There are lots of reasons why businesses struggle with trust in leadership – after all, no two businesses are the same. Sometimes, it’s because of a dysfunctional culture that doesn’t allow the right behaviours to exist. Sometimes it’s down to leaders that know they need to make changes, but can’t identify what they are. And sometimes it simply comes down to ego, where leaders or CEOs don’t have the humility to accept that there are problems to fix.
If you’re a leader of an organisation facing these challenges and have read our book, The Trusted Executive, you will have come across our Nine Habits of Trust model – the only academically verified behavioural model of trust in the world. This model has helped more than 100,000 leaders across the globe to build high trust cultures. You might be wondering how best to put the theory of The Nine Habits of Trust into practice in your organisation. To meet this challenge, we take leaders on what we call ‘The Journey of Trust’ and help them rely on the power of trust to run their business though individual and team coaching, tailored specifically to them.
Our journey consists of four stages:
Discovery
The first stage is all about finding out about this way of leading. This might be by reading our book, listening to a keynote speech delivered by our founder, Dr John Blakey, or attending one of our workshops. It is at this initial stage that leaders will know if they have the will and desire to continue on the journey. They may have recognised issues within their own organisation that they are trying to eradicate or have been inspired to get the best out of themselves and their team.
Exploration
At the next stage, we use our diagnostic tool, the Nine Habits of Trust survey, to work out an organisation’s strengths and weaknesses in its leadership team. This academically verified tool breaks trust down into three pillars and those pillars into three again, forming nine habits. The idea is that trust cannot be fully present without each pillar propping it up and each pillar cannot stand without each habit being fulfilled. From this assessment, we can set goals for the leadership team and help them understand how to achieve them through further workshops and coaching sessions.
Commitment
We ensure that the leaders are ready to commit to role-modelling the Nine Habits and to taking the trust within the organisation to new heights. We need them to commit to the hard work in changing habits by taking on 6-9 months of individual and team coaching to do so. We will get into the minute details of behavioural change with the senior leadership team throughout these coaching sessions as they have proven to be the most successful in changing behavioural habits.
Community
Our goal is to create a ‘tribe’ of leaders who believe in the power of trust across many organisations and sectors. They will get together in what we call our ‘fellowship boards’ to support and challenge each other to be the best that they can be. Pioneering, like-minded leaders will inspire others, take inspiration and see real life examples of best practice from their peers.
As you can see, our work is a structured roadmap, and it requires hard work and commitment. However, we can demonstrate that, over time, if organisations are committed to learning about the power of trust and putting it into practice, they increase their trust levels, enhance their workplace culture whilst boosting their results and reputation.
If you’d like to get started on your very own journey of trust, please do get in touch.
