Building Trust - Lesson 8

Let's continue our discussions now with another aspect of interpersonal skills that I think is gonna be critical for us to develop. And as you look at your assessment results, I think you're gonna see that the scores may vary a little bit because relatability is interpersonal, but it's very unique because relatability manifests an individual's bond with another individual or with their team members. Now, here's one thing I wanna make very clear.

Relatability is not likability. Relatability is something that gives the people that you're interacting with or your team a reason to connect with you as their leader. You see, a relatable leader is one whose team understands their values and actually trusts their heart.

So let's talk about the four aspects that are critical to relatability. First, you need to make an effort to connect with your employees both individually and as a group. If you don't do both, they're gonna feel left out.

Now, this is obviously easier for the high I and high S person that is people-oriented and that does enjoy spending time with their people, not because they may have a surplus of time, but because they know and understand that each person has feelings and they have a need to be acknowledged. It's gonna be more difficult for the high DC, someone who's very objective, and even the high aesthetic and individualistic at times because the high DC is gonna be much more focused on getting things done. And the objective mindsets are all project-oriented, but the aesthetics may see that this doesn't fall within their ideal framework and they may struggle dealing with letting other people know their vulnerabilities.

The high individualistic person says, "I'm up top, I'm on charge of things, therefore things are gonna be done my way." And they are not as willing to spend time with individuals. They may do it as a group and then go hide, but taking someone to lunch, putting them in with their schedule on a coffee break is going to be required because all of us want to be considered and appreciated for our values.

And when we are left out of that, we no longer can relate to that manager, that leader, that senior pastor or the worship leader. When we don't feel that we are important, our natural tendency is to disengage. And this is one of the biggest mistakes that leaders make in their ministry.

Secondly, we need to know each team member well enough to understand their challenges so that we can support them. You mean I have to take time with everybody? Yes, absolutely. Because if you don't know their strengths, their weaknesses and their challenges, you may never understand that one of your team members' parents are going through cancer.

You may not know that one of your team members' child is having drug problems. You may not know that their best friend just passed away. And I can assure you, if you don't know those things, it's going to have an impact of your impression of their performance.

So it's going to be easier for the high DC and objective person to dig into these things, especially when they see that there are things that are not being performed properly. They're going to begin to ask questions. So when they start asking their questions, there needs to be that relatability so that the leader can say, "You know what? When I went through that with my parents, this is the way I felt."

"You know, when I went through that with my child, this is how I felt." Now you become relatable. You become a real person to that.

The high S is just going to do this naturally as well as the subjective because they're much more open to conversation. They're much more open to listening. They are much more open to other people and their causes.

Now, why is it harder for the high I? Because they are so busy talking and so busy communicating and so busy interacting with other people that they struggle to be the kind of listeners at times to be able to pull this off. So you say, "Wow, some aspects of relatability, the high I is pretty good, but there are some aspects that the high I is not so good." So you have to think through which of these aspects in the relatability factors are critical for you to address.

Thirdly, you have to approach each team member uniquely based on their behaviors and their mindsets. If you come to an individual and don't understand that they are highly subjective, then what you're going to do is you're going to make them feel stupid. You're going to make them feel like they're worthless and things like that.

So what you have to realize is that keep in mind who you're approaching. What I suggest is this, is there are free behavior and mindsets assessments on our website. Run your employees through it, print out the copy, put it inside their personnel folder so that when you have a meeting with them, you can just glance at it, it'll remind you and put you in the right mindset.

Now, this is going to be easy for a D because they can look at that and be very objective in the way that they approach it. So with that high D, that high objective person, they can look at them for who they are. The high C and high S that's subjective on the other hand may not be that readily able to jump into that reliability factor because the high C is going to want to know all the details and all of a sudden it gets highly elevated as the subjective person does.

They want to talk it to death. And sometimes talking it to death is not going to help the person, but actually elevate the anxiety level that we've talked about in the past. And when the anxiety level is high, you actually make things worse because the cognitive abilities are low.

Fourthly, listen to and act on team member feedback. It's going to be much easier for the social and the utilitarian because now the ideas are coming in. The social is going to feel part of that team and they're going to want to make that contribution as is the utilitarian.

It's all about collaboration. It's going to be harder for the high I, the objective, traditional and high C, high D person because listening is not always their favorite thing to do. They are going to want to move ahead, be optimistic about the outcome, but they're going to rely on facts and data rather than how other people view them.

So I encourage each of you to take the steps and look at the fact of how relatable are you to other people. So let's talk about some of the best practices in growing your ability to relate to other people. First of all, increase your interaction through conversations rather than specific meetings.

This is a time when you should be having lunch and having coffee and doing the things that are necessary to have personal level communications. And don't be afraid to discuss your failures. Don't be afraid to get out there and talk about the foods that you like, talk about the sports, the activities that you like, because once they find a connection, you are on the road to becoming relatability.

Share those stories of failure. Let them see that you're a human. It just makes them so much easier for you to relate to. 

Now, what questions might you have about becoming more relatable? 

Student: So in the process of being relatable, the tools that you've mentioned about how we know ourselves and how we know other people are valuable indicators and give us some good directions to know how to do that in a way that's effective. What are some practical ways that we can develop a sensitivity to the Spirit to know how to do that and also to develop a real love for people so that when we do these things, it really is sincere and it really is meaningful? 

