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October 15, 2017 By Lynda Foster

Fixing this one thing at work can solve a lot of problems – The Power of Trust

Lynda McNutt FosterThe most common challenges I hear from leaders about teams or team members that are under performing are that they lack enthusiasm and energy for their job, that their productivity is down, and that they are having to deal with constant drama that is distracting and time-consuming.  What is sometimes hard for leaders to recognize is how a lack of trust in the workplace can frequently be the core issue that needs to be addressed.  Lack of trust between individuals, their leaders, and throughout the culture, can sometimes be what is creating the drag on people’s time and energy from them at work.

The quantitative results of a trust-based workplace culture are in and can help the internal brand of organizations, like yours, create a working environment that leads to the type of results every leader wants to achieve.  This isn’t cum-bay-ya stuff.  Creating and maintaining a high-trust environment leads to significant increases in your bottom line.

Paul Zak, Harvard Researcher, Founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies and Professor of Economics, Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University, has conducted 2-decades worth of studies that had some remarkable discoveries.

The studies found that people at high-trust companies:

  • Experience 74% less stress
  • 106% more energy at work
  • 50% higher productivity
  • 13% fewer sick days
  • 76% more engagement
  • 29% more satisfaction with their lives
  • 40% less burnout

People at high-trust companies also:

  • Enjoyed their jobs 60% more
  • Were 70% more aligned with their companies’ purpose
  • Felt 66% closer to their colleagues
  • Had 11% more empathy for their workmates,
  • Earn an additional $6,450 a year, or 17% more than those working at low-trust organizations

How do you begin to create a high-trust workplace environment so that you can experience those types of results?  This article explains 8 Ways to Build A Culture of Trust Based on Harvard’s Neuroscience Research.

My favorites from the list are:

Recognizing excellence immediately.  Letting the team know when someone has done something that is “spot on” to the type of standards you are wanting to achieve when it comes to effort and results can go a long way to appreciating what is going right.

Autonomy goes a long way… and is cheaper than you think.  20% of employees say they would forfeit a raise to have more control over their work environment (I am thinking that those 20% may already be compensated fairly for their roles, perhaps). Employees tend to enjoy having freedom to select projects that align with their skillsets and an opportunity to give input on projects that are assigned to them.

Communicate often.  Being transparent about the things that you can be transparent about is helpful and giving feedback consistently so that team members know what is going write and how they could do things differently leads to clarity.  They can’t read your mind.  Don’t assume an employee knows the background of an issue or what they need to do to fix something unless you have asked them to share with you what they know or have heard from their perspective.

You can find resources on the Cortex website (just search for the word TRUST) for learning how to build trust on your team, with team members, and specific types of employees like Millennials.  Here’s an article about the 6 elements of trust and what you may be doing to jeopardize trust without even knowing it.  If you know you need to repair a relationship with someone at work, here’s an article about how to Repair Trust with Someone At Work.

Filed Under: Blog, Virginia @ Work Tagged With: 4 Keys to More Effective Leadership Behaviors, Leaders, Leadership, Lynda McNutt Foster, Trust, workplace

August 14, 2016 By Lynda Foster

Leadership Behaviors That Make You Invaluable at Work

We can easily recognize poor leadership behaviors in others. Meetings that are led inefficiently and are ineffective. Performance management that is punitive rather than empowering. Transactional conversations that jeopardize trust rather than build it. Actions, like being late or not listening, that communicate to others that you don’t respect their time or point of view.

Oh yeah. Pointing the finger up the ladder and around to peers is simple and I would dare say – prepare yourself – lazy. What’s much harder is to look at are our own actions and determine what we can do to be better leaders. After all, the only thing you really have control over is you. Identifying who we need to be and what we need to do to get better outcomes is one thing, actually changing the behavior is a whole other ballgame.

I hate to break the news to you if you haven’t figured this out already, but you can’t fix everything about yourself. You can make big improvements over time, but a complete personal demolition and rebuild will take a lifetime and usually isn’t necessary. Small, incremental pivots in your behavior can net huge returns. No matter how hard you work at being the best leader you possibly can, no matter how much time and effort and money you put into it, you will fall short of perfection – not only in your own eyes but also in others.

Nope. The art and science of great leadership is a constant focus on small pivots that you maintain over time that will lead to consistently achieving better results. It’s what Carol Dweck in her book says is a growth mindset.

So what do you work on first? McKinsey and Company did some research that I thought was a big help to answering that question. Out of 20 behaviors that create solid results in leaders, there were 4 that they determined give a leader 89% of the positive outcomes they experience. That sure does help narrow things to focus on down a bit, right?

What was interesting in the research that we did at Cortex, regarding those 4 behaviors was that they tied in nicely to the DISC profiles of those that we coach. This knowledge can help you focus your efforts quickly on what will be noticed by others and get you solid results. If you are already someone who has spent a career focusing on one of the behaviors because that one comes naturally for you, then you can probably assume that the one that is opposite of that is the first behavior to start with.

I will warn you now, though, our research also indicated that if you are someone who is great at one of the behaviors already you probably will want to lean in and get better at that one. This is not like the philosophy of focusing on your strengths. Yes, you want to continue to do what you are naturally gifted at, but the McKinsey research states clearly that you need, as a leader, to focus on being strong in each of these 4 areas to reach the peak performance outcomes your organization wants from you and that will make you invaluable in the workplace.

Which one should you focus on first to become more valuable to your organization and others? If you’re willing to spend about an hour of your time taking a couple of self-assessments and reading a few pages of material, you can determine the answer to that question pretty quickly.

We are creating an opportunity for anyone who gets this newsletter, and those that watch our segments on WFXR to download the quick guide to better leadership, 4 Keys to More Effective Leadership Behaviors for FREE during the next month.

You can CLICK HERE for your free download.

Become more valuable by following these 3 steps:

1. Download the free ebook
2. Pick one of the behaviors, from the short book, that you can quickly identify as something that you need to focus on to get those peak performance results you want to achieve. For instance, if you want to be a better problem solver, you will need to learn the skill of strategic thinking that I discussed in last week’s article. If you want to be more supportive, you will need to build your active listening skills (we’ll talk about how to do that next week). Having the behavior of getting results is becoming better at setting goals and being tenacious at reaching them. Finally, if you aren’t skilled at seeking others perspectives you are going to need to take a hard look at who you trust for advice now and on what subjects. Do you have experts in key areas that you are working on that you have a strong enough relationship with to receive new perspectives on initiatives that are not moving forward on?
3. Pick ONE SIMPLE ACTION this week that will move you towards building that skill.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: 4 Keys to More Effective Leadership Behaviors, Cortex Leadership Consulting, Getting Results, Leadership Coaching, Leadership Consulting, Leadership Training, Seeking Others Perspectives

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