Building Trust - Key to Successful Leadership

The most important factor in business or any relationship is TRUST. You can easily attain authority by virtue of a position. Although authority will make people do what you ask them to do, it won’t necessarily make them believe in it, only getting you so far.

To gain commitment from your team, you must first build trust. It is critical that people truly believe in the direction you are setting, and you attain their buy-in. When your team is committed, they are more likely to stay with you to push forward through challenges and put in their best efforts to get the job done. The key is that people recognize you have their best interests in mind. Their endeavors will be more worthy if they believe that your leadership will create a better future for them.

Through my journey in the corporate world, I have witnessed many distinct types of leaders, some that built trust and others damaging it. When people start doubting the motives of their leaders, collaboration starts falling apart and only leads to questioning credibility, reliability and ultimately causes a decline in all key business metrics.

Building trust is not a one-time activity. Instead, it is a series of small, consistent, and daily actions that fosters trust with others. Being authentic is of prime essence; true leaders do not pretend to be one in public and act differently in private. When you say and do things that you really believe, people will start trusting you. Authentic leaders can put the mission and goals of the organization ahead of their own self-interest. Being authentic is not easy… it requires consistency, focus, and determination.

Innovate to Stay Relevant

Success and creativity goes hand in hand; creativity fosters innovation. To be successful in today’s competitive marketplace, organizations must embrace innovation and demonstrate creativity in their thoughts and action. Innovation is all about identifying new ways to add value to the business.

For leaders it is important to not just ask the obvious questions but look deeper and not be afraid to reconsider basic fundamentals about your business, products and services. When you view your business from new perspectives, you can harness ideas from some of the most unlikely sources. Brainstorm ideas, keep in mind that censoring ideas will be a barrier to creativity and sets up limitations that kills innovation and invention. Your objective is to create possibility thinking and not dullsville. Be inspiring and decide on no limit thinking when you are brainstorming alone or with others.

Just giving great customer service does not mean caring for your customers. It is important to get to know your customers and their business as intimately as possible. It is imperative to immerse yourself in the lives of the people you are trying to serve. Focusing on the high-value tasks is of prime importance. You and your teams must know how to prioritize their time, maintain prioritization of activities and actions, and ruthlessly eliminate wasted work by not doing the things that does not matter.

Connecting the dots is crucial by finding ways to bring together concepts, people, services and products. Many great innovations are "mash-ups" of existing ideas.

Finally giving form to your idea as quickly as possible and making a commitment for its realization is vital. Quickly create a prototype and initiate testing it right away. This is the only way to know if you've touched on something truly promising for your business.

Tips to convert an Angry Client to an Opportunity

When your customer is upset and you receive an email or phone call you better be ready to defuse the situation. Here are a few tips to handle the situation:

1. Identify - While some clients will be apparently angry, others will present their frustration in a more controlled manner. Your job is to recognize if the client is unhappy, no matter how they convey. A quick response can help keep the problem from escalating into a catastrophe.

2. Listen - The worst thing you can do when someone brings you a problem is to interrupt and start making excuses. Get an understanding of the issue and find what happened. Ask if there is something that can be done immediately to get things sorted out? Understand if there is any impact to the client's business. Majority of the time client's anger is intended to get you to take the situation seriously and act immediately. If you jump on the problem, you can shift them into a more cooperative mode quickly.

3. Take Action - Fix the problem first and then investigate why it happened and how you will avoid it in the future.

4. Take Ownership – It is very likely that it is not completely your team's fault but if you step up and take ownership, you will win points with your client for being on their side. If you need to involve other vendors, pull them in and resolve the issue in a collaborative manner. Don't make your client the middle-man by pointing fingers.

5. Escalate – Certain situations and issues are beyond your ability to fix. Don't waste your and the client's time if you are struggling with a resolution. Don't make the client have to ask you to escalate the problem to someone else. Get the right people involved in the situation as quickly as you can.

Tips to Manage an Unhappy Client

Any manager or leader who has struggled through an unhappy client knows how crucial people buy-in is. They also know how time-consuming and difficult it can be to secure. When it comes to unhappy clients, time is of the essence. Your initial actions as leaders should be aimed at immediately stabilizing the project and preserving the core relationship so it will survive. Then you can shift attention to reworking the project, laying the foundation for future success. Here are three ways you may gain buy-in from your client and team while you have an unhappy client situation:

1. Empathize: Unhappy client, by definition means they are suffering. Let client and people air their grievances about what went wrong and reminisce about the glory days. Their complaints may reveal important information about what they truly care about and how they measure success.

2. Congregate and share information: Interview client leadership team and members of the project to make sure your strategy will work, and transparently share these information with the team. If client and project team see evidence that the strategy will work, they are more likely to get behind it.

3. Keep open lines of communication: As you implement the strategy, continually ask client and team for their input and regularly update them on progress.