003: Building Trust

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Welcome to the finance leader. Podcast. I am your host, Stephen McLane. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting again. My desire for this forum is that this is gonna be a place for finance and accounting professionals to grow our leadership skills because we definitely work in a complex world with very tight deadlines. On this episode, we're gonna talk about how to build trust because once trust is lost, it's hard to recover. It takes time, and you may never get it back. You can try harder and do extra, but it's gonna be very difficult once others lose trust in you. I think you need to do a continual self analysis how you go about building trust on your team and then recognize and apply that if you do lose trust that you don't do those things again. As a leader, you are being watched every moment and being judged. It may be a silent judgment, but you are being judged what happens to a team when no one trusts the leader and no one trust each other. The team definitely performs poorly. You're not gonna get the best out of people, is not really gonna be an incentive to take risk or do anything above what is expected every day. Trust is the glue that's going to keep your team together. It's the glue that bonds you to your boss. To the senior leaders above you. Once they lose trust in you, you're not gonna be effective. You know, I could barely get anything done. They're not gonna give you any special projects. They're not gonna give you anything to get the head or any opportunities to move forward in your career in that organization. Same thing. If you lose trust with your team members, they're not going to do the best for you. They're not gonna take any risk. They're not. They're just gonna do what they need to do at a minimum level to get the task done. They're gonna be in protection mode. They're gonna look out for themselves. You're gonna risk high turnover on your team Will be some little stay. You will just come in, get the task done and leave. They won't do anything extra for you. We'll just meet the deadline, meet the minimum standard and move on. But your high performers, they're just not gonna tolerate it. They're not gonna deal with it. If they can't trust you, they're gonna move on. They're gonna find another opportunity. And then you're just gonna be stuck with a team of just mediocre performers who don't really care whether you're just really or not. It is gonna come in, do their stuff get done. Trust is the daily expectation that we will all act ethically within our human relationships. Trust is expected above all else. If you lose trust, you will lose your team. I want you to think back to a time when you did not trust a manager or senior leader that you had. How did affect your performance or potential for staying with the same company? How did you feel dealing with a senior leader that didn't quite do what you expected them to do? A ce faras the relationship. You had the trust that you expected. How did you feel about sticking your neck out for that individual or putting your best effort in most of the time? If a senior leader consistently doesn't doesn't show that they are trustworthy, then you're gonna be very cautious around that person. You're not going to give them your best, O r. Give them an insight, or you're gonna be You're gonna be very guarded with what you tell them and how you approach them. If you're working on a project with them, you're gonna be very guarded. When you go to present a project, you don't know what angle they're gonna take in the presentation. If if they have showed consistently that they won't back you up or they steal credit for an idea number of other ways that you can lose trust. So that's the same thing as we approach our own team members who are looking at us. If we don't show that trust, we don't show how we can do our best to bring out the best ideas or to know that they will know that we have them. We have their back, Ah, tough situation or a risky project or if they're dealing with a personal issue in their life and we have given them our word on something. And if we don't follow up on that, what we have said, what we have promised, then how do you expect down to do their best and stayed with us in the long term. They're just not going to do it because if it happens to you, you wouldn't do it. That's where we come to behavior and expected actions of yourself in a leadership role that you have. This is where we come to the expectation for you within the role that you have as leader, that we must personally set the best example of character and work ethic. You must be consistent. We must have honorable behavior. You must treat people well. We must live up to the word that we have said the promises that we have made. We must live and operate every day with a high level of integrity. That is, when someone, if someone comes to you with a problem or an issue that we hold that trust, we we don't share that information with others. That person has opened themselves up to us and maybe needs some help solving problem. We don't go them spreading that news around everybody. That's what I mean by having a good integrity, good, honorable behavior and we must be consistent with that every day, every moment, every interaction we have with our with our team members. Few other areas that will help us, especially in setting the best example is time management. We don't want to be consistently wasting the time of our team members. We must respect others time. We must show up to meetings on time, must deliver off what we promised we were going to deliver a piece of information or we're saying that we're gonna set up a time to discuss an issue. Then we follow through with that. Got to follow through on the commitments we have made on the promises that we have made. We must have good business practices during the day, not sloppiness. We must hold our meetings that were supposed to. You must have some kind of predictable, consistent behaviour every day and during the week. We should be living the example that we want our team members to live and also living the example that our boss expects And then our senior leaders expect you must continually be trying to set that solid example high example of integrity, high example of consistent behaviour, honorable behavior. Another area that we can commit to building trust within our team is that we must communicate relevant information quickly. Some people in leadership roles hold onto information because it makes them feel powerful, makes them feel like they have something up on the rest of the team or their peers. And some people believe that that gives them an edge or an advantage that by knowing certain pieces of information within the company that they can use it to divide up people well, maybe pit people against each other. These are horrible practices. These are These were done by people with no integrity, no honor. And we don't We're not gonna do those things. I don't want us in. This finance and accounting community did not do those bad practices. We need to learn to share relevant information quickly so that our team members know what's going on. They can then used the information that they have in solving a problem that they may be having for the company project team routine tasks that they have. If we if we know that something is coming down the pipeline, that's gonna affect a project that we need