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As a business leader, it
is therefore part of your job to genuinely seek ways to connect with your team to be able to see things from their perspective. This creates
the empathy needed to
build trust. Being able to see things from their perspective helps to make team members feel cared for and supported. There is nothing as unsettling as a leader
who does not care about their employees’ well-being. Simple acts of kindness
like randomly sending
texts to check on
As a leader, it is part
of your job to genuinely seek ways
to connect with your team.
someone who is not well and openly celebrating their successes can go a long way towards building trust.
To this end, the pandemic has accelerated the much- required mindset shift to focus more on the ‘human’ in human resources. The changes Covid-19 brought has compelled many leaders to ask themselves: How do
I re-evaluate my relationship with my team? Answering this question is an important step towards focusing on the humans that make up
a team, understanding
their context and how they personally are affected by the pandemic. It requires you to open up and show employees that you trust them. This will, in turn, encourage them to be more open and trustworthy.
IF YOU DON’T TRUST YOUR STAFF, NEITHER WILL YOUR CLIENTS Clients and customers
are on the receiving end of what happens internally in an organisation. If
there is a lack of trust among the people in an organisation, it will extend to clients.
It is therefore everyone’s responsibility to build a relationship of trust with the client. Moreover, we have to shift to task-
based trust. To do this diligently, teams should ask themselves these questions: Are we keeping our word and following through? Are we consistent in our engagements
with clients and in our service offering? Do we maintain processes our clients can trust? Do we always act with integrity when dealing with our clients? Are we truthful
in handling their queries? The answers will be useful for bolstering client trust where it has been broken or building trust where none existed before.
As everyone navigates this time of chaos and confusion, it is important to get things right inside your organisation before it can translate into the client experience. This
is the real value of trust.
As Conant concluded: ‘As you execute with excellence and deliver on your commitment, trust becomes easier to inspire, creating a flywheel of performance.’ M
wealthSPACE leadership
Thato Belang is an experienced management consultant and Programme Director at Duke Corporate Education. Through her business, Transforma Coaching, she provides clients
with strategy development and business coaching.
ISSUE 1 2021 | 19
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