From Chaos to Confidence: 6 Proven Strategies for Tech Leaders to Build Unbreakable Trust
Today leadership is not simply about providing the best state of the art solutions and time-sensitive solutions in a highly competitive and fast moving industry but it means getting other people to perform at their best.But it’s actually about establishing credibility within your people, a hugely underrated aspect of driving the mechanical component that results in more cooperation, creative problem solving, and longer-term wins.It is also equally critical for the individual professional and organizational advancement as a tech leader you must be able to build a culture of trust.
Using Maria’s example I will go through some principles that might help for building the trust.
Building Unshakeable Trust: Maria’s Journey
Maria is CTO of a fast growing fintech startup. They are building a new flagship product: a mobile app that will help people take control of their personal finance in a single place. Until late in development phase, things were going smoothly until an unexpected security vulnerability is found right before launch. The issue presented a real threat to the app’s security, and left unaddressed, it could put sensitive user data at risk in completely unauthorized ways.
Let's see how she applies some principles of trust
1. Say What You Do. Minimize Surprises
Maria realized that her team requires strong leadership in order to define the business operations’ goals and follow them as much as possible when the business itself is vague. For every meeting associated with the vulnerability, she forwarded concise details about what was said together with a brief of what should be done.
Situation: Maria then had a meeting with here engineering team to determine what action to take to rectify the problem. He subsequently, she provided every detail that has been discussed in the meeting to minimize confusion.
Script:
"True to our agreement, therefore, we will be concentrating in plugging the vulnerability over the subsequent two weeks. [Developer X] starts with the first inspection by Friday and [Developer Y] bear the testing next Monday. You may need to ask questions or need clarification, please go ahead and do so if you are comfortable to.”
It helped minimised a lot of uncertainties on part of the team and also made Maria a single point contact for directions when the pressure was on.
2. Do What You Say. Deliver on Commitments
In her mind, Maria realized that both the team and other stakeholders were waiting for her to give them updates regularly. She was also good to her word in this respect as she was always reporting the progress of the project and whether others needed to be warned about the likely risks in the near future.
Situation: While the fix was under implementing, Maria reported the current state of work to both tech team and the upper management.
Script:
"Here is the updated status of the security vulnerability fix’s issue. We should be able to address the problem before the next one is out of the week. There is a small possibility that testing will take longer because of the complexity of the handle_map function; however, we addressed extra resources in case of such an occurrence."
Maria also met the expectations of people she promised to keep everyone updated, thus making the team have confidence in her leadership.
3. Extend the Bridge of Trust. Assume Good Intent
One of the developers was not present at an important meeting, when the crisis was unfolded. Where most people would have a negative emotional response, Maria thoroughly put up a positive attention assumption and perception.
Situation: One day, Maria noticed that one of her team members was not in the virtual meeting concerning a particular project, she climbed up to that person’s level and text this team member asking if he is okay.
Script:
"I saw that you were not present at today’s meeting, XXX. I hope everything is okay. Then we talked on the security fix plan and the future actions. If you need me to summarise that or if you want to give your thoughts on what has been shared, please let me know."
If Maria extended trust and assumed benevolence in her team, it means that nobody could be afraid of being true to themselves at work since the worst that could happen would be that they’d be scolded for being human.
4. Be Transparent: Most of the areas of function namely Communication, Decision Making and Admitting Mistakes are interrelated with one and other.
Maria knew that credibility could only be achieved through disclosure, especially working under pressure. When the security issue came up, she freely communicated the problem and the solutions being implemented to her team and the rest of the company.
Situation: Maria told everyone in the company about the vulnerability and the reason why the launch was postponed during a presentation.
Script:
"All in all, I would like everyone to know our rationale for choosing to.parametrize the launching of the product. The issue we have discovered is critical and forcing the launch might lead to our users’ data being exposed. Here’s what we are doing for safety and to fix the problem"
This helped to created trust with people across the company, demonstrated Maria’s honesty in admitting her error and her concentration on the optimal way forward.
5. Champion Inclusivity. Engage and Value All Voices
In the meetings, Maria insisted on everyone to express him or herself especially in situations that calls for problem-solving activity. It was quite evident that multiple solutions could be arrived at by viewing things in different manner.
Situation: For instance during a special team’s planning meeting when the team is making decisions as to how to deal with the risky factor, Maria will ensure that all the junior members present their ideas since otherwise, they would not have to.
Script:
"Hello the XXX, I was wondering how you would feel about this approach to the arguments I made above. You’ve done something like this before I believe your insight could be useful to us here."
Another important aspect that Maria succeeded in was respect or rather the perception of value for every employee and every idea they have. This went on to enhance the inter team trust because all the team members understood each other better.
6. Be Generous. Care for Others
Despite stiffness at work, Maria was also extinction to assist and provide for her staff, which came as evidence that she considered the best interest of her team.
Situation: Maria had one engineer on the project who was having troubles with the security patch complication. Instead of waiting for Colleagues & subordinates to ask for it, Maria initiated to provide help and information’s.
Script:
"You are indeed devoting a lot of efforts on the security patch as I can notice. I remember a similar project that I did last year and we have a number of resources and documents that I think will come in handy to you. Then he said: “Please inform me if you wish me to disseminate them."
Another way, which Maria contributed to the formation of people’s friendly structure, was she shared her time and knowledge to prove that a team is trustworthy.
Conclusion: Trust that results from repeated behavior
Security is one area where a mistake was made but Maria did not stop there, instead she turned the security vulnerability into a platform of constructing long-lasting trust with her team members. By not surprising people, fulfilling her promises, assuming positive motive, being open, and including everybody, as well as being helpful, Maria ensured that the team functioned effectively and everyone was encouraged to do his/her best.
All of these action that Maria had taken were grounded on empathy, transparency and reliability all of which contributed to building trust so that the team would still remain concerted and confident in the face of such challenges. The outcome was actually not only a positive change in the actual product that was being created but also an enhanced change in the team which is ready to face any next changes.