Trust is the foundation of leadership. Without trust, it’s nearly impossible to recruit and retain followers and to implement change. Trust affects a leader’s impact and the company’s bottom line more than any other factor.
But there’s no shortcut to building trust. It has to be earned, and that process takes time. The best leaders devote consistent effort to building and maintaining trust. Here are the principles they go by:
When people experience your character, they will trust you.
When people can count on you, they will trust you.
When people see you genuinely care, they will trust you.
When people view you as competent, they will trust you.
When people encounter your courage, they will trust you.
When people know what you’re thinking, they will trust you.
When people see you act with consistency, they will trust you.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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