Believe Like A Boss

leadership Lessons: Part 3: Trust Your Team, Trust Yourself

• Nandi Camille • Season 7 • Episode 12

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Trust forms the bedrock foundation of any successful leadership journey, yet so many aspiring and established leaders struggle with this fundamental element. Drawing from decades of leadership experience that began surprisingly early (directing traffic as a fourth-grade crossing guard!), I share the powerful connection between trusting yourself and earning your team's trust.

Your energy as a leader is palpable—like body odor, it can't be hidden. When you harbor thoughts like "I don't know if I can do this" or "I'm not sure I'm qualified," that uncertainty radiates outward, attracting team members with similar doubts. By strengthening your self-trust first, you naturally draw more confident, capable individuals who resonate with your leadership presence.

Curiosity might be the most undervalued leadership skill. That moment when a team member disagrees with your brilliant new strategy? Instead of defensiveness, try "Tell me more." This simple phrase opens doors to deeper understanding and demonstrates respect for your team's experience and perspective. Getting curious about both professional abilities and personal stories—like why Jamie wears that special earring every Tuesday—creates meaningful connections that build trust organically.

The concept of "aces in their places" transforms team dynamics by aligning responsibilities with natural strengths. When you understand what drives each team member and position them accordingly, two magical things happen: the work improves dramatically, and your team feels truly seen and valued. This personalized approach requires knowing not just what each person does well, but why they come to work each day.

Many workplace problems persist simply because people don't feel safe speaking up. Remember that punitive boss who made you feel foolish for asking questions? How many issues could have been prevented with a more approachable leadership style? By creating psychological safety, you ensure problems surface early enough to address effectively.

Ready to transform your leadership approach? Book a session with me to explore what might be blocking you from becoming the leader you aspire to be—sometimes these barriers are unconscious patterns formed years ago that still influence your behavior today. Together, we'll expand that part of you that already knows how to lead with confidence and authenticity.

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Speaker 1:

Hi, friends, and welcome to Believe Like a Boss. I'm your host Life Coach, nandi Camille. Join me as I teach you how to smash your goals and expand the possibility of your life through mindset management, spiritual alignment and authentic action. I'll teach you how to create what I like to call a life of thrive, with ease and authenticity. It's time to play with what's possible. Are you ready? Let's go? Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of Believe Like a Boss. I am your host life coach, nandi Camille. Welcome back.

Speaker 1:

My friends, this week we're going to unpack part two of our. What were we in? We were in part two of leadership lessons and then I broke that one down into a second part because we started to unpack trusting ourselves. Right, if you're stepping into a leadership position, if you're stepping into entrepreneurship, you have to trust yourself. If you're going to hire people, if you're going to lead a team, if you're going to sign clients, you have to trust yourself. And so we started with do you trust yourself? And what would it mean to trust yourself last week? So if that is piquing your interest, I would say start there. If you're new to the podcast, welcome.

Speaker 1:

My name is Nandi Rimes-Ogandi. I am a mindfulness-based life coach for creative entrepreneurs and high-achieving women, women in leadership, women who are building businesses, women who are building teams, women who are building a new reality, a new empire and a legacy for themselves, but sometimes get stuck, sometimes get overwhelmed, sometimes feel confused because they're learning or thinking things to the effect of I can't, it's too hard, or I've been stuck or I'm confused. And so my work is to help you clear the fog in your brain so you can take the aligned action you need to take to create the new results that you so deeply want to create. But, as always, my friends, take what sticks to you, leave the rest. Like I said, we're unpacking leadership lessons. So today, what we're unpacking is building trust with your team. At this point, I couldn't. I was thinking about. I was like okay, how long have I been leading teams? Since I was in the fourth grade? When I was in the fourth grade, I was elected to be the class representative, so I took notes from our entire class, brought them to student council. I was also in that same year, fourth grade, elected and chosen to be the JPO captain. Jpo was junior police officers, and so this was a group of students on campus that before school. After school, we actually did direct traffic. We had an adult liaison with us, but my mom has a picture of me with a stop sign leading traffic in Pearl City, hawaii.

