How can I build relationships with my peers full

What is a manager's most underappreciated, under supported and underutilized relationship? It's their peers. So how can you build stronger peer relationships? Well, like any relationship, it's built on trust. And I'm going to give you four dimensions of trust today that will help you develop and build your relationship with your peers. Now, this is from a book called the Thin Book of Trust by Charles Feltman. And he identifies four dimensions of trust. The first one is care. This idea that we're all in it together. Now, you've probably talked to somebody where you feel like they don't really have your best interests at heart, and instantly you feel kind of guarded in a sense of, I'm not going to trust you. So the dimension of care is an area you can use to build trust with your peers. Start by active listening. You can Google what active listening is and ways to practice it, but there's a ton of different ways to practice active listening. When you're in conversations, audit yourself. I've been guilty of where starting a conversation that I think is going to be kind of collaborative and really it turns to me just highlighting my work. So if you want to build trust, seek their interests, especially when you're talking to them. Ask them questions about their work, about their life, ask them about their expectations. And if you make decisions or you take actions that impact them, follow up with them. That's how you can demonstrate care and build trust in that dimension. The second dimension is sincerity, which is I mean what I say, I say what I mean, and I act accordingly. Now, since sincerity is being internally and externally congruent. So internally meaning we're honest with ourselves. Externally, meaning we're honest with others. So if you want to build trust with your peers, start by just checking for internal congruency. If I say I support this position or I want this certain thing, is that really what I want? That's internal congruency. And then consider the positions you're taking and what you say to support those positions. You don't want to exaggerate or create or neglect information just to garner support for your position. When you talk to people, check for understanding. Did you come across as you intended? You know, hey, I was kind of be collaborative in that conversation. Is that how it came across? And that's kind of checking for external congruency. Are you changing your mind without letting other people know? Or are you telling different versions of a story to different people? All right, the third one is reliability. You can count on me to deliver what I promise. Now when we think about reliability, it is a to deal with commitments like we make a commitment when either we receive a request or we make an offer. Can you do this thing for me? Yes, that's a commitment. Or hey, I can do this thing for you. Thanks. That's a commitment. And a commitment is a commitment. Even if the request is unclear or the offer is unclear, those are still commitments. And so we need to be listening for the commitments we're making. And to build trust, especially with our peers, when we hear those commitments is to clarify, to make sure we understand what the request is, to confirm that that's what they want. And then we can either commit, make that commitment, we can decline the offer, we can counter, so we can say, hey, you wanted this at 3, but I can get it to a 4, would that be okay? Or we can commit to commit. I know you want this at 3 o'. Clock. Can I let you know at 2 o' clock if I can do that? Those are your options. Now, if you make a commitment, obviously things come up. So revoke or renegotiate those commitments as early as possible. We all know what it's like when last minute somebody comes and says, hey, that thing I said I was going to do for you, I can't do it. They likely knew well ahead of the last minute. So if something happens where you're not going to be able to follow through on your commitment, state that as early as possible. That's how you build reliability, trust and reliability. Fourth one is competence, which is, I know I can do this, I don't know if I can do that. Now, just because somebody's competent in one area, of course, doesn't mean they're competent in other areas. But people assume that all the time. You know, individual contributor does really good, gets promoted to manager. People kind of assume, well, they were really good here, certainly they're a good manager, but that might be an invalid assumption. What assumptions do you make about people's areas of competence? Sometimes we have to admit when we don't know. And that's one of the ways you can build trust in this dimension of competency. So you can just take an inventory of yourself and the different areas of competency and areas you're lacking, and then share that with your peers. Likely they have areas of competency that match your areas of weakness and vice versa. So you can ask for help, seek feedback, and get advice on areas to grow in. It's probably one of the biggest benefits of having strong peer relationships. Now, these four dimensions, care, sincerity, reliability, and competence will help you understand trust. But to build trust, you have to take action. So choose one dimension and commit to taking an action to demonstrate and build trust with your peers. That's how those relationships go to being underutilized and undervalued to ones that thrive and help you support a thriving career. Trust is critical to high performing teams and often that trust can get damaged or broken and threaten the success of the team. And that's a lot of times where somebody like myself, a team coach, can come in and help navigate those discussions, repair some relationships and really make a world difference. So if you or your team would like support, please book a call with me. Just go to shiftfocus.com strategycall and you can book a time that's convenient for you. Or just drop me a line. I'd be happy to share over email ideas. Thanks for watching and we'll see you on the next video.