Louis CarterFounder and Chief Executive Officer, Best Practice Institute · Founder and CEO, Best Practice Institute - Most Loved Workplace® | Organizational Psychologist | Creator of AI Workplace Intelligence and Employer Branding Platform

Coaching Leaders and Companies to Become Even Greater - Build Trust Through Relationships

10 Aug 2021 · 3 min

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2:35

In this presentation, the speaker argues that traditional leadership approaches no longer earn trust and that leaders must adopt a systematic, relationship‑focused strategy to become highly respected and effective. He explains that humans are biologically wired to bond through oxytocin, a chemical released in mother‑child connections and throughout all relationships. By consciously leveraging this innate bonding mechanism, leaders can build deeper respect and trust. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding not only supporters and stakeholders but also adversaries, urging leaders to seek a full view of others’ perceptions, motivations, and emotional states. He links this empathy to better emotional regulation, which in turn enhances a leader’s impact, results, and legacy. The talk promises concrete leadership strategies and references client case examples that illustrate the measurable benefits of this trust‑building approach.

Chapters

Your leadership can't be the same old stuff because people no longer trust it. So there's a very systematic way to become a highly respected and effective leader. You need to build respect and relationships, as we said, which can be done if you utilize leadership strategies that take advantage of your innate ability to connect with others. Now, again, this is innate. You were born with this. So, A mother and child literally bonds at birth. There's something called oxytocin that's released from your brain. It's a chemical that bonds you with your mother. You were born to release oxytocin in all of your relationships to connect with others. That's what you want to do. You default to that. You want to achieve that. Some people get super upset or they— some, I know some people cry if they don't get that oxytocin release or some people are are completely frozen. They can't do anything. Some people flee. And that's where a lot of the slow rolling and the people who are upset or people who don't have the greatest integrity are going over lines because they're not connecting with others and getting that full oxytocin release, understanding really that other side, what's happening on that other side, why somebody perhaps may be angry, why it is that really people are acting in certain ways. So this is the surefire way to become an even more effective leader. It's to get your supporters, stakeholders, and adverse— really your adversaries, if you'd say, people who really may not believe in you and who may have challenging thoughts about you. Those are the ones we want to know as well. We want to get a full view and sort of begin this, those trusting relationships, reset them, and then enable a full understanding of who they are and why they're going through what they're doing and why they are adversaries, 'cause there's a lot behind that. It's mostly, I can guarantee you, it's not about you most of the time. You're really learning about the other person's perception. You know, your reactions obviously can get to that, and we'll talk about that later about emotional regulation and reaction. However, it usually is about that other person and what they're going through, and the kind of coming together is understanding what the other person is happening and their other side. So that's the key to being an effective leader, making and having that greater impact, getting better results, as we've seen, and we will see in these client cases, and really leaving a great legacy.