Expose the Trust

A funny sign of good leadership is that everything can seem worse, at first.

I’ve heard this from many leaders – when they start really putting in the effort to improve their team dynamics, suddenly it seems like there’s nothing but problems. They panic, thinking they’ve caused all sorts of issues with their new leadership style.

But what’s actually happening is much, much better. Those problems were already there, but now their team isn’t hiding them anymore! The team is willing to share feedback, expose issues, and even complain. That can seem scary, but remember: the alternative isn’t the absence of those problems. The alternative is that those problems fester until they cause disaster, and you never knew because your team didn’t have the trust and rapport necessary to work on them in the light.

Trust can be scary, but the very point of it is to get those issues out in the open where they can be solved. No team is perfect, so if you think yours is, that just means that all the messy stuff is being hidden from the scary boss.