When your employees need you to follow through on your word, do you hold yourself accountable? Trust is the foundation of every relationship. The need to trust is required to not only work together but accomplish common goals and believe in the vision of leadership. The saying “My word is my bond” means you keep your promises and word every time, and we have five ways to help you keep that bond healthy.

1. Have Open Communication With Your People

Employees who have a fear of communicating with management leads to unhappy people, rumors, and backdoor conversations that can affect your team’s cohesion and happiness. Setting up one on one sessions to deliver and accept feedback while having an open dialog about the role and any issues will lead to more trust with employees. When people know you are listening to their input and taking it to action, they will believe in your ability to follow through which strengthens your word.

2. Follow Through on Feedback

After you hear the feedback and have delivered it to your people, make sure you follow through on any actions needed to resolve any immediate problems. Listening is one thing, but acting is the real reason your employees will come to you with specific issues. Take steps needed while holding your team and yourself accountable to follow through on anything required. 

3. Find Your Button Pushers

Finding out any triggers you may have that cause you to either deliver feedback negatively or accept feedback negatively and casting those feelings aside will help you to be neutral with your people. When you are triggered, you don’t think clearly, and it could cause not only miscommunication but also issues with the perception you have among employees. Keep a calm mind, and accept feedback as what it is, a statement to help you grow!

4. Understand yourself and your gifts

Knowing your employees and how they contribute is one thing, but you also must understand what you need and bring to the table for your team. Find your skills and fine-tune them to add your gifts to the group’s effort. Not sure what your abilities are? Ask your leadership what they think and use their feedback to help group your awareness of your gift. Everyone brings something different to the table, and he or she all bring great value!

5. Use your EQ skills

EQ or Emotional Quotient is a (notional) measure of a person’s adequacy in such areas as self-awareness, empathy, and dealing sensitively with other people. EQ is crucial to working with different personality types and allows you to connect with your employees in better ways. Try having your people take the Myers Briggs test to help identify their particular personality types. There are several free versions of this test that are available on the web, and they all offer a look at how different people can be regarding their values and lives. Explore this and use your findings to talk to your people and motivate them on an individual basis, rather than a cookie-cutter made for everyone model.

Using these skills, you can turn your team into a team of trust that believes in your ability to not only get the job done but care for their needs and keep your promises.