Speaker 1:

As a kid I went to Lehua Elementary School so I started in leadership positions and leading teams in the fourth grade. I then got into sports. I ended up being a dance captain in high school and then, beyond that, when I got to college, worked on the executive board of my dance troupe. I stayed in student council roles. After I graduated I've been in leadership roles.

Speaker 1:

I went back and I thought it's like okay, how many teams have I led since post-grad, since graduating college? And I have led at least four different teams ranging from two to 25 humans. If you've led larger teams, I would love to hear what you have to say about leading teams and gaining trust with teams. But I've led teams from about two to 25 humans, built teams from scratch. I've come in where maybe I am the new manager or supervisor of a team, so a team already exists, and then I come in and I kind of inherit them.

Speaker 1:

So the advice I'm giving you all today, the tidbits, the mindfulness tips that I'm giving you all today are from my own experience as a leader in multiple leadership positions and roles, and how I've learned how to gain trust with my teams. I have been told more than once I'm the best boss that somebody has ever had and that is my favorite compliment. That is my absolute favorite compliment. I think, as I've grown in leadership, it's also part of why this podcast is called Believe Like a Boss, and why I've been so drawn to leadership is because I had so many crappy leaders. So I took all of that information, like I asked you to do in our previous episode, and I took that. I said hey, okay, what have I liked about previous leaders? What have I not liked about previous leaders? And I've applied that to all the teams that I've had moving forward.

Speaker 1:

So here are some tips for leading a team and gaining trust with that team. First and foremost, make sure you trust yourself. That's what we talked about last week. If you need to review that podcast episode, go to last week's podcast episode where we talk about gaining trust with yourself. If you don't trust yourself, why would your team trust you? Right, if you're coming into a new team or you're building a team from scratch, if you're an entrepreneur and you're building your business and you're hiring. If you've got this like timid, I don't know if you should trust me.

Speaker 1:

Energy I don't know if I'm a good boss. Energy it's not that you won't be able to hire, you won't be able to lead your team, but you're going to have less buy-in because you have less buy-in to yourself. Right, think about it like body odor. Your energy is like your body odor. If your energy is that of I don't know if I can do this, I don't know if I'm a good leader, I don't even know what I'm doing, people can sense that, right, and so you are more likely to attract somebody that is in alignment with that energy of like, I don't know if I can do the job, but I'm going to try. Right. Truly, I want you to pause and think about how important your energy is right.

Speaker 1:

And when I say energy, it's your thoughts and your feelings, your thoughts, what you're thinking about the world is influencing how you're feeling. You're feeling that, that, that energy right, your feelings are influenced by your thoughts. So if your thought is I can't do this, I'm not a good boss, that's the energy you're putting out in the world. You're more likely to attract an employee, a client, who is at that energy level, because that's the energy level that you are at Like, attracts, like I'm talking, science y'all, even though it feels like woo, woo. So what are you thinking about yourself as a leader? First and foremost, do you trust yourself, because from wherever you are energetically, that's where you're going to attract from, and so if you want to attract more confident leaders to be on your team, I'm going to encourage you to be your most confident leader so you can attract those of a higher level.

Speaker 1:

Now, when you're coming into a new team, one of the things that I find is very important when it comes to building trust with a new team is being curious, being so curious. This is going to be a theme across every area when it comes to leadership. When you're hiring, be curious about the person across from you. When you're bringing on a team and you're gaining trust with that person, be curious about the questions that they have. In a concrete example, I was sitting down with a team member and I was rolling out a new plan. I was like okay, so this is what I'm thinking for the new plan X, y and Z.

Speaker 1:

They disagreed with me. They said and I had a moment, because this is in the first six months of being in the leadership position of this role with this nonprofit and I want to gain trust. I want to come in and I want to implement new things, new strategies to help to elevate the nonprofit, and I have to respect and honor that. The person across from me has been a part of this nonprofit for seven going on eight years, and so their opinion is important and that if I steamroll their opinion, that is, if I completely ignore it because I think that I know best, I'm breaking down trust. It doesn't mean that I need to do everything that everybody on my team says just because they've been here long, but it does mean that when they have an opinion that I listen to it.

