Why is trust important?
It is impossible to complete some tasks on your own. One of those difficult tasks is continuously learning. And, what should you be learning? This is where it’s helpful to form relationships inside of a community geared toward helping you to achieve your career goals. This requires us to be authentic and real with each other. And these relationships are formed on the foundation of Trust.
“Trust is the foundation of real teamwork. And so the first dysfunction is a failure on the part of team members to understand and open up to one another. And if that sounds touchy-feely, let me explain, because there is nothing soft about it. It is an absolutely critical part of building a team. In fact, it’s probably the most critical.” (Patrick Lencioni, Five Dysfunctions of a Team)
The way we build trust is investing in relationships over time. You can’t just join a community and expect to get help with your problems. You need to join and then give of yourself and your knowledge. As people see your contributions build up over time, they see that you have invested in the community and that when you ask for help from them, they are willing to assist.
4 Ways to Bring Value and Build Trust in a Community
- Discover – Learn from a Beginner’s Mind. As we develop expertise over time, it can be difficult to think back to a time when we had no knowledge on a subject. This Discovery skill is honed by constantly learning new things and then as a beginner, describing what you have learned. Then you can use this skill even in areas where you are a subject matter expert.
- Encourage – All learning should be used to encourage others. Learning can be difficult. There may be many failures along the way. But that is part of the learning process and just having someone come alongside and encourage you to not give up or to comment on the potential they see in you, could be all you need to keep going. I read a good article entitled, “The Upside of Failure” by Binod Shankar. In the article, he talks about encouraging his students who had failed a CFA exam requiring 6 months of training. One student was so despondent. Binod’s remedy is to take the test again, but he encourages them — “I try to draw out the real reasons, the uncomfortable truths. After which I ask them to show me their plan for success, their study strategy for the next exam.”
- Challenge – Leaders need to challenge their teams to greater heights. To push the boundaries of comfort. To strive to level up their abilities.
- Insights – we’re all Data Scientists. Even though you may not have the technical, statistical or programming skills, required of a Data Scientist, you can tap into your creativity and curiosity to search for insights. These insights can be discovered through random associations of unstructured data. Unstructured data is the most difficult kind of data to analyze from data science programs. For a good discussion, on various forms of insightful activities, read my blog post, “Soft Skills for Success”, where you can learn the 4 ways that contribute to the Innovator’s DNA.
I think this short video below shows the value of a community built on trust. See how the wall is conquered with 9 people of different abilities:
Join a community of like-minded people who want to make time for learning and encourage others to reach their goals.
Upskill Create is all about creating a lifestyle of continuous learning and then applying what you have learned to secure your future and create a life you love.
We offer an engaging private community of fellow “Upskillers” to provide an environment where we can learn, collaborate and encourage each other in this journey. You can request an invitation to join this FREE community at the bottom of this post.
I hope you will join me,
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