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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

July 10, 2016 By Lynda Foster

Trust: Will you jeopardize one of the 6 elements this week?©

By:  Lynda McNutt Foster

Trust button set on highest position. Concept image for illustration of high confidence level, trusted service or review.

Note to self: I did it again. I used that tone that instantly triggered anxiety in someone I wanted to trust me today. It was only for a few seconds, but in that short time, I recognized the signs that I might have jeopardized the trust I was building. Looking back on the week, I also haven’t called someone that is important to me to check on them since they’ve been out sick and I rushed through a conversation with a team member as they were sharing about the work they had done on their project. I had the gut feeling that I was detaching when I should have been connecting and yet, I just ignored it. I will do better next week. I will continue to put the act of building and maintaining trust at the top of my priority list.

Just because we know it and it may be common sense doesn’t mean it’s easy to make building and maintaining trust with others common practice. We can jeopardize trust in an instant. We don’t take the necessary time to do a thorough job on a project or request and bam! the trust in our competency is slightly eroded. We say that we care about someone we work with and yet we don’t take the time to listen or ask about how they are really doing during a difficult time for them. We say we will complete something by Monday and don’t get back to the person until Friday so our reliability is jeopardized with that person. Ever so slightly. Hardly noticeable, until bam! the “straw that broke the camel’s back” is laid on top of the multiple, small, infractions and no longer does that person feel safe with us.

We may not even notice when someone doesn’t trust us anymore. They may just slow down the amount of interactions they have with us or stop sharing in meetings. The erosion of trust can show up by silence as much as outward displays of anger and resentment. Since the majority of us (from our research, about 90%) want to avoid conflict, we may never know what we did to jeopardize or break the trust someone has in us. They may simply, eventually, disappear from our immediate line of sight.

Trust is the starting block for any type of meaningful relationship at home or work and is the cornerstone of everyday interactions and conversations that lead to success or failure. The building, maintaining or jeopardizing of trust is hidden beneath each action we take or don’t take and measured almost subconsciously.

 

There are six elements of trust that most people consider in building relationships with others:

Sincerity: Being genuine in actions and intentions. This is the number one element that team members say is most important to them when it comes to their boss.  It’s important to team members that who they work for doesn’t just say they care but take the time to demonstrate it in a way that the team member feels is appropriate and valued.

Involvement: This isn’t about being “social” necessarily. It’s more about being attuned to the concerns of others and relating with compassionate presence to the person. Our surveys show that for 19-34 year-olds this is the number one element of trust. People whom involvement ranks high for want you to check in with them, frequently, to see what is going on with them. They like consistent feedback and they like a casual atmosphere where they feel comfortable mixing social conversation with business.

Reliability: This is simply the act of doing what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it. If you say you are going to be somewhere you show up there. If you make a commitment to complete something for your team, you do it, on time, within budget, and without hassle. It’s hard to build trust on a team or in an organization unless this element is consistently demonstrated.

Time: This one is the most interesting one we have surveyed. This element is simple. Honor time commitments you have made. If you say you are going to be there at 8am, be there at 8am or call to say you are going to be late. What’s so interesting about this one, though, is that in class we ask everyone to select their top 2 elements of trust and out of say 30 participants only 1 will choose Time as their top element. HOWEVER, when workers complain about their bosses, many times they will sight how disrespectful it is when their boss is consistently late to meet with them or the team.

Competency: This is the number one answer that bosses give about team members. Competency is having the experience, