Written by: Trish Bishop, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
One of the most prevalent issues in today’s business cultures is that employees do not feel psychologically safe. Ask yourself if you’ve seen or experienced any of the following behaviours in your workplace:
Sarcasm, which while entertaining is also incredibly toxic in a team.
Gossip and cliques within a team.
Us versus them mentality either within or across teams.
Passive/aggressive behaviour.
Being thrown under the bus by others so they can avoid accountability.
Others taking credit for your work so they can get themselves seen.
A sense of walking on eggshells because you don’t know how leadership will react to a situation.
Working ridiculous hours and never meeting unrealistic expectations.
Being blamed for the latest crisis by the very leader who asked you to do whatever it is you did.
The workplace is very much like a field full of landmines that employees spend far too much time and energy learning to dance around to avoid the blast sites or collateral damage. For those employees who have learned how to navigate these landmines effectively, this also means their armour is made of titanium.
Think about the above scenarios and imagine how much time is spent navigating landmines rather than focusing on doing the work.
Think about how much unnecessary stress is created in this type of environment. Stress that doesn’t get left at the office, but that goes home with your employees, seeping deep into their personal life, removing any true ability to create work-life balance.
If you’ve personally experienced this kind of work environment, do you feel that you were able to give your best every day, or were you simply showing up and trying to get through the day, going to bed each night wondering and stressing about what would happen tomorrow?
None of this is conducive to creating high performance.
Trust is the first step towards creating psychological safety. Here are the two things leaders can do to establish trust within your team:
1. Be Authentic. Yes, I know, this has been quite the buzzword for the last 10 years or so. However, here’s a new spin on what this means and why it is critical for creating trust. Your level of authenticity – in its simplest terms, being who you really are – creates an ‘energy’ of alignment. This is where what you say, think, feel and do are aligned and it cannot be faked.
Here’s an example of not being aligned: I ‘think’ that John is inept and provides terrible customer service. I then ‘tell’ John that I think he’s doing a good job because I want to boost his confidence and be positive. What’s really happening here is that John (and everyone else in the vicinity) can sense that my energy is not aligned because what I’m thinking and what I’m saying is not aligned. They may not know exactly what I’m thinking, but they can sense the deceit and therefore, while they aren’t sure why, they inherently mistrust me.
Therefore, you must first be authentic. You must do the inner work to get yourself into alignment in what you think, feel, say and do. If you have a concern with John’s performance, artificially attempting to boost his confidence is doing more harm than good. You’ll be better off being honest and addressing your concerns with John directly and honestly. While these are not fun conversations to have, you’ll find that more often than not people respect and respond more positively to authentic honesty than inauthentic deceit.
2. Be Consistent. This is extremely important. Many leaders think they need to show up a certain way, to appear professional, or to place themselves above others, as if being a leader makes them ‘more than’ somehow. The best advice if you want to create trust within your team is to just be you. You don’t need to be tough, strong or authoritarian or whatever other ideas you’ve learned leaders should be. What you need to be is YOU. When you allow yourself to be you two things happen:
The first thing that happens is that you will spend far less energy trying to be something you’re not. This is an exceptionally freeing experience, where you don’t have to put on your armour and your mask each day. You can simply show up, be yourself and get to work. Imagine if you didn’t have to spend any time strategizing about how you should act in front of others, how to get the attention of certain people, etc. and could just be you?
The second thing that happens is that others will sense your authenticity and will inherently trust you. There’s no energetic barrier between you and the person you think you need to be. That barrier (armour, mask, etc.) creates an energetic static barrier that means that others can’t read your energy clearly and therefore, again, will mistrust you without actually knowing why. The more you are YOU, the more others will trust you.
No matter what your personality is, passionate and high energy, quiet and low key, introvert, ambivert, extrovert, leveraging more of your masculine or feminine energy, just be you and do it consistently.
As an example, I am definitely passionate and high energy, which means my team knows that I will generally have passionate reactions to situations. However, they also know – because I show up consistently that:
I focus on the issue, not the person.
I will look into all sides of an issue before deciding on a direction.
When kudos come our way I will step to the side and allow it to flow to the team.
When the bullets are flying I’ll stand in front of the team and take the heat.
It is important to understand that people can trust you and not like you. You can even have a high-performance team with people who don’t like you, as long as they trust you and trust in how you’ll show up when the crap hits the fan. I’m sure I have people on my team who may not like me as a person, I may even get on their nerves, however, when the heat is on, they know I have their backs and will absolutely put myself on the line before I’ll let any collateral damage affect them. The trust they have in that knowledge gives them a foundation of psychological safety and once that happens, they start to spread their wings and fly. They will take more risks, they become emotionally invested in the success of the team and will go the extra mile because they want to, not because it’s expected. You cannot buy that kind of energy and commitment.
If you’re serious about creating high-performance capability in your organization, be authentically you and do it consistently. Understand that what you say is not where the trust comes from – trust is established energetically first and you cannot fake that – your energy will always tell the truth of who you are and your intentions towards others. Do the work, get aligned and be the leader you were always meant to be! Take the leadership challenge to find out where you might have some work to do in creating your high-performance team.
Trish Bishop, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine After launching and taking public, one of the first Internet Service Providers in Canada, Trish quickly found her niche as a ‘translator’ with an exceptional ability to translate business needs into solutions. She also discovered early in her career that she is highly intuitive and then honed that gift into her corporate superpower! She blatantly integrates both the corporate and woo-woo aspects of who she is and attributes this to the amazing success she has had in her career, including developing 6 high-performance teams. As an Energy Integration Coach, Trish teaches leaders how to create massive transformations for themselves, their teams, and their organizations by learning how to read and interpret energetic information (aka intuition!) In addition to being a highly successful IT Project Manager, Trish is also the author of 'The Question Journey,' a Shaman, Empath, and Certified Angel Guide. Her mission: to heal corporate workplaces one leader at a time.
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