to share that information now, I know that there's some sensitive information that can't be shared or the timeliness is critical to when we share it. We've been told that you know, in advance and announcement's gonna come out in a couple hours. That's critical that we need to hold on to that information, and I completely understand that. And also for those of you who are working in public companies, releasing of information is critical. So you don't violate some type of SEC rule or some kind of other regulatory violation, and I completely understand that. But when we share information quickly, it build confidence and trust for our team members because they know we're not withholding something. Team members will start to you in their own minds, trying to figure out if you're withholding information from them, something that's affecting the team's, something that's gonna affect the performance of the team with the integrity of the team, or even withholding critical assumptions or fax project. If they feel that you're withholding that information, they're not going to trust you. So that's why I encourage managers as much as you can push information down to your team members as quickly as possible. Anything relevant, anything that'll affect project anything that'll affect reporting that goes on anything that affects their normal everyday rhythm of tasks, share that information and you're gonna get more respect. You're gonna get more trust. They're gonna know that you're doing everything you can to give them the tools, the information necessary to do their jobs even better. And they're gonna come back, and they're going to give you even more effort. Another area that will help build a bill trust within the team and also build trust across the organization and up and down in our chain of command is that we must deliver results within the deadlines. You will lose credibility with your boss and senior leaders if you can't deliver results. If you can't meet deadlines, that's the same thing for your team members. If we're working on a team project, even individual tasks of your team, if they can't meet their deadlines because something that you have done or promises that you have made and they can't deliver on their deadlines, then you're gonna lose trust on your team. So that's why a continually to encourage be consistent and no achieving those results that you're expected to complete the tasks that are required and meet your deadlines. And that way you won't be losing trust in that regard. You're also gonna lose respect across the organization with your peers if you can't meet, if you have tasks that require sharing of information across the organization to your peers. If you can't meet those deadlines, then you're gonna have no respect from your peers. And they're not gonna do anything more for you know, because we can't meet your deadlines, then don't expect them to meet their that lines. This last area that we're gonna talk about when building trust on your team is about being fair and unbiased in how you treat your team members, I would say of all the things that we've talked about on this podcast episode, this is probably the most critical. How do you treat your team? And do you treat each team member fairly? Everyone has filters and see the world through a certain lens. We were all raised differently, were all raised a certain way, and that the way we were raised does effect. Our mindset does affect how we view the world does affect how we view others. So we must be continually knowing and understanding what filters and what lens we're using. As we look at people as we interact with people as we lead others as we give direction and purpose. What filter are you applying your thought process through? What filter are you using for the input that's coming into your mind? How are you viewing people? Are you viewing each team member fairly? Are you favoring one over another? Are you? And a lot of this may be unconscious. You may not be realizing you're doing it. That's why you must be more silverware of how you're interacting with others. How your viewing, others your body language towards people, how you're interacting, how you're speaking tone of voice. Are you making eye contact? Come and ask you for something. Are you treating them fairly? Are you viewing someone differently over another? And again Once you become self aware and you acknowledge that you have a filter, you then can ensure you are treating everyone fairly that you can start to see how you talk and how you act. Now you're interact affects the team that that you have We must treat everyone the same. Must give everyone the fair opportunity to perform well. We must give everyone who seem tools. We must share information equally along the team, and we also address performance issues fairly across the team. We don't favor anyone over the other. Now you're gonna have different performance levels across the team. Just be self aware and making sure that every team member has access to the same thing has access. Same access to you, the same access to information tools training so that they can also perform their best. If you are doing that and you still get a performance issue, then it's a performance issue for that person. So I'm gonna encourage you to continually do the self assessment. Am I giving everyone a fair shot on my team because you want to continually fight the bias? We all have it. We all have some kind of eyes. If we acknowledge it, we know it. We can do better. We can lead our team better. We can give begin sure that we're giving opportunity to everyone to excel on the team and in the organization. We're giving access to special projects to the people who deserve it to the people who are really comes down to them and their performance as long as they have access to everything and it's up to them to decide how to use those tools and the access of that information if they still have failed. And it's all now, but you're gonna make sure you're doing it, so I don't want to encourage you. Self assess. Be more self aware. Watch what you're doing. One of the things that I learned several years ago when I was trying to become more self aware was my listening skills. I worked hard at more active listening, changed my body language, changed how I view people, how I look at people, and I give them that equal access. I'm listening to them, and I'm not being flippant about what people are saying. It's still something I continually work on. Good, active listening. All right, so in this episode we talked about building trust and wanna close with Trust is expected above all else. No matter what you're doing, you've gotta work on building trust because once you lose trust, you will lose your team. You can find this episode in past episodes on Apple podcast Spotify and a lot of other platforms. You can download the show notes of steven McLean dot com. Next episode We're gonna talk about one of my favorite topics. And that's mindset. And that's how you see yourself affects your overall potential. Your mindset affects your long term potential. I hope you enjoyed the show. Please join our community on Facebook, the finance leader podcast Facebook Group. This will be our community to grow within the finance and accounting professional until next time you can check out more resource is that Stephen? Mclean dot com. You can sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now go lead your team and see you next time. Thank you.