Trust is the foundation in which influence is built. The people’s trust in the leader creates sustainability for years and possibly decades. Trust should be protected at all cost.
Therefore, few things are as sad and disappointing as when a leader unnecessarily loses trust. This post is created as a warning and checklist to help leaders steward the confidence people place in them.
- Leaders Lose Trust When They Put Their Personal Needs Above The People They Serve – When leaders make decisions which put their comfort, financial security, and personal desires above what is best for the people they are called to serve, they will lose trust.
- Leaders Lose Trust By Making A Series Of Poor Decisions – Incompetence is not an attractive quality in a leader. When leaders continually make wise and untimely decisions over an extended period of time, confidence will be lost. As a result, they will not be trusted to make major decisions.
- Leaders Lose Trust When They Have No Plan For The Future – Certainty will give your people clarity and confidence. People want to know where they are going and there is a detailed plan for how to get them there. When the future is fuzzy, so will the people’s trust.
- Leaders Lose Trust When They Are Dishonest – You simply can’t trust leaders who lie or leadership teams who have bifurcated or conflicted messaging. Leaders must be unified and answering questions, not asking them.
- Leaders Lose Trust When They Are Not In Touch With Their People – Do not assume you know what your people are thinking and feeling. You cannot lead from the corner office or the church’s green room. You must be among them.
- Leaders Lose Trust When They Are Surrounded By The Wrong Inner-Circle – When you cannot trust the people around the leader to provide sound counsel, you know the leader will be making poor decisions in the future.
- Leaders Lose Trust When They Have Poor Personal Conduct – You cannot control a crowd unless you can control yourself. Leaders who have reckless conduct or anger issues create unsustainable work and ministry environments. It is not a question of if, but when a fall from grace will come.
- Leaders Lose Trust By Making Poor Financial Decisions – Every leadership strategy requires a funding strategy. When the funds are misappropriated, poorly used, or leveraged in a self-serving manner, donors will leverage those resources to more reliable options.
- Leaders Lose Trust By Making Poor Personnel Decisions – No one is perfect in this area but a series of bad hires or worse, poor fires, can cause people to lose trust in their leaders. Also, if there are multiple staff transitions during a single season, it will understandably raise questions.
- Leaders Lose Trust When They Don’t Love People – Leadership is first and foremost the people business. Leaders who don’t genuinely love their people and enjoy being around them will eventually not be around them. Leaders who want to be left alone will eventually get their wish.
- Leaders Lose Trust When They Do Not Make Hard Decisions – This is one of the primary reasons leadership exists. If leaders do not make the hard decisions, the people will think they lack courage or simply “don’t get it.” One or both will be right.
I hope all leaders reading this evaluate how they are doing in these 10 areas. I want to see your trust grow and increase. Candidly, I have grown sick and tired of seeing successful leaders lose trust unnecessarily. It does not have to be this way.
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