The Easiest Way to Build Trust with Your Team

This is the Momentum podcast. The fastest way to build trust with your team, to build rapport with your team, to bring your team towards you is to be vulnerable. I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the momentum podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shop takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny.

We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop. And we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate. There could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be. So jumping in here to to talk about the easiest way to build trust with your team, but first I want to tell you a quick story. So over the past several months, I've been doing a tremendous amount of personal work and exploring and deep work and understanding what I want and who I am. I'm 48 years old. I don't have to work for the money anymore like I did when I was younger. And so I'm really trying to get clear on what do I want to do and who do I want to be and what's going to make me excited for the rest of my life. And so in the past few weeks, a lot of that has become clear. And I feel like I've been shot out of a cannon because I'm so excited about some of the things that we're doing as a team, some of the things we're doing as a company, and some of the things that I'm personally doing. And what happened this week is something that has happened to me a lot as an entrepreneur. And you might be able to relate to this if you run a business with a team. I was sick the last couple of weeks. I finally started feeling better this weekend. I came in Monday morning and I was like, I want to fix everything I want. You know, I feel this like compulsion, this drive, this obsession to go look at all of our marketing and figure out what's going on and understand what we can do better and start fixing things and changing things. And so since Monday, it's now Thursday, since Monday, I've been accelerated and I've been jumping into meetings and cutting people off and asking questions and not letting people answer. And I didn't really know I was doing this. I in fact, you know, when I look back at my business career a lot of my life, I ran my business just like I just described, with just reactivity and reactivity and piling on to people and getting people anxious and getting, you know, being aggressive. And it just doesn't work. Like that's what I've done forever and it doesn't work. And so this week, I was incredibly fortunate because yesterday a couple of our team members talked with my wife in their weekly check ins and they said, you know, Alex has been showing up accelerated and he's making us feel a little uncomfortable. And is there something we did wrong? And certainly not like tattling on me, but trying to figure out how to make it better. And so Cadey reached out to me yesterday after those calls.

And Linda Cadey reached out to me after those calls and said, like, hey, here's the feedback that I'm getting. And man, you know what? The 20 something year old business person that I used to be would have thought that call. I would have justified myself. I would have been self-righteous. I would have said, here's why I said those things. Here's here's why I was was we should have said those things. Here's why I cut people off. And and you know what? It's kind of hard to admit, but I know for a fact that's what I would have done back then. And today I feel so fortunate.

I feel so fortunate for myself, but also so fortunate for the people that choose to work with our company, both the members and our team members. Because after Cadey talk to me, I played back just the meetings that I was in yesterday. I realized, you know what, she's right. I was cutting people off and I wasn't letting people answer. And I actually thought of a specific meeting I had with Eddie and our marketing team. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I can remember asking that question. I can't remember letting him answer. So I know I've been out of control this week. And so the fastest way to build trust with your team, to build rapport with your team, to bring your team towards you is to be vulnerable. And it was not fun this morning, but I got on first. Well, first yesterday after I talked to Cadey, I called and I reached out to Eddie and I apologized and let them know, hey, this is what's going on. I'm accelerated and I want everything to happen too fast.

You know, sometimes, like I don't know about you as an entrepreneur, but for me, sometimes my focus and attention like shifts overnight. And all of a sudden I want to just look at one thing and I want to understand it. I want to figure it out. And it takes all of my attention. And so that's been happening this week. So first, I apologize to Eddie, then I got on this morning and we have Stan Tuttle's. So we have our strategic team had over I mean, with leadership and then we have our team huddle. So in the strategic team, I apologize and let them know what was going on. And then in our greater huddle, I apologize and let them know what's going on. And the entire time I'm doing these apologies, I'm uncomfortable in my skin is crawling. I'm getting heart palpitations and I feel small. And I feel like like I should run out of the room and I want to take my toys and go home.

But I made the apologies anyway and. And I got through it, and when I apologized to Eddie afterwards, he said, you know what, the fact that you're willing to do this, the fact that you're willing to apologize like this is just amazing. He's like the fact that you even realized what was going on is amazing. And and, you know, I could tell that I built trust with Eddie and then I apologize to my team. And again, while I'm doing it, I'm feeling horrible. And then the second I'm done, I'm getting positive feedback from my team. They're saying, you know, thank you for bringing this up and we appreciate it. And it's so rare that somebody does this. And so, you know, I think was Bernie Brown that said vulnerability makes you feel really small.

But to everyone around you, you look like a giant and you look strong and powerful. And I remind myself that when I go into situations like this, when my team like I'm going to feel vulnerable, I'm going to feel small, I'm going to feel like I don't have the power, I'm going to feel like I'm ceding power. But then I just remind myself, you look small or you feel small, but you really look powerful and strong and like a good human being to the people around you. And this morning proved that.

And so the fastest way to build trust with your team or to build trust in any relationship, things said, appreciate your brother. The fastest way to build trust in any relationship is to admit when you're wrong and be vulnerable and be real and tell somebody why it happened and let them in. And I did that with my team this morning and I could feel the momentum immediately shift and I could feel everyone engage. And today we had our strategic weekly meeting that went faster than it normally does. Everybody was super excited, like the entire feeling and energy I was getting from my team shifted. You know why? Because I shifted because I let go of trying to do everything all at once and right away, and because I was vulnerable and real with them. So if you are an entrepreneur with a team, this is the fastest way to make sure your team trusts you. When you screw up, when you make a mistake, let them know.

Now, if you're an entrepreneur with a team and you don't know when you've made a mistake or your team's not giving you feedback or you haven't created that emotionally safe space in your business yet, next week, on Thursday, I'm doing a webinar on how to predictably grow and scale your business without feeling like you're doing it all yourself. We have a brand new product called the Predictable Planning System. It is changing entrepreneurs lives. We already have the first cohort taking the class by the first few people taking the class, and we're getting amazing feedback already. And so I'd love for you to join next week. Thanks for being here. We'll talk to you soon.