Tag Archive for: trust

Own Your Energy: Seven Keys to Honing Your Personal Power

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own your personal powerOne power dynamic we rarely speak explicitly about is the one with yourself. Yet it’s arguably the most powerful relationship impacting your work, your leadership, and your life.

Are you still perceiving power as the ability to exert control over others – or to be subject to another’s control? What if you began to define power instead as the energy you cultivate when you move in alignment with your truth as you navigate the choices of your days?

In any given situation, do you remember to re-orient yourself towards your axis of personal power? Are you aware of how you leak power? Are you aware of how you build it? No matter the situation, you hold power. How you perceive and steward that power – especially with yourself – matters most.

Leading and empowering others begins with your ability to authentically lead and empower yourself. Here are seven ways to step into greater energetic mastery of personal power.

1) Disrupt the urge to dominate yourself.

In the patriarchal paradigm, achieving outcomes often means using pressure and domination inside of a hierarchy. When you internalize this, you dominate yourself to meet external demands – often at a profound cost to your well-being.

If you laud force over yourself to make things happen, you push beyond your limits, override your embodied truth, and live in chronic stress and anxiety, priming yourself for burnout. As Stephen Covey illustrates, you err when you prioritize the golden eggs (production) over the goose that creates them.

Empowering yourself means honoring how you treat yourself – mentally, energetically, and physically – rather than devaluing yourself. When you stop normalizing self-dominance, it become harder for others to dominate you and easier to discern toxic environments.

2) Start moving from where you stand now.

Often we displace our power to some future, idealized scenario.

You tell yourself that when you reach a certain title, goalpost, or milestone, you’ll finally manage your time better, assert yourself, relax, or set boundaries. If only something were different, you think, or if you attain that one qualification, then you could make the leap.

But any notion that displaces your personal power to a future scenario blinds you to the power you presently hold. It may even create a false story about what is necessary to move toward what you want, suspending your ability to act here and now.

Your ability to affect your experience never lies in the future. It is available in this moment.

3) Stop seeing giants around you.

“If a person continues to see giants, it means he is still looking at the world through the eyes of a child.” ― Anas Nin

In patriarchal culture, we are conditioned to see authority as external to ourselves. No matter how far you are in your career, do you still find yourself projecting disproportionate power onto certain people, especially those with prestigious titles or positions?

True power exists within you – it’s how you manage your energy and choices in every interaction. It can neither be granted nor taken away. It has nothing to do with role, reputation, or permission. It’s embodied from within.

When you see giants around you, you subtly give away your power. If you stopped, what might you be willing to speak, do, or risk?

4) Get honest about what holds power over you.

Unconscious thoughts and behaviors drive most of our daily interactions. More than any person or institution, you surrender your power to beliefs, patterns, stories, habits, and cultural norms. What you repeatedly activate infuses your energy. The narratives you tell yourself shape your lived reality and how much power you have.

When you react rather than respond, you are not in your power. Certain interactions, people, or thoughts can trigger you to lose regulation, unplug your energy, or activate fear-based behaviors.

Bringing these dynamics into your conscious awareness allows you to investigate how you lose power, such as:

  • What beliefs, patterns, and habits unplug your power?
  • How do you silence or diffuse your own voice and possibilities?
  • What story are you telling that disempowers and limits you?
  • Where and how do you abandon your values?

Where you lose power impacts upon your ability to show up authentically in leadership. As the saying goes, the calmest person in the room holds the most power.

Working with an executive coach can help you to reveal and recalibrate the power battles you face within.

5) Practice discernment and boundaries.

“Energy is power. And it is your responsibility to monitor how you manage it.” – Caroline Myss

Navigating your “yes” and “no” is energy management and has consequences for your clarity, health, and sense of power. When you cannot say “no,” you victimize yourself.

Boundaries matter. Not every invitation requires your attention. Not every conflict merits your engagement. Not everyone has free access to your energy and time.

Practicing discernment can strengthen your energetic field, so you are not scattering energy or leaking power. You sense intuitively what is in alignment for you. Sometimes this means action; other times, withdrawing or letting go.

Every time you say “yes” to a clear internal “no,” you chip away at your personal power. It is far healthier for you to disappoint others than to betray yourself. When you manage your energy, you radiate an authenticity and leadership rooted in self-esteem and self-respect.

6) Keep your word with yourself, first.

Trust is a foundation of leadership, including self-leadership. When you deeply trust yourself, you build the inner wholeness essential to personal power. But as Martha Beck writes in “The Way of Integrity,” lying to yourself – even in small ways – wreaks inner havoc.

  • What are you doing that you know hurts you?
  • What are you not doing that it hurts to not be doing?
  • Where are you fibbing to yourself or breaking your own word?
  • Where are you being unfaithful to your truth?

When your thoughts, energy, and actions align, you come from inner coherence. Power rooted in real integrity speaks through your presence, energy, and actions, far more so than power rooted in title, performance, or external validation.

7) Calibrate your presence from within.

The ultimate power you hold is your perception and ability to define your inner experience. Most people live in reaction. Because of X or Y or Z, we must shrink or be afraid or lose trust. But circumstances and meaning are two different things, and context does not dictate response.

You can default to reflecting the environment, or you can anchor your tone from within. You decide whether to mirror chaos and fear and victimhood or to choose calm and groundedness and trust. Personal power happens when you no longer default to unconscious reactions but instead move from conscious choice, sourcing your stability from within.

If there is one power dynamic you master, let it be the one you hold with yourself. This will transform the way you move through every challenge, opportunity, and relationship – and it will redefine the quality of your leadership.

Alongside years of writing on leadership, Aimee Hansen is the founder of Storyteller Within and leads the Journey Into Sacred Expression women’s retreat on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. Her upcoming event is July 26th – August 4th, 2025. Follow her at thestorytellerwithin.com, on instagram, and via Linked In.

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How to Lead your Team Successfully at Work by Building Trust

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building team trustTrust is foundational to a successful team. Being able to trust that your coworkers and employees will perform to the best of their abilities enables not only more productivity but also engaged employees. The Harvard Business Review found that people who work in places with high trust levels reported 106% more energy at work, 76% more engagement, 74% less stress, 40% less burnout, 50% higher productivity and 29% more satisfaction with their lives compared to those at a low trust workplace.

The report also found that low trust workplaces often mean that people have to spend time navigating office politics. There have been decades of research into all aspects of the workplace, team performance being a dominant one. One person who has researched trust and dysfunction in teams is Patrick Lencioni who wrote the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

The book lists these dysfunctions as absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. Absence of trust focuses on the lack of vulnerability based trust which leads to team members not willing to be open with teammates on things like admitting mistakes or weaknesses. Fear of conflict connects to trust as it involves team members being comfortable contradicting a teammate and debating topics. Lack of commitment happens when members’ ideas aren’t being taken into account. Avoidance of accountability is when peers don’t hold each other accountable for living up to the standards of the team. The final dysfunction is inattention to results in which individual team members are more focused on their own results than the team results. Many of these dysfunctions can be addressed by making sure psychological safety is present in the workplace.

The current definition of psychological safety was coined in 1999 by Amy Edmondson and is defined as, “the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.” In a recent study by Yuanqin Ge, it was found that employees that felt a sense of psychological safety in their workplace could speak more openly and often, provide their opinions to help decision making in teams and feel comfortable enough to share their ideas with managers. All of these outcomes are based on trust.

How can you apply psychological safety? According to Timothy Clarke, whose model is based off Edmondson’s 1999 research, there are Four Stages of Psychological Safety which include:

  1. Inclusion Safety – Inclusion safety involves making sure team members feel as though that can be their most authentic selves and will be accepted for that.
  2. Learner Safety – This stage includes making sure the workplace is an environment where questions are not frowned upon. The workplace needs to become a space where people feel they can ask questions to learn, give and receive feedback and even make small mistakes without fear of repercussions.
  3. Contributor Safety – In this stage, the team should feel as though they can share their ideas without the fear of being ridiculed or embarrassed. This stage can be the most difficult stage as bringing your own ideas in front of peers can be a very vulnerable position to be in.
  4. Challenger Safety – In the final stage, team members should be able to question or challenge coworkers’ (include authorities’) ideas and offer suggestions to plans or ways of working through a project.
What Can You Do to Encourage Psychological Safety In Your Own Team?

