Trust Is the Cheapest Leadership Tool You're Not Using
Inc.'s Marcel Schwantes argues people follow your daily behavior, not your title, and that the habit with the biggest payoff is extending trust before it has been earned: clear expectations, real resources and room to decide.
Prompted by “4 Rare Leadership Habits That Make People Want to Follow You”, Inc. (Marcel Schwantes).
Marcel Schwantes makes a claim worth sitting with if you run a company: your title doesn't make you a leader people follow. Your daily behavior does. And the behavior that moves the needle most isn't strategy or vision. It's whether you extend trust before someone has “earned” it.
His argument is simple. Give people clear expectations and the resources they need, give them room to decide, then get out of the way. Do that consistently and people take more ownership. Make every decision yourself because you're the boss, and you get the opposite: people protect themselves instead of solving problems.
Where does that get uncomfortable for a founder?
You probably built the company by controlling most decisions yourself, because for years that was the right call. The habit that got you here can become the one limiting how much your team will ever own. Nobody hands you a memo when that shift happens. You just keep doing what worked at 10 employees when you're at 80.
Test it out: pick one decision you'd normally make or approve this week and hand it fully to the person who'd normally bring it to you, with real authority and no check-in. Then see what they do with it. It's a more honest read on your bench than any performance review.
Handing real authority to the people around you, and building the team habits that make it stick, is the work in Team Coaching.
Originally posted on LinkedIn ↗