In only 1/10th of one second, the new person you just met has decided if they can trust you. One tenth of one second. Have you ever done this? Met someone and had an instant reaction, either good or bad? It’s visceral. The article that mentioned this stat went on to mention a number of tactics you can use to modify how others perceive you. What became apparent to me after reading this article was the concept of authenticity. The tactics the article mentioned were not super difficult (smiling, eye contact, mirroring, etc.), but if these things aren’t a natural part of who you are, you won’t be able to fake it and pass our instant BS detector. Remember, we can determine whether you are trustworthy in just a blink. So, don’t fake it. Instead, work on it. Deliberately and over time. The idea is to retrain yourself and incorporate the tactics so much so that these behaviors become who you are. They become authentic behaviors. Old dogs can learn new tricks. Except in this case the benefits go way beyond entertainment.
With your teams, don’t get out of the way, do this instead
"Get out of the way!" I often hear some version of this sentiment when talking about building a culture to incentivize high performance teams. "You have to find the right people, equip them, and then get out of the way." People who talk about getting out of the way...