Trust
Building Trust Several years ago, when I became a project lead for the first time, I had a group of young people reporting to me. I was new to this world of leading decent sized team, having been an individual consultant for a long time and then leading a small team of 4 to 6 people for a short duration. Suddenly I felt I was all alone in this vast ocean... all by myself... I read a few articles on leadership, but I was not clear where to start. So I went to my boss with several questions. Post a long discussion, I learnt that one of the important factors is to build trust. I quickly learnt that to gain trust from my people, I had to trust them first. Not only should I trust them but also make it loud and clear that I trust them. That was the difficult part, making people know and understand that I trusted them. The first thing I did was ensure that I met my people regularly both officially (as formal meetings, in small group discussions) or unofficially over a co...