· Lead by example – if you set an example of trustworthiness, you begin the development of gaining trust and trusting yourself. If you are always looking for the next angle or trying to beat the system you begin to develop distrust. When distrust develops you not only distrust others but you distrust yourself.
· Communicate openly – Discuss issues with your team openly and honestly. Even when mulling things over in your head, be honest and open with yourself. This is where a strong level of emotional intelligence is important.
· Get to know yourself and others – Knowing who your team members are, on a personal level, is critical to gaining their trust. Understanding who you are is important to building your own self trust.
· Don’t blame others – never blame others for the failures of the group. Take personal responsibility.
As you gain the trust of others your trust in self will develop and strengthen also. The two together become like the snowball rolling down the hill. They get larger and larger.
Obviously you must be careful to not lose trust. Trust, once it is lost, is very difficult to reclaim. Should that ever occur you have to ensure that your steps toward regaining trust are adequate and ultimately successful. Equally important, they must be sincere. These steps are:
· The first step in regaining trust is taking complete ownership of whatever caused the trust to be lost. It is your responsibility and is not, was not, never will be, caused by anything else.
· The second step is to accept the loss and recovery from it as a learning experience. We learn as much, if not more, from mistakes we make than from our successes.
· The third step is to not over react. It is not uncommon to add to or create processes that ensure mistakes don’t happen. This excess bureaucracy causes even more mistakes because it not only slows down the process but it can also stop the process.
· The Fourth step is to ask others for help. Do not try to solve these issues all by yourself. This sends a message that you don’t trust others. If they sense that then they will not trust you. Share the effort and share the success.
· The last step is do not rush. Let the process take the time it needs. Do not try and force it but also do not become apathetic or laissez faire about the process. Move it forward at a pace that is appropriate for the situation.
Trust is one of the more critical aspects of leadership. Without trust you have nothing. With trust, providing you sustain it, you can do anything. Simply put…trust is everything. As your trust in self increases, others will increase their trust in you. These two parts are mutually inclusive and as they grow, will improve your leadership abilities.
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