Positive Trust

Even when a leader is positive, it’s possible to not have team trust and commitment to the mission, strategy and journey. Showing positivity alone is a lot easier than being an effective, influential leader. When our “positivity” doesn’t align with the understanding or consistency of our behavioral actions, it’s confusing, unclear and doubt in our intent will arise.

Trust has three dimensions: display and use of our character strengths, relationships and competencies. With character, a leader could be over or under using a strength such as judgment, humor or social intelligence. With relationships, a leader might be positive, but not spending time to cultivate relationships or potentially is new to the team and not well known as of yet. With competencies, a leader might be in a new role and not yet having displayed the strength of their technical, athletic or business skills.

All three dimensions above contribute to trust and while a leader can come across as positive, if those three dimensions are not all there, their positivity alone will be insufficient to gaining trust and influence, persuasion and motivation.

Be positive, but also be trusted.