The best way to build trust with your team
If you open a new tab and search for What's the foundation of a healthy team?, you'll find "trust" right at the top. We all recognize its absolute importance, yet sometimes we're unsure of how to build it.
Today, I'll draw on a recent parenting analogy to illustrate what I believe to be the most effective method for building trust with your employees.
[Here's the link referenced in the video: abbeylouie.com/1-1]
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The other week, my oldest was at gymnastics practice and my husband was out of town. And so it was just my younger daughter and I at home and it was in the evening and I really wanted to go on a walk, just get outside and kind of wanted to go on my own. And so I encouraged my daughter to go see if her neighbor friend could play and she went and knocked on the door and he wasn't available. So she came back and I convinced her to come on the walk with me, which my girls are not always that interested in in coming on walks with me.
But she came on her scooter and we ended up having just the most wonderful time together and just a chance to chat and move alongside each other and just be together. And she ended up really enjoying it. And when I was tucking her into bed that night, she even commented, "Mom, I'd really like to go on more walks with you."
Even the way she just engaged with me the rest of the evening after that dedicated one-on-one time together was different. She engaged in an entirely different way and it made me think about my favorite leadership practice: regular one-on-ones with our employees.
Often we have managers who, you know, are all about keeping an open door, making sure employees can come in and chat with them whenever. And absolutely I am a fan of that. However, in my perspective, it is not a replacement for regularly scheduled one-on-ones with your employees.
There is something about having that dedicated time where they know my boss has this time blocked on their calendar for me and I can come with whatever it is I want to in this one-on-one and bring it to my boss. And this is dedicated time to just be with them. There's not always a perfect agenda, you know, there isn't always a ton of things that we need to cover, but just having that dedicated one-on-one time, there's no replacement for it.
If you have kids, you know how focused one-on-one time fuels them. You may be spending tons of time with the whole family altogether, but the dedicated one-on-one time, it does something different. It's the same with our employees.
And so I want to encourage you, if you are not already holding regular one-on-ones with your employees, to do so. And if you're not sure where to start, guess what? I have a free one-on-one cheat sheet for you. And so I'll link that below, take advantage of it. It'll walk you through exactly how to do it. But go and spend that dedicated one-on-one time with your employees.