I trust you

Have you every been told or shown by someone in your life that said “I trust you”? How did you make you feel and how did it affect what you then did?

I’ve recently been reflecting on the many opportunities that I get to help other people. What’s been at the forefront of my mind when I reflect on what I’m grateful for, it’s really been the people that have allowed me to come into their lives to add value.

I was sharing with a beautiful friend and colleague today who wanted to catch up about an area that she’d like to improve in and as we closed our conversation, I thanked to her saying “the highest form of praise is for someone to give you their trust” — spending time with people and having rich conversations easily puts me in the state of “flow”, I lose sense of time and in this case, 30 minutes turned to 90 minutes. It was the highlight of my day!

We can all think of moments in our lives where we were either trusted to fully own a problem to be solved or where we weren’t trusted at all. In those moments where I have been fully trusted, I gave my absolute best and put my whole self into producing the best possible outcome and funnily enough, in the moments where I wasn’t trusted at all or there was very little trust, I just did what was required.

In this environment of being trusted, I find that I’ve got so much more to give — more creativity, more ideas and more energy behind a sole focus on how I can add as much value as possible to producing a great outcome.

The highest form of praise is for someone to give you their trust

These 3 little words hold so much weight in how we allow people in our lives to reach greater heights than what we could ever help them achieve through advice alone. As with anything we say, it absolutely has to be congruent with our actions and behaviours.

I came across a video on LinkedIn the other day where Simon Sinek was sharing how he chooses to do business with those who believes what he believes rather than people who say ‘convince me to hire you’ because if he had to convince him at this point, that’s the same thing he’ll need to do for every thing he proposes — based on a saying “the way a person does one thing is the way they do everything”.

In the first 8–9 years of my corporate life, I used to place so much emphasis on my KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and doing everything I can to get a higher rating — all for the hope of getting a larger percentage of my bonus. There were times where I was able to get 85% of my short term incentive until I had a conversation realising that it’s a system that’s been created to pretty much never deliver the whole thing unless if you did something so far out there, which could never really be explained properly by any manager.

This was exhausting! Chasing after the carrot year after year and going through rounds of half-yearly reviews with very little clarity on what I needed to do to “perform exceptionally”. It always felt like I was playing catch up rather growing.

The way a person does one thing is the way they do everything.

I once heard John C Maxwell said, if you want to be exceptional, find out what people need and let that become your floor, not your ceiling.

I remember it was around the time when I started to pursue being a ScrumMaster and learnt about how it required me to be a Servant Leader — this resonated deeply within me because it was all about putting the needs of the people before your own and helping others be at their best. It’s a role that is not about managing people but rather serving people. This was when I made the decision to no longer focus on the KPIs that I was given and started to focus on the people I worked with and what they needed from me to help them. This was one of the most liberating decisions I had ever made — instead of chasing after a bonus percentage that I would never really be in control of, I chose to let that go and now, I leave the decision up to my manager saying “you give me whatever you think is right”.

I am blessed every single day to be trusted to do my work, choose how to do my work and focus on the things that align to my why. I get the amazing privilege to coach a number of different people and also help the Not For Profit community in Australia.

If you’re a people leader, I encourage you to pursue the life of a servant leader and begin with 3 little words that can bring the best out of your people — I trust you.

James Zhang

My why is to help and inspire others to live a full life through unconditional love.

PS. I once attended conference called “Agile Tour Sydney” and participated in a really fun and awesome game that had some great learnings around trust — if we’re allowed to play such interactive games again amidst social distancing rules, this is highly recommended! https://coach-agile.com/coach-agile-serious-game-crevasse/