Coaching Conversations in 2024

6 Mistakes Leaders Make That Destroy Trust With Their Teams and How to Avoid It

July 24, 2021 Tim Hagen
Coaching Conversations in 2024
6 Mistakes Leaders Make That Destroy Trust With Their Teams and How to Avoid It
Show Notes Transcript

This episode details 6 typical mistakes leaders make that destroy TRUST based upon conversational coaching skills:

  1.  Time
  2.  Interruptions
  3.  But
  4.  Non-Verbal Discord
  5.  Assumptively Reacting
  6.  Truth Expectations

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Speaker 1:

One of the major things that we hear leaders talk about all the time is this concept of trust. You have to establish trust. Now I'm going to come off a little bit cynical or a little bit sarcastic, but bear with me. I was just in a conversation with a team of leaders and they were interviewing us to do a project for them. So they were not a client and they were talking about their values and their principles, and they kept bringing up the word trust. So I said, well, how does someone deliver trust? How does someone facilitate trust? And they all looked at me with this blank stare. They said, well, it's one of our values and principles. So I, I know it is, but how do you go about doing that? How does a leader getting encouraged at your organization to facilitate that? They continued to look at me with blank stares. So when we talk about trust, I want to identify and share with you six conversational mistakes. That absolutely destroy trust. Number one, time, not taking the time to have a conversation. Now it seems dumb, right? Seems fundamental. Do you know how often in our business we hear people say, I don't have time to coach. I don't have time. When you don't have time, you are sending a message to the people that work for you, that you don't care. I may not be your intention, but that's the risk of that perception. Number two interruption. Now I'm an interrupter. It's something I will work on until my death bed, but somebody who interrupts discounts, what the other person is saying, and that leads us to number three, the word. But so when you combine interruption with, but such as hold on a second, Charlie, I have to stop you. You know, it's a great point, but when we use, but we have erased their thoughts, what they have shared with us. It's the great verbal eraser to the good stuff. Number four, non verbal discord. When somebody says something we disagree with, what do we do? We roll our eyes. We turn away. And what we're really saying is we don't care about your ideas. Number five, assumptively reacting. Now I did not put in this six active listening, but assumptively reacting is at the forefront of why people need to demonstrate active listening, paraphrasing backwards. Somebody said, I was just in a meeting and somebody said something. And the person across the table literally responded with. So what you're saying is, and then started to use completely different language of what the person said. And I think even meant. And then that person got riled up and I'm looking around the table and I'm like, that's not even close to what she said. Number six. Here's a big one. When we think about honesty, that's a loaded bag. When we think about trust, that's a loaded bag. So when you go up to somebody and you're just brutally honest and you never want to be honest to be brutal, but you want to be brutally honest, right? We, we think there's value in that. Now let's say your wife has coming down the stairs and she's wearing a dress and it's wrinkled and it doesn't look good. And she says, how do I look? Are you honestly going to say, honey, you look like crap, go change. It's not going to happen. Right? So honesty is tough. So when I think about trust conversations, I think about a concept called truth expectations. So there's two things that I do and I encourage people to do. I do it with employees. I share it with clients. I've done it with my boys, volleyball teams on and off for 30 years. Number one, what's the best way to give you feedback. I never ever get someone to answer that right away. They give you a weird look like, well, that's a weird question because nobody's ever really asked them, what's the best way to give you feedback positively and potentially constructively. Because then what they're doing is they're crafting how they need to receive their crafting the acceptance of feedback, which allows honesty and trust to be more palatable when they need to receive it. Number two, setting the expectation. I'm going to be honest with you. I'm going to tell you the truth. Now everybody starts nodding cause oh yeah. I want the truth. Let me give you a little bit of a humorous perspective. When I would run my varsity volleyball parent meetings, I would make that comment that I just made to you. And I would ask the question, how many of you want me to be honest about your kids' ability? And they'd all raise their hands. And I said, you're all lying to yourself. And they all start laughing, which is confirmation. Don't really want that much honesty and truth truthful in this. So when you think about this, think about this building trust is hard. And the minute you tell somebody that is completely out of context, of being honest, you have probably lost that person forever. Whether they're fair or unfair. Let me give you an example. I saw a manager who really struggled with conflict, and this is a pretty common thing, but this is just a representation of what I'm talking about. And the employee came in and said, you know, how am I doing with my job? Am I doing okay? And it was, you know, the person was asking all close ended questions and manager goes, yep, yep, yep. You're doing great. Yep. And the manager in his mind had to go on to another meeting about 45 to 60 days later that our work, you know, by annual reviews and that manager gave the employees really low marks. Now the manager did not remember this conversation because he was running to another meeting the employee. She remembered that conversation because it was confirmation. It was validation. I'm doing okay, 45 days later. So here's the funny thing. People remember stuff like this, you know how I know that when you go to somebody and somebody says, well, geez, you know, Tim, how much do you charge? And I said, oh, we charge anywhere from 50 to$150 an hour, whatever the number is, guess what number they remember. It's not the one 50 people have very selective listening memory. So leadership and trust, we have to take the time to talk to our people. We have to avoid interruption if we demonstrate using words like, and instead of the word, but such as Joanne, I really love your ideas. And I think where you have an opportunity to improve in terms of time management to support some of those initiatives, let's explore that together and is inclusive, but is a verbal eraser to the good stuff, practicing. And I'm saying it because I know most leaders won't do this. Practicing nonverbal cues, practice being attentive, being attentive, showing people you care because you should care. Number five, not reacting assumptively instead of assuming state back Joanne, here's what I hear you saying in terms of an idea for the team, is there anything potentially I missed there or misunderstood? And let's say there is that employee will absolutely love you because you made the attempt to understand them that explodes trust and then creating truth, expectations, truth expectations are, what's the best way to give you feedback. And I'm going to set the expectation. I'm going to be really honest with you at all times. And I want to set that expectation and I want to let you know, I'm going to be honest with you. Are you okay with that? The minute the employee says I'm okay with that. They will rarely if ever later on which they do all the time, say my boss attacked me. You know what came out of nowhere. Now, once we set the expectations of truthfulness of honesty, I'm to be honest about how I see your ability, I'm going to be honest about what you're doing well, where you have opportunities to improve when you say it and say it and say it and say it, guess what happens. They become more accepting of it yet. If you don't set that expectation and you say, you know, Joanne, I gotta tell you, you know, that's not really a job. Well done people listen emotionally. She will take it out of context and say, I can't believe he said that. It's like, he attacked me. It's like he doesn't care. Once you set expectation of truthfulness, you've established trust. So the six again are time interruptions the word, but nonverbal assumptively reacting and setting truth expectations will build trust with you and your team.