The Best Way for New Leaders to Build Trust - Jim Dougherty - Harvard Business Review - 0 views
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I spent more than four hours listening in to client support calls at the call center. I shared headsets with many of the team, moving from desk to desk to speak to the reps. To say they were surprised is an understatement: Many CEOs never visit the call center, and virtually none do it their first afternoon on the job.
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Many leaders see their role as directing and giving information, rather than gathering. There is pressure to “come up with the answer” quickly or risk looking weak. Too many new leaders believe they’re expected to know the answer without input or guidance. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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Without trust, it is very unlikely you will learn the truth on what is really going on in that organization and in the market place.
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Without trust, employees won’t level with you—at best, you’ll learn either non-truths or part truths.
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The best way to start building trust to take the time and meet as many individual contributors as you can as soon as you can.
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I made this my priority partly because I wanted to know what customers were saying—but also to make an internal statement.
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Later on my first day at Intralinks, I began arranging meetings with individual contributors. That’s where my learning really began. Over the next few weeks I met with over 60 individual contributors. Not only did I learn a lot, but I convinced them that I cared what they thought and could be trusted with the truth.
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Instead of just laying this out in an all-hands meeting, I began laying out the plan in one-on-one meetings in which I talked about how each individual’s feedback had helped guide my thinking.
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None of this could have happened without building the trust of the team. New leaders must remember that many of the best insights on how to fix a company lie with employees further down the org chart. Creating a trusting, honest dialogue with these key personnel should be every new leader’s top priority.