Building Trust in Your Company!

Often, it’s a matter of trust. Trust supports the knowledge management process by giving people confidence to propose new ideas and recognising their contributions when these ideas succeed. In contrast, a lack of trust encourages workers to hoard knowledge that could help a company to reach its peak potential. And neither technology alone nor toothless mission statements will persuade employees to trust the overall organisation, their managers and each other, whether the person is in the next office or halfway around the globe.

To be effective, trust must be ingrained in the culture of the organisation. It can flourish when the entire company communicates a constant, consistent message of respect for employees and their ideas, gives them ample opportunity to provide feedback to others and integrates them into the decision-making process.

Having spoken to some of my students and co-workers about the topic most of them seemed to agree that, if you want to build an environment of trust, you have to tackle it from all angles. You can’t do it with a consulting engagement. You have to measure it, talk about it openly, ask your people how to improve it, listen to them and do what they ask. It’s a lot harder than it seems.

I’m quite sure that many of us would, have at some point in our lives, trusted someone, only to have them give you reason not to trust them again. To me it’s like this, you know when you have it; you know when you don’t. But there are many hard questions that we must answer as we continue our journey in this rapidly changing world.

We might ask "what is trust and how is trust usefully defined for the workplace? Can you build trust when it doesn’t exist? How do you maintain and build upon the trust you may currently have in your work place?"

Trust forms the foundation for effective communication, employee retention, and employee motivation and contribution of discretionary energy, the extra effort that people voluntarily invest in work. When trust exists in an organisation or in a relationship, almost everything else is easier and more comfortable to achieve.

In a business context trust is important for sound practical reasons. When there is trust, people in the organisation are more likely to: Accept and implement decisions, which they do not fully understand. Sacrifice immediate rewards for mutually beneficial long-term gains. Share the burden in difficult times. Respond with understanding to work emergencies. Invest in the future through their ideas and suggestions.

In business, or in any relationship, short-term inequities and misunderstandings are inevitable. Trust is essential to overcome these problems and maintain a stable long-term relationship. At the same time, it also increases motivation, productivity and organisational efficiency.

Why is trust important in working relationships?

If trust is not present in a relationship a large amount of energy is wasted in the form of redundancy and rework. Fuelled by doubt, a person invests time and energy in checking up on another’s commitments and the quality of their work. This energy could be directed toward more positive action if a bond of trust existed. Trust is especially important for teams because of the interdependent nature of the work for which teams are responsible. In organisations where individual contributors have sole responsibility for their jobs the need for trust is not as critical. The more connected or trusting a group is the more freely the members share ideas; teach each other new skills, energize one another; share resources; spark each other’s creativity; and abandon concern that someone else will get the credit for an idea.

Another benefit of trust is that it allows an organisation to manage more efficiently. Where trust among members is low, you will see micro managing behaviours (unnecessary review loops, lots of checks and balances) and volumes of policies and procedures. Where trust is high you can comfortably empower people to behave in alignment with the organisation’s goals and values.

What if your team doesn’t have good trust relationships? What if team members tend to write off each other? What should you do? Perhaps, taking time to go through the following steps will be helpful.

Step 1: Check your own trustworthiness. How are you doing in the areas of commitment, consistency and capabilities? Try taking the self-test on the following page. Each team member is an important part of the trust relationship and increasing trustworthiness of each member will have great impact.

Step 2: Be willing to take another risk in the relationship. Offer to be vulnerable to rebuild a relationship. Instead of using force to get a behaviour from another party try the concept of trust where you rely and are dependent upon the other person to complete or fulfill their commitment. Put yourself in the position where you must have faith in the other person’s competence, ability, and dependability.

How to Maintain Trust

The best way to maintain a trusting work environment is to keep from injuring trust in the first place. The integrity of the leadership of the organisation is critical. The truthfulness and transparency of the communication with staff are also a critical factors. The presence of a strong, unifying mission and vision can also promote a trusting environment. Providing information about the rationale, background, and thought processes behind decisions is another important aspect of maintaining trust. Another is organisational success; people are more apt to trust their competence, contribution, and direction when part of a successful project or organisation.

Yet, even in an organisation in which trust is a priority, things happen daily that can injure trust. A communication is misunderstood; a customer order is misdirected and no one questions an obvious mistake. In many work places, people are taught to mistrust as they are repeatedly misinformed and misled.

Steps to keep and build trust

Several characteristics of good managers engender trust from the individuals and teams that they lead:

Integrity. Exhibiting basic honesty and moral character are keys to demonstrating that you are trustworthy. A person of character can be trusted to do what is right even when there is "no controlling legal authority" because they are guided by internal standards.

Reliability. Trustworthy people are consistent, dependable and stable. Their actions are congruent with the values and principles they espouse. They keep their promises.

Fairness. Being fair means making unbiased decisions and not taking advantage of people just because they are in a weaker bargaining position. But, being perceived as fair also requires managing others’ perceptions. In order to be perceived as fair, a manager should make standards clear and take the time to explain decision-making processes to the people affected by them.

Caring. We have all been taught to make rational business decisions and to not let our emotions bias our decision-making processes. Rationality is important, but emotions shouldn’t be completely ignored. The most trustworthy managers are the ones we can talk to about our worries and frustrations because they care. In contrast, impervious managers show they have no interest in hearing about what concerns us, and we do not trust or feel close to them. They treat us like nonhuman resources, and we will not go above and beyond the call of duty for them.

Openness. Trustworthy managers keep confidences, but they do not keep harmful secrets or have hidden agendas. Open information sharing is a reciprocal process. We tend to withhold information from people who seem to resist opening up to us.

Competence. Trustworthy managers perform their roles competently. Subordinates do not put their faith in incompetent managers, even if those managers are fair and caring.

Loyalty. Trustworthy managers also show through their actions that they are willing to protect and defend their subordinates when they make mistakes or during times of crisis. This kind of trust is particularly important during times of innovation and change because of their inherent risks.

The Human Resource professional has a special role in promoting trust. You coach managers and supervisors about all of the appropriate roles described above. You also influence the power differentials within the organisation by developing and publishing supportive, protective, honourable policies. You are influential in building appropriate social norms among people who are doing different jobs in your organisation.

Engage in trust building and team building activities only when there is a sincere desire in your organisation to create a trusting, empowering, team-oriented work environment. Engaging in these activities for any but honourable reasons is a travesty and a sham. People will know the difference, or they will find out, and then, they will never trust you.

Trust is built and maintained by many small actions over time. Trust is not a matter of technique, but of character; we are trusted because of our way of being, not because of our polished exteriors or our expertly crafted communications. So fundamentally, trust is the cornerstone, the foundation, for everything you’d like your organisation to be now and for everything you’d like it to become in the future. Lay this groundwork well. Trust is telling the truth, even when it is difficult, and being truthful, authentic, and trustworthy in your dealings with customers and staff. Can profoundly rewarding, mission-serving, life- and work-enhancing actions get any simpler than this? Not likely!

vickyboodram@hotmail.com