Timing matters. Trust matters. If you are not sure you have all the information, take time to dig deeper before you make a critical decision about people.
Here’s our “wow” for this week: This Wow! goes to two individuals who I had all but given up on. At one time, not so long ago, I felt each relationship was irreparable. When someone feels this way about you, and perhaps you feel it too, it is so easy to just break. One thing bonds people together strongly enough to avoid that break: Trust. We trusted ourselves and each other enough to dig deeper.
Why is this “wow!”? What changed? Did one give in to another’s demands? Actually no, and this is another aspect that is so powerful. What trust does is allow difficult conversations to be shared, and those conversations can lead to repair. To an outsider it may seem nothing. But truly this is huge. We are in business to build value. A leader cannot do that if he or she is not trusted or if he or she does not trust the team. But it goes even further than what may seem to you very touchy-feely stuff (which it is)… trust, or lack of it, and retaining people (or not) have a significant impact on the business bottom line…
Why is this important? Trust, and taking the time to dig deeper using objective methods, can ensure that you (the leader) are not making hasty decisions that will tear down value, and immediately and negatively impact your business bottom line.
If you aren’t building trust you will experience loss. If you are not tracking what goes right and wrong, throughout the year (and why) – and if you do not have the right data to identify the real causes (and rarely are we correct when we assume what someone’s intentions are) you cannot possibly make good decisions about people.
When you are unsure, it often makes the most sense… even to the business bottom-line… to retain a person and re-fit them in a role that plays to their strengths and supports your Strategy best. Also consider how you can adapt your style to support a better fit for all.
Congrats! Wow! Trust has allowed us to dig deeper, retain people, and build value.