5 Important Ways Great Leaders Earn Trust and Respect

Difficult to earn and easily lost, trust and respect are two of the most important characteristics of great leadership. Workers look to their leaders for guidance and behavioral cues that influence the way they react to a given situation. So, the trust a workforce has for the people in charge greatly impacts productivity.

In fact, according to the 2017 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Report, 61% of employees said trust in senior management is very important to their job satisfaction. Even more striking, only 33% said they were “very satisfied” with the level of trust in their organization overall.

So, what does it take to earn trust and respect from the people you lead? Check out these five important tips.

Leave the door open
Free and open communication is essential for building trust and respect. Open door policies take many shapes, but fostering an environment where employees feel safe coming to you with workplace concerns, new ideas, or even constructive criticism, shows that you are receptive to and genuinely interested in understanding the situation on the frontlines of your business.

Consistency is key
From how you react to project challenges to how you reprimand individual employees, consistency in your words and actions is a major part of building trust. Inconsistent messages and unpredictable behavior will cause your employees to feel that they can’t depend on you to make fair and honest choices of action in difficult situations.

Get your hands dirty
There are few better ways to build trust and respect than rolling up your sleeves and jumping down into the trenches with your employees. Showing that you aren’t afraid to step out on the front line and get your hands dirty creates a bond through shared experience and reminds your workers that you’ve been there and have personally walked a few miles in their shoes.

Confidence in your decisions
Mental fortitude and resoluteness create confidence among the people you lead that they are following the right person. Wishy-washy decision making and uncertainty when the going gets tough causes doubt, and when the team isn’t fully behind their leader, a breakdown in communication and productivity is sure to follow.

Share your wisdom
As iron sharpens iron, one person sharpens another—leaders who give willingly of their time and expertise to build up the next generation earn trust and respect from the people they lead. Not only do they set the standard for future leadership, they also leave behind a legacy worth celebrating.

Workforce productivity and success hinges largely on examples set by the people at the top. Building trust doesn’t happen overnight, but the leaders who invest the time to foster a positive working environment based on mutual respect will be rewarded with employees who are more engaged and loyal to their company.

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2 Responses to 5 Important Ways Great Leaders Earn Trust and Respect

  1. Totally dissatisfied. October 3, 2017 at 7:55 am #

    Good article. Based on the information, I should of left my company 25 years ago. After starting at the bottom, I worked my way up to Inventory Manager, after 4 years. About 5 years later, they added Purchasing Manager to my job duties. I was abruptly moved into an inside sales position with the feedback that the new replacement, who came from a larger competitor, had more experience and would surely help us grow. We had growth of 14 times the original sales volume from when I started 12 years prior. Well in the twenty five years since, I found out the real reason for my position change, was that the owner didn’t like when I tried to save the company from some decisions he was trying to make. He is one to avoid confrontation and never talked to me regarding the change. Since my demotion, I have held several other management positions and left all those in much better shape than what I inherited. The company has only grown by 50% in those 25 years. Recently I was taken out of a branch management position for the son of a VP. In my new position, I helped to increase overall company GM% by 1%, but received no pay increase. In fact, that has been the case since before the great recession of 2008. My situation seems hopeless and my only option is to start over at a new company. Wish I would of left 25 years ago, when my energy and drive were more marketable.

  2. Khalif Barkhadle December 8, 2017 at 6:54 pm #

    Your posts makes a great deal of sense to me and you have an uncanny ability to condense the complex into more manageable,easier to understand, bite-sized pieces.
    Thank you.

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