As a leader for over 18 years, I’ve learned through lessons of my own, how important trust in yourself, your coworkers and your instincts leads to focused, effective and engaging leadership. Trust is earned and becomes instilled from the various experiences we encounter. The more experiences we have, the more trusting we become of ourselves, others, decision making, etc. Once we fully trust, we reach a point where we know we can handle any situation that comes our way. It removes fear of the unknown and keeps us calm regardless of the situation at hand.

Trust Yourself

Trust in yourself comes with time and experience. As a leader we will always make mistakes and often times they may be big ones when we first begin the leadership journey. (I know I made a few doozers early on!) We learn from mistakes and over time, these mistakes becomes less frequent and relatively minor. From my experience, leaders will still make mistakes no matter the experience level and as long as a leader is confident in their abilities, they know the mistake can be fixed and move on. That is exactly where the trust in yourself becomes instilled.

Trust in yourself becomes more ingrained when we tackle an assignment, promotion or other circumstance that we may feel ill prepared. At first, we are nervous, fearful and doubt ourselves. But once we have successful experiences under our belt, we build trust in ourselves and know things always work out. Then when we receive those amazing opportunities, promotions, etc, we are comfortable in the unknown and our ability to figure things out with the right resources, team, equipment, etc which we KNOW will lead to success. Trust in ourselves is a sense of confidence that is balanced with the understanding of needing others to help us along the way. Nobody accomplishes success without the help of others.

As a leader when we trust ourselves, this helps the overall operation since this usually translates to trusting others. Leaders need to trust themselves first before they truly trust others.

Trusting Others

One of the biggest complaint in many operations is the lack of trusting others whether it is fellow managers or individual contributors. Trust is earned and comes from interactions and experiences. With more positive experiences, the more trust. This does not mean there are zero mistakes made with coworkers, it means if there are mistakes, then there is trust it will be brought to the forefront and rectified. Once we establish trust with another person, it leads to tremendous autonomy and engagement which is exacting what any level of employee wants. Is autonomy and engagement a strategic advantage? Absolutely!! When we feel empowered to make decisions and know we are supported, we become more productive to meet our goals and feel valued by the leader, team and organization.

Trust Your Instincts

There are times when we need to make important decisions from a split second decision to an unpopular decision. When we first encounter these types of decisions, we may be unsure what to do, become paralyzed and overcome with fret. We may even make the wrong decision at first. Trust comes with experience! The more positive experiences with decision making, the more we trust in our instincts. When we trust our instincts, we minimize decision overload and paralysis, and make the decision. Does this help the operation? Yes! When a leader or any level of employee can’t make decisions, this is problematic to an organization. When we feel confident to trust our instincts in decision making, the operation moves quickly and avoids becoming stagnant.

When we make unpopular decisions, trusting our instincts is a must! When we trust instinct, we know the right decision regardless of the reaction. Every leader will encounter this situation and when we don’t trust our instincts, we are more apt to make the wrong decision. When we quiet our mind and focus on the parameters of the issue, the right solution will come.

Trust in ourselves, our coworkers and our instincts creates an environment of autonomy, empowerment, engagement and productivity. All of which are strategic advantages! Trust comes with experience. It comes from making poor decisions and great decisions. Over time, we learn from the poor experiences to create more and more positive experiences which instills trust in ourselves, our coworkers and our instincts.