Speaker 1:

So in that moment I said tell me more. Right, I felt in my body being mindful. Right, I was mindful of my body. My body got hot, I got tense. I felt frustration in my body because, as this new leader, I have this new idea. I'm very excited about it. But when then my employee the person across the table from me who's been with this company longer than I have has something else to say, my body got hot. I was like what do you mean internally? What do you mean? You don't trust what I have to say. What do you mean? You have a differing opinion, right.

Speaker 1:

But I remembered, if I want to be a strong leader, for me, a strong leader is one that trusts themselves and has the trust of their team. Let me pause so you can download that. A strong leader, amongst other things, is someone that trusts themselves and has the trust of their team. So in that moment I was like okay, I want to be a strong leader. I had to pause, take a mindful pause. I do this with my clients all of the time. We teach and I teach the mindful pause pause. She disagrees with me, but what's important to me is that I'm a strong leader, which means I have trust of her. I have her trust. So I asked okay, tell me more. Why do you disagree? Be curious If you want to gain the trust of your team members. Be curious about why they do the things that they do. Be curious about why they have this job in the first place.

Speaker 1:

If you're a new leader coming into a team, I love to ask the question of like, why are you here? But ask it in the way that you need to ask it, right, why are you here? Why did you take this job? Is it for the practical piece of? You got a degree in marketing. This was the next step in your marketing career, and so that's why you're here. I truly love to get to the heart of people. What is your why? I find that this is very helpful for gaining trust with your team. So, the first one curiosity. Second one know your team's why. Right, and this can be difficult depending on how big of a team you have. Maybe you're an executive and you have 200 people underneath you. All right, we'll figure out your higher ups why. You know the 10 people underneath you that lead the 50 people underneath them. What is their why? What gets them up in the morning? If you can understand your team's, why, you can play to that.

Speaker 1:

I love the saying aces in their places and the way that that works. Aces in their places meaning like if you're good at writing, I want you on more writing tasks. If you're good at more client facing roles, I'm going to have you in a client facing position. If you like more arts and crafts and marketing, great, I'm going to have you on camera doing the marketing for an upcoming event. Aces in their places, meaning that the people who their strengths, they're playing to their strengths and, as a result of your team members playing to their strengths, they're happier, they're more engaged, they're excited about the work they're doing and therefore they're putting out better work. And because you put them aces in their places, they now have more trust in you as a leader. Ah, you saw me, you saw my strengths, you saw what I'm good at and you let me play to them. I now trust you more as a leader. That is what I have found to be true Aces in their places. But that comes from knowing your team's. Why. What is your team's? Why? Why does Claudia come to work every single morning?

Speaker 1:

Why does Jamie wear that pink earring only in their left ear every single Tuesday? Get into the details, whether it feels like it's professional or not. You learning about why Jamie wears that earring in that left ear. It might be because my grandmother loves these hydrangeas and I got it Like I'm actually telling a real story. I'm. I had a. This was a transient employee of mine and they were a mover and they were coming in and moving a lot of things into our building and I was going to be working with them for a few weeks while they were a mover and they were coming in and moving a lot of things into our building. And I was going to be working with them for a few weeks while they were moving things in and actually took the time, he wore one earring. His name was not Jamie, but he wore one earring and one earlobe and I asked him why do you wear this? And it really truly was connected to his grandmother. But the reason why I'm telling that story is because it was a true story and I got to know this person.

Speaker 1:

But then when you develop that relationship right, you are more able to communicate more strongly with this person. When I say communicate more strongly, let me clean up all this language. It's all too fluffy. When you understand somebody's, why they are more likely to open up to you, they are more likely to engage with you because you have shown that you want to engage with them. Then from that place, they're more likely to ask questions, they're more likely to be engaged because they know that they have a boss that cares about them professionally but also cares about them as a person. And if I have a boss that cares about me as a person, they're going to want to know that I'm overwhelmed by this one specific project, and I'm going to then, as an employee, bring that to my boss.

Speaker 1:

The amount of times that problems happen simply because we're not speaking up or because employees don't feel like they can speak up, I want you to think about this for yourself. Have you ever been in a position where your boss was so punitive? You just felt like you couldn't speak up. You had a work-related question, but you felt like, if I ask this question, I'm going to come across as dumb, they're going to belittle me, they're going to make me feel stupid, and so, instead of doing what you needed to do, which was ask for help or advocate for yourself, which would have alleviated the problem, you didn't say anything and it ended up being a problem later on, right? And so this is why, when you're in the boss seat, when you're in the leadership seat, let's clean up some of that.

