[August 19, 2021] A fundamental attribute of any leader is the ability to build trust in the people who work for us, supervisors, peers and associates, and clients. Building and managing that trust ranks as one of the top factors to achieve and sustain high levels of organizational strength. It is also a measure of a leader’s successful performance.
To lose that trust is easy. A loosely translated and often quoted Dutch proverb says, “trust arrives on foot, but departs on horseback.” Another way to interpret the proverb is to say that a single stupidity can ruin your reputation that took years to build.
This is intuitively obvious for those at the senior leadership level; we could not have achieved this status without our personal efforts to realize this very trust and confidence. Good communications, breaking down information stovepipes (or silos), making it easy for everyone to interact, and building a culture of open dialogue and truthfulness go a long way to maintain that trust.
Under the “Art of Senior Leadership” rubric, personal relationships enable leaders to build the trust that all organizations need. Of course, trust is very labor-intensive, built over time, and cannot be “surged” like personnel, equipment, and money can be needed to accomplish a task.
As senior leaders, we should always be on the lookout for opportunities to improve professional relationships and know that this is one of the senior leader’s most valued and irreplaceable commodities.
Here are a few things we should do that will go far in building trust:
- be helpful
- provide good communications
- provide a clear, understandable vision
- make all your processes transparent
- be principled and consistent in making decisions
- be prepared
- have a positive attitude of humility
- have the courage to take on complex problems
The unique skill sets required to build and maintain trust starts with a high level of maturity and confidence in the leader. Humility is another (a future blog post on this topic).
All leaders should be mindful that they occupy a position of trust, and to sacrifice or lose that trust is far easier than we think.
Trust remains a recurring theme in this blog, for it is the foundation that supports the pillars of all organizations and is the means for measuring success.
More to come on Afghanistan and how incompetent the US military was there.
“Have the courage to take on complex problems.” Well, Gen. Satterfield, we know that PResident Biden surely does not have the courage. We all know he doesn’t have the smarts. Sadly, America will have to wait and see what team Biden does to screw up the nation more over the next few weeks. Pictures coming from Afghanistan is only a start.
Excellence in article writing. Cheers!
Spot on comment BC. Thanks. Be sure to read today’s article, Great Leaders Pick the Right People https://www.theleadermaker.com/great-leaders-pick-the-right-people/ It tells us a lot and these two articles can be linked as one big smack down on the current presidency of Joe Biden and his incompetent staff.
“What the Biden foreign-policy record shows, I think, is a man who behaves as if he knows much more than he does, who has far too much confidence in his own judgment in the face of contrary advice from experts. (My hunch is he’s overcompensating for an intellectual inferiority complex, which has manifested itself in his history of plagiarism, lying about his academic achievements, and other embellishments.)”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/biden-afghanistan-record/619799/?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
by Peter Wehner in the Atlantic.
From Gen. Satterfield’s friend at PowerLineBlog.com comes this, “Wehner thinks he has found a common thread in Biden’s errors — a willingness to betray.”
Sad, very sad ….. but for us as citizens and the Afghans, not for Biden Harris, the keystone cops of our leadership elite.
Betray, exactly the point that Gen. Satterfield has made repeatedly about Joe Biden and other ilk that follow him thru their complete blindness manifested in a Marxist ideology (which always destroys everthing it touches).
Joe Biden’s record on major foreign policy defies the law of averages. It seems almost impossible to have been wrong time after time on the big questions. This is why we don’t TRUST Joe Biden at all. If you do, you are someone who doesn’t deserve to be trusted.
Right, we don’t trust Biden now and never will. He has proven that he cannot do the right things as a leader of our nation. Too bad there is no way to break the partisanship. I only hope that the Democrats get a much deserved slaughter in the upcoming elections.
Jimmy Carter is the happiest ex-president ever. Now, someone else will be called the worst president in US history.
Carter was pretty bad but it took him three years to implode, while it took only 6 months for Biden.
Pres (ex-president) JimmA CartAr was terrible as a president and deserves not only derision today for this horrible job but his continued interference in elections since and his stupid messing with the people of America. He needs to just shut up and go away. Carter only emphasizes his terrible time in office by remaining in the public eye. Go away Jimmy. Just go away.
Ha ha ha ha…. Max you are once again spot on with your comments and rightly jab Carter the moron. But as much as Carter allowed the humiliation of American, Joe Biden is doing it much better, faster, and with greater intent.
Hi Idiot, welcome to Gen. Satterfield’s leadership forum where you can post most anything and get good, worthy feedback. Good to see you here. 😊
It took President Carter 3 years to implode and Biden 7 months.
Gotcha. Thanks Max.
Once again, Gen. Satterfield has nailed it. Going back to the topic over the past few days we can also see how the betrayal of Pres. Biden has destroyed the trust we have in him … and in his administration. Biden needs to retire so he can do less harm.
Retire? We need to boot his ass out.
Right, not retire, get kick out on his arse. There needs to be an uprising against this sort of tyranny and carelessness in the White House. I don’t mean by guns but by raising our voices to be heard over the stupidity of Nancy Pelosi and her ilk.