 

  • Don’t Worry about Being the “Perfect” Team

Don’t put all the emphasis on being the “perfect” team where no mistakes are made and everything is always right. It’s understandable to strive for that as a leader, but it’s not exactly feasible. All of your employees are human and humans cannot be perfect all the time, as much as we may want to be. Studies show that a perfectionist boss has negative effects on motivation, effort, and willingness to work. Let go of your perfectionism a little and allow your employees to make mistakes and learn from them. Try to avoid anger in blaming the person and instead look for ways to rectify the situation. In doing so, you not only show your employees that you trust them enough to learn from this and not do it again but also show your team that coming to you with a mistake will not result in being berated by authority.

  • Encourage All Voices

Try to create a space where everyone can say what they believe needs to be included in a discussion. Remind your team that their input is appreciated and cherished. Attempt to hear people out when they are sharing, instead of dismissing them with answers like “yes, but…” or “You don’t know enough context to understand this situation.” Instead, ask them questions and invite participation in a non threatening way such as “What point of view could we be missing?” and be willing to accept criticisms. It may help to even set up meetings with a portion for playing the devil’s advocate and addressing those concerns as a group. Making sure that your employees feel as though they are being heard can encourage them to continue speaking up and bringing unique ideas and solutions to the table.

  • Focus on Building a Team Culture

Build a team where no one is afraid to ask each other for help. Make it the norm that coworkers encourage each other and have that begin with you. Try to schedule times for your team to spend time together and focus on feedback and appreciation. Make sure you let your team know you appreciate them and are supporting their development personally and professionally. Do this as well as events like happy hours or fun team building activities so your employees can let loose a little. You are with these people 35+ hours a week. Knowing more about them and feeling safe around them will make working with them more enjoyable and productive.

The addition of psychological safety can do wonders for increasing trust in your team. Trust and safety go hand in hand in making sure your workplace is one that can flourish and perform to its highest standards. Applying these few examples can make huge strides towards a more productive and happy work environment for your team.

By Chloe Williams

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The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and How to Address Them

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five dysfunctions of a teamHigh performing teams, and the desire for them, is a common occurrence in corporations. While teams and groups are commonly used as synonyms, they are different from each other. Oxford Dictionary defines a team as a group of people who work together at a particular job while a group is defined as a number of people or things that are together in the same place. As common as teams are, it should come as no surprise that some work better than others. Dysfunction in teams is all around. Behnam Tabrizi found that nearly 75% of cross-functional teams were dysfunctional. In his book, The Five Dysfunctions of A Team, Patrick Lencioni describes the most common dysfunctions in a team. These dysfunctions are as follows:

  1. Absence of trust
  2. Fear of conflict
  3. Lack of commitment
  4. Avoidance of accountability
  5. Inattention to results

Lencioni argues that trust is foundational for teams. Without the basis of trust, dysfunctions will not be able to be resolved. Research from the Harvard Business Review found that people who work in places with high trust levels reported 106% more energy at work, 76% more engagement, 74% less stress, 40% less burnout, 50% higher productivity and 29% more satisfaction with their lives compared to those at a low trust workplace. Low trust workplaces often have to deal with, and navigate, office politics. Resolving the absence of trust dysfunction is crucial to resolving the later dysfunctions. Each dysfunction is based on the resolution of the previous dysfunction and cannot be mastered out of order. For example, if your team shows lack of commitment, it is likely that there is also a fear of conflict from some, if not all of your team members. When a member doesn’t feel as though they can disagree and create conflict with a coworker, they will not be fully committed to the solution proposed because they were never able to weigh in their own opinions.

So how can you tell which dysfunction your team is stuck at and what can you do to resolve it? Here are some examples for each level:

Dysfunction #1 – Absence of Trust

Teams with absence of trust may:

  • Not own up to mistakes made
  • Not admit that they can’t do something to hide their weaknesses from other team members
  • Be unwilling to go out of the realm of their job descriptions to help a coworker

What can you do to address it?

  • Have team members be vulnerable and tell the team something about themselves then discuss as a team what you learned. This increases vulnerability between the team and makes it easier to continue to be vulnerable.
  • Focus on everyone’s strengths. Doing this will help team members gain confidence in themselves and their work. This could inspire coworkers to appreciate the strengths and talents of their peers.

