By Donny Barstow, President of MCCi, Leadership Tallahassee Class 26 graduate, and member of the Chamber’s Small Business Resource Committee
Teams need to trust their leaders to do the right thing, to care about customers, to add the right people to the team, to care about them, to hold them accountable, to make tough decisions, to be consistent, to help them grow, to envoke change, and to be visionaires. With trust comes confidence. When leaders have gained trust, their teams are confident that they are with the right team and headed in the right direction; the atmosphere is positive and they enjoy working towards a common goal; they like what they do and are focused on being the very best.
In addition to a team having trust and confidence in it’s leadership, the same goes for teams having confidence in one another and in the overall leadership of the organization. Teams interact and typically depend on one another to achieve success, therefore they and their respective leaders must be as cohesive as possible. Teams create both challenges and success for one another, which creates an emotional (both in a good and a bad way) environment at times, however with the right leadership (trust and confidence) we always emerge a stronger organization.
As leaders we have to do what it takes to gain the trust and confidence of our teams. Additionally, we must have the trust and confidence of the other leaders in the organization, their teams, and vice versa. Strategy and execution is our responsibility. Our teams expect us to make the right decisions about people, partners, processes, etc. When/if mistakes are made, we fail the team if we do not take corrective action and in turn we become vulnerable to losing the necessary trust and confidence. We are not perfect, nor is the organization, however our teams will continue to trust and have confidence in us as long as we continously make the right changes and position them to be successful.
