It all begins with trust.

What is your trust anchor and wobble?

Building strong, trusting relationships is crucial to success as a leader. These relationships serve as the foundation for organizational success and as Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei says, trust allows leaders to “move fast without breaking things.” In her Ted Talk, Frances Frei lays out the foundations of trust as logic, empathy and authenticity. She also points out that most of us are particularly strong in one of these dimensions (our anchor) and usually have an area that sometimes lets us down (our wobble).

My trust anchor is empathy. I work hard to ask questions and listen to understand those that I interact with. In the past, I realized that my wobble was authenticity. Sometimes I didn’t share my true feelings out of fear of upsetting others. I realized that this wobble had the potential to weaken the trust that others have in me. More recently, I’ve worked to develop the courage to share my feelings in service of greater authenticity while still preserving the relationship.

What is your trust anchor? What is your wobble?