Traits of Trust

Your team is so close, you know each other both professionally and personally. I think with that, there's probably a certain level of trust. How important is building trust to your success as a leader?

I think it's the bedstone to any leadership. I definitely think that in order to gain trust, you need to first be vulnerable. That's a lesson that my team had to teach me. Because early on when I was just starting to be a CEO, I thought that I had to have all the answers. I thought that the weight of the world, the weight of SOA was on my shoulders, and that I had to come to them with only solutions. But they had a pretty intense conversation with me once and told me, "We are here to help, please tell us how you're feeling, please tell us how we can do more." And so it was such a critical moment for me to hear from my own team and tell me, it's okay to be vulnerable, it's okay to let go. It's okay to tell us and how we can support you, that it built that trust, it built that connection that I feel as if has taken us to a whole different level as far as our culture and understanding that I trust them by sharing the problems or the feelings that I have, and they trust me to be transparent in my decision-making process as well.

So then what would you say are the traits of the most trusted person or persons in your organization and also in your personal life?

I would say that humility is really important. Because when you're working in the social sector, especially in protecting the ocean, there's just no room for ego, there's no room for anything other than waking up every morning and doing everything in your power to want to support entrepreneurs or young leaders or healthy ocean. So I think humility is definitely one of them. The second one, I would say is integrity, just staying true, staying true to yourself, staying true to the mission, and making sure all your actions are aligned with integrity. And the third, I would say, is around hard work. I do believe that the people that I trust in most are people that I know will stay up until three in the morning if they have to, to deliver the grants that we have to submit or that will take a weekend to talk to an ocean young leader that is struggling with their project overseas. So I think those qualities have made me trust them wholeheartedly.