Addressing lack of trust can:

  • Lead to quicker reaction to issues, now that mistakes can be admitted more openly
  • Prevent mistakes before they happen if coworkers feel comfortable to ask for assistance on projects
Dysfunction #2 – Fear of Conflict

Teams that fear conflict may:

  • Not listen to understand during a disagreement, rather listen to win the disagreement and argue their point
  • Not converse with a coworker they disagree with and speak behind their backs
  • Let leaders dominate a meeting and leave the meeting
  • Display artificial harmony in which there is no conflict at all

What can you do to address it?

  • Suggest an obviously bad idea and see if anyone in your team argues. If they don’t, there is a blatant fear of conflict.
  • Show your team that having opposing views can be productive and helpful.
  • Have a “devil’s advocate” portion of the meeting in which an opposing view can be argued.
  • Thank team members for bringing up different points of view that may conflict with the consensus.

Addressing fear of conflict can:

  • Lead to quicker resolution of issues
  • Lessen the amount of office politics
  • Allow more diverse views and lead to innovation
Dysfunction #3 – Lack of Commitment

Teams that have a lack of commitment may:

  • Have members who don’t commit to an idea because it’s not their idea
  • Have the false impression everyone is on the same page after leaving a meeting
  • Mean members don’t contribute to the discussion because their ideas differ

What can you do to address it?

  • Ask members if they have anything to add, any other ideas or (especially) differing opinions on the topic at hand.
  • Encourage team members to ask questions for clarification.
  • Set a team goal and have objectives for everyone to commit to.

Addressing lack of commitment can:

  • Help the team understand why a goal is being addressed in a certain way
  • Help members commit to an idea after being heard out about their own
  • Show the main goal of the team and what is expected of team members
Dysfunction #4 – Avoidance of Accountability

Teams that have an avoidance of accountability may:

  • Have peers who won’t hold each other accountable on performance and behavioral aspects
  • Have leave leaders with the sole responsibility of discipline
  • Include members not performing to the best of their ability

What can you do to address it?

  • Start at the leadership level and call members out on their behavioral mistakes and let this trickle down to peer level.
  • Regularly review team members’ individual performance and remind the team of the high standards expected.
  • Have the team come together and share one thing for each member that could be improved to promote accountability between team members.

Addressing avoidance of accountability can:

  • Lead to quicker and higher quality performance from the whole team
  • Urge poor performers to improve performance
  • Take some of the strain off of leaders
Dysfunction #5 – Inattention to Results

Teams that have an Inattention to Results:

  • Don’t focus on the team as a whole when working on projects
  • Attain personal goals more often than team goals.
  • Fail to develop as a team

What can you do to address it?

  • Have regular meetings to review key metrics
  • Keep a scoreboard of some type that keeps the team updated on tasks that have been completed.

Addressing inattention to results can:

  • Increase the amount of team goals hit
  • Increase team work and minimize individualism in these settings
  • Increase development as a team

All of these dysfunctions take time and effort to resolve. You have to start at the beginning of the five dysfunctions and work your way through them all to create a truly functional team. If you find that your team is exhibiting dysfunctions of one stage and they can’t seem to be overcome, try taking a step back and looking at the dysfunction level before it. You may find that your team’s problem lies there. Sometimes moving backwards is the only way to avoid an obstacle (or dysfunction) and move forward. Use these tips and ideas to work on creating the trusting, highly functioning team that businesses should aim for and see if the research done by the Harvard Business Review rings true for you.

By Chloe Williams

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Executive Presence – Do It Your Way For More Trust With Your Team

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How-to-build-a-teamThere are many books and “experts” on executive presence out there, many of them keen to tell you how to dress and how to act. My take on this is simple, just be yourself. Authenticity and being truthful about who you are has been shown to augment trust between people and people make the work go around. This has been shown especially with LGBT managers.

Now we all know that if you are a woman sometimes you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t ( see every female leader who ever lived, currently Hillary Clinton could tell you about this in detail I am sure) so the least you can do is not assimilate to behaviors that feel odd to you. However, you can be interculturally competent in any situation- which means reading the room while doing it your way!

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com if you would like to hire an executive coach to help you navigate the path to optimal personal success at work

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