Want to build fast and high? Start with this foundation
“When trust goes up, speed will also go up, and costs will go down.”
“When trust goes down, speed will go down, and costs will go up.”
Stephen M. R. Covey, The Speed of Trust
True leadership influence is built on a foundation of trust and integrity. Quite simply, without it, leaders will flounder and fail. Here are the Xtra Mile Performance steps to building a foundation of trust:
1. BE THE BEST PRACTITIONER OF WHAT YOU PREACH: If the leader does not embody the organizational values, the team won’t either. Nobody will hire a personal trainer who is 50 pounds overweight. Make sure your values and your actions are fully aligned.
2. DO WHAT YOU SAY: Nothing builds trust faster than delivering results. Jimmy John’s Sandwiches claim to be “freaky fast”. Try one of their restaurants for yourself, they are very fast.
3. ADMIT WHEN YOU ARE WRONG: I don’t expect people to be right 100% of the time, and neither does your team. A large part of entrepreneurial growth is achieved through experimental learning; through our failures we find winners. Always accept responsibility for failures, these phrases can be helpful…
- “That didn’t work quite like I envisioned…”
- “Some of my assumptions were clearly bad in this case…”
- “Thank you for indulging my experiments, what have we learned…”
Proactively build TRUST as one of your leadership strategies with your clients, employees, customers and suppliers. Most people wait to give trust after someone has earned it. I say proclaim it ahead of time and watch people strive to live up to a reputation you gave them.
The speed going up and cost going down are well worth it, plus it is just the right thing to do.