Speaker 1:

Be the boss that somebody can approach and say hey, I'm struggling with this. How do you do that? By being curious, by knowing your team's why, right? Those are two very important things that are going to get you a very long way. Trust yourself, my friends, right? You can trust yourself to be the boss that you know you want to be. And I would say, get clear on what does that mean for you, right? That's a leadership lesson in itself.

Speaker 1:

If you're going to trust yourself to be the boss you want to be, have you clearly defined who it is you want to be as a boss? I want to be an approachable boss. I want to be a kind boss. I want to be a strict boss. I want to be a structured boss. What kind of boss do you want to be? You get to get clear and you get to decide what those attributes are then from there. If you want to be a kind, attributes are Then from there. If you want to be a kind and strategic boss, what does it mean to be a kind boss? What does it mean to be a strategic boss? Break it down and then from there, I really want you to do this work.

Speaker 1:

If you do the work, it goes a long way. And if you want help doing this work that's what I do as a life coach Come and book a session with me. This is what we do. I'm going to help you break it down. Who are you? How do you want to show up in the world? Why is it that you haven't been showing up in the world the way that you want to? What have been your blocks? That block might be a subconscious block from seven years ago. This has happened with a client. I was working with a woman once who I still work with. I just did her client tracking the other day. We've been together for five years. It's craziness and let me just say, my friends, I signed you up for about I think my lowest package is 10 months, maybe six months, and that's where we start. But life develops and as you develop, life changes and that's what I'm here to help you do. So I really truly do bank on you getting everything you need in six to 10 months, but as life changes, if you want more help, I'm here for you. So I've been working with this client since 2020. And one of the things that we've worked on is her career.

Speaker 1:

One of the things that we noticed in particular was her nervousness with using her voice, and so, as we impacted a little bit more, we understood that the nervousness of using her voice came from past evidence where, once she used her voice, she had a boss once where she used her voice and she suggested things or she had questions, and that boss verbatim told her that she was dumb or that she was doing things not correctly. She then internalized that as when I speak up, I'm going to be told that I'm dumb, I'm not that smart, I shouldn't speak up, right. So that's what her brain made. That mean I spoke up, I got a negative reaction. My brain is now creating the sentence, the equation in my spirit, that when I speak up, bad things happen. So she stopped speaking up. This is now years later. She's got a different job, much happier in her job, but she's noticing I'm still not speaking up. And as we unpacked it, we noticed that her brain still had the sentence that it is unsafe for me to speak up. Why? Because the last time I did I got slapped on the wrist. I got told that my ideas were dumb, right. And so as we unpacked it, we noticed oh, you have an old stale thought from an old stale boss that is still keeping you from showing up the way you want to show up.

Speaker 1:

This is what we do in coaching we get clear on who you are, what you want and what's getting in your way and for today, I want you to get clear on who are you as a leader, what do you want as a leader and what is getting in your way? Do you trust yourself? Do you trust your team? Are you afraid to trust your team? That's a legitimate question. I'm afraid to trust my team. I've given them projects before and they didn't follow through. Get clear. Here's my final question for you how might you gain a little bit more trust with your team today? Get quiet and trust the answer that comes up. Remember, mindfulness is our awareness. We're going to be aware of what comes up and we're going to trust that.

Speaker 1:

I'm also in the business of teaching women and just executives in general how to trust themselves. If you want to run a business, if you want to run a company, you have to trust yourself, and there's a part of you that already does so. It's our job to expand that part of you that already trusts yourself, to build the business, to build the family, to build the empire, whatever it is that you're looking to build. And as you're building that and you might be building a team alongside you what does it look like to put the aces in their places? What does it look like to be curious. What does it look like to trust yourself and to trust your team?

Speaker 1:

As always, take what sticks to you, leave the rest. I'll see you next week. Hey friend, if you like this podcast, I would love it if you give us a five-star rating. Share it with your friends. If you're interested in one-on-one coaching, if this podcast resonates with you and you're ready for some one-on-one support support for you and your journey go ahead to nandikamilcom to learn more, or head over to nandikamilasme to sign up for your free discovery call.