DISC Unlimited - Trustworthiness and Building Trust

SPECIALS

PRESS

MY ACCOUNT

SHOPPING CART

Newsletters > Leadership Update Archives

Leadership Update # 8

printer friendly

Learning Unlimited Corporation / Integro Logo - Leadership Update Newsletter - What Do Employees Expect?

Leadership Update #8

Trustworthiness and Building Trust

By Keith Ayers

The Difference between Trustworthiness and Building Trust
By Keith Ayers

Larry, the President of a small Philadelphia based company, had attended an executive briefing on Increasing Employee Engagement. He had been particularly interested in the topic because a recent staff survey had shown that engagement in his organization was unacceptably low, and employees had rated trust for senior management as very low. He was so concerned about the lack of trust that he had brought his entire senior management team to the briefing.

Larry called me over to his group after the session and said: "We just could not figure out why our employees don't trust us. Our management team is very conscientiousness, work long hours, and do their best for the organization. We're an honest, ethical group of people who put the organization's interests ahead of our own. How could they not trust us? When you presented the four Elements of Trust it all made sense. We were really only focusing on two of the four."

The Elements of Trust

The Elements of Trust™ Larry was referring to are:

Congruence - being straightforward, honest and ethical

Openness - being willing to listen to others ideas and feedback and to disclose your own thoughts, feelings and opinions.

Acceptance - being nonjudgmental of people; treating them with respect and dignity.

Reliability - keeping commitments, meeting deadlines and doing your best in everything you do.

Engagement is Not Enough (book by Keith Ayers), Trust and Trustworthiness

Like many senior executives, Larry and his team were focused primarily on Congruence and Reliability... running an honest, ethical organization and achieving results. What they did not realize is that while employees want the senior team to be honest and ethical, and run a financially sound organization, Congruence and Reliability are not as important to them as are Acceptance and Openness.

First and foremost in the employee's minds is Acceptance.... how the senior team treats them and their coworkers. They need to feel valued and respected, and know that their work is important; that their ideas will be listened to. Most organizations say "Our people are our most important asset .", but how many treat their employees, individually, as if they are? To many employees, that statement demonstrates a lack of congruence.

Confront the Brutal Facts

One of the factors that contributed to the leap to greatness of the eleven companies Jim Collins wrote about in his best selling book Good to Great was their willingness to confront the brutal facts. Are there any policies, procedures or practices in your organization that send a clear message to employees that they are not trusted?

Behaviors that Diminish Trust

Many in the workplace, don't intentionally set out to diminish trust with other team members, and yet many successfully do that every day. Here are some of the more common behaviors that diminish trust:

Being solely focused on meeting ones own needs; usually at the expense of other team member's needs.

Using information as a source of power, withholding information from team members to ensure they know they are not important or trustworthy.

Not communicating openly with employees about their performance.

Treating mistakes as a crime rather than as a learning experience.

Assigning blame without first checking the facts, rather than focusing on solving the problem and learning from it.

Avoiding responsibility for their own actions or decisions... it's never "my" fault when something goes wrong.

Treating employees as insignificant by not asking for their input, and not listening when it is offered.

Trust is the foundation of all relationships, and significantly impacts organizational performance. Any lack of trust employees or customers have for the leaders of an organization, based on all four Elements of Trust™, is affecting their bottom line. Here is an example:

Cornell University's Hotel Administration School did a study of 76 Holiday Inn Hotels in North America to measure the cost of a lack of trust in management. The results were stunning to say the least:

Hotels that scored highest in trust for management had:

The highest levels of customer satisfaction

Lowest levels of staff turnover

Highest profitability

The researchers concluded that a one-eighth point increase in trust on a five-point scale (2.5 percent)would translate into an increased profit of 2.5 percent of revenues...which in this case was $250,000 per hotel per year!

If you are not working at building trust by focusing on all four elements, you may well be unintentionally diminishing it. Check out your organization's policies, procedures and practices to see whether they are contributing to reduced trust from employees or customers. Build the four Elements of Trust™ into your decision making process, by asking yourself: "Will this decision build trust, or diminish it?" The cost of lost trust, in the long run, is not worth any short term gains.

Keith Ayers

DISCUNLIMITED NEWS

The Elements of Trust

Confront the Brutal Facts