A Foundation Built on the Advertiser
At Choozle, our focus is on the advertiser. Everything we do is designed to help them reach their goals. We strive to instill confidence in what we offer, and in the team they rely on to help them scale. To give Power to the Advertiser, our team needs to be empowered to do their best work. That starts with trust.
Trust Starts with Leadership
What does it take to create true employee empowerment? It starts at the top, with leadership that models ownership and accountability. It also requires the executive team to prioritize the growth and development of the next layer of leaders. Directors and managers must know they have the trust of executives to execute in ways that drive results. In turn, they carry that trust into their teams by modeling the same permission to try, take ownership, and continuously improve.
Building Trust Through Relationships
In Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni describes how teams build toward maximum productivity and results by creating a strong foundation of trust. It’s easy to talk about trust; it’s another thing to cultivate it. First, trust is built within relationships, and relationships take time and intention to develop.
Among other things, strong relationships are developed through:
- Time
- Honesty
- Accountability
- Vulnerability
- Presence
- Shared Values
- Transparency
Assuming Good Intent
One of the best ways to build strong relationships is by embracing the concept of assuming good intent. Edith Ng, a now-retired professor at the University of California, Berkeley, developed the Intent-Impact Model as a framework to facilitate understanding by highlighting the distinction between how people perceive their own actions (intent) and how others interpret those actions (impact). Often, when communication breaks down, a gap exists between intent and impact, and unintended consequences occur.
Possessing the self-awareness to assume good intent creates space to recognize that when the impact of someone’s behavior feels negative or harmful, it was most likely not their intent. It also creates a safe space to ask clarifying questions and bridge the gap between intent and impact. This skill takes time and practice to develop, but when it becomes a core part of a company’s culture, everyone, including clients, benefits.
As trust is built, it becomes easier to see a path to the next layers of Lencioni’s pyramid of high-functioning teams. These teams build on trust by adding conflict resolution, commitment, accountability, and a focus on results. Teams that embed this pyramid into how they work together are made up of engaged employees who know they are working toward a shared goal for the client.
From Trust to Results
Ultimately, advertisers should care about the level of trust within the teams they rely on to support their initiatives. According to McKinsey & Company, “teams that scored above average on trust were 3.3 times more efficient and 5.1 times more likely to produce results compared with those with below-average trust.” A strong foundation of trust is directly linked to how effectively a team works toward its advertisers’ goals and how consistently it delivers outcomes.
Our Commitment at Choozle
At Choozle, we’re leaning into building trust. We’re empowering our team members to build relationships grounded in transparency, vulnerability, and assuming good intent. To support that, we use tools and platforms like Emergenetics© and Lattice for training and accountability, and we measure our effectiveness. We’re practicing ownership and learning from our experiences while holding each other accountable to the commitments we’ve made. Ongoing conversations around leadership and culture, paired with continuous feedback from our team, help us understand where we’re succeeding and where we need to improve.
Our priority is to keep our clients at the center of everything we do, and we know that earning their trust starts with building trust with each team member who is serving them.
If you’re looking to join a team built on trust, ownership, and continuous growth, we’d love to hear from you. Check out our open roles and learn more about life at Choozle on our careers page.
