Braving Trust for Better Work Culture with Amy Leneker
Trust is a critical best practice for your work culture. Amy Leneker is a leadership consultant, author, and certified Dare to LeadTM Facilitator, and describes herself as an optimistic, joy-seeking, recovering perfectionist. As the founder of The Leneker Team, she works with leaders and teams around the world. At HR Virtual Summit, attendees of Amy’s session—Dare to Lead: BRAVING Trust—learned best practices and tips on how to make trust work for them as HR leaders.
Here are a few critical takeaways from Amy’s session:
The importance of trust
In her session, Amy walked her audience through the critical nature of trust. In her words, “Trust is the foundation of all relationships.” Citing Brené Brown, Amy shared that without trust, there can be no meaningful connection between people—it’s the glue that holds teams and entire organizations together, yet many teams and many people struggle to build trust, maintain trust, and even repair trust.
“You don’t stumble into high-trust relationships. You don’t accidentally end up on a high-trust team. That trust is built slowly over time and it requires constant attention,” Amy shared in her session.
How trust impacts work
As she walked her audience through different areas of work where trust is critical, Amy asked, “What results are you accountable for delivering at work?” She pointed out that every answer—whether that’s delivering something to someone, reporting to someone, receiving work from someone, and even relying on someone to help you with your work—all of those rely on trust. “It doesn’t matter what’s on your list,” she explained, “the role that trust will play is a critical piece of how you can accomplish those goals.” Underscoring this even further, she concluded that, “Any time you’re dependent on someone else or delivering work to another person, trust plays a role.”
When to reflect on trust
Amy offered several moments for her audience to reflect on their own journey with trust, especially as trust relates to their work and their teams. Here are two of those questions for you to consider as well:
- Before you walk into a meeting, consider pausing for a moment and asking yourself, “What is the current level of trust with this group?”
- Before you sit down for a 1:1 meeting, consider pausing for a moment and asking yourself, “What can I do during this conversation to increase trust?”
To hear more from Amy and learn about what you can do to improve trust and focus on trust in the workplace, watch for updates about HR Virtual Summit. Amy’s session will be available to watch soon!
Keep an eye out for more learnings from the other tracks at HR Virtual Summit. You’ll find best practices and so much more for each of the session tracks: Benefits and Compensation, Career Growth, Wellbeing, Employee Experience, and HR Newcomers.