Dr. Coker: That's a good question because I think the first thing that we have to do when we're trying to build relatability is go to 1 Peter, where it reminds us that other people around the world are going through and experiencing the exact same things that we are. And here's the one thing I know.

Everybody loves a little bit of downtime, yet everybody has times that they have to perform, whether you're an actor, an athlete, a pastor, a staff member, or a mom or a dad. And what we have to do is find that common element and realize what is it that this person's going through that I have been through? I think that Scripture in 1 Peter is so cool because it reminds us that no matter what our stature is in society or ministry or wherever we are, we have the same experience. We have fears, we have doubts, we have love that we seek and we desire, and we also want approval, especially from Christ.

And we know because of the promises that we cannot disappoint the Trinity. As far as I know, there's never been in any emergency meetings of the Trinity. So in thinking about that, what we have to remember is that other people's needs are going to be similar to ours.

And so therefore, we have to go into a conversation with the idea that what they're getting ready to share with us is something that we've experienced in one way or another. And we can't deny that because there's nothing new under the sun. And how do we develop a real love for people and a sincerity in these conversations, even though they've come along as staff or elders or things like that.

So it's a situation where maybe these people aren't ones that we would have necessarily chosen for friends or relationships, but we really value them and we wanna communicate that we really love them. How do we develop those attitudes so that it really is sincere? I think this is insight that as we mature in our faith, we actually forget some of the things that happened to us early in our faith. We know that most people in their spiritual walk actually bring more people to Jesus in the first 18 months than they may later in life.

So what I would encourage you to do is begin to think about what are some of the things that I learned early in my faith? And as I matured in my faith, I had several people come up with some "Holy mackerel, that's so profound," simply because they were experiencing the love of God for the first time. What that taught me was the fact that no matter where you are in your spiritual walk, whether you're a dependent infant, whether you are a learning child, whether you are a faithful servant out there rocking the world with your spiritual principles, or whether you are discipling people, you have something to offer. And if that is true, then I think the key in looking at that is that go into the conversation, go into the relationship with the whole idea of what can this person teach me, even though I may not like them very much.

Because if we are attentive to the Spirit of God, He will teach us in every single conversation we have. We just have to have ears to hear. And I think the Scripture says something about that.

Student: Being a high D, this sounds exhausting to me. And I was thinking just at a practical level. If you were pastoring a small church, let's say an average church actually of 100 people, and you have a couple of elders, it's not hard to meet with your elders and to meet with a couple of volunteer staff and with the people to develop this relationship and develop the relatability.

If you're a church of 1,000, then you're going to have these different levels of the pastor, depending on how it's structured, the pastor and the elders and the staff, and then the full-time ministry leaders and whatnot. I'm assuming that you have to be practical and say, "I can't work on my relatability with everyone in this system." But rather it's kind of like my quote level and the next level down or something like that. You have to be a little discerning in your time, I'm assuming.

Dr. Coker: Absolutely. And you know, one of the things that we've discussed in our earlier lessons is the higher on that leadership scale we rise, the more lonely it becomes. Why? Because we have to be discerning enough about what our bandwidth really is.

So yes, I would agree with you. We have to determine where our sphere of influence must exist. For a church of more than 1,000 people, it has to be that executive leadership team.

However, I think there are times when there needs to be maybe a session once every month or once every other month, or even once a quarter, where as a leader, you talk to the average Joe. And during that period of time, what you do is bring that relatability to the conversation, because here's what I know. When you do that to someone of lesser significance, you put them in a position to what? They're gonna go tell.

Why do we think that Jesus told the one person that came back, "Don't tell anyone that I healed you"? Because he knew what? He was gonna broadcast that. So what you do is identify on rare occasions when you're going to do this. And let me give you an example of someone who does this well.

I have direct relationship with the senior pastor of the fastest growing church in America. And one of the things that he does is twice a year, he has a hunting exposition. And anybody in the church that wants to sign up to go hunting, doesn't matter what their status in the church is, he's gonna go with them.

And he takes 10 people with him to go hunting. So other than that, you probably can't get an appointment with him. But what he does is he sets those times up so that there is interaction with other people to make him more relatable.

So now that we've gone through these best practices of transparency, I want you to stop the video at this point and get together as a group and talk about how you and your natural behavior and your mindsets are going to impact your transparency. And what of the best practices are going to be best for you to do that? Okay. So I'll do your introduction to relatability.

Okay. Now that we've taken the time to focus on the first aspect of our interpersonal relationships, transparency, I want us to move on to relatability, which is just as critical, but requires very different skillsets. And it's going to be important that we see that because relatability requires an individual bond, not just being transparent.

Okay. And then the ending to relatability. Okay.

Now that we've gone through the best practices and heard a few questions addressed about relatability, I think it's time for you to stop for just a minute. Think about your behaviors and your mindsets and how that impacts your relatability. Look at your score from the assessment and identify which of the four aspects we discussed about relatability may be a challenge for you and solicit comments from the people in your group or on your team as to how you can improve the relatability which is so critical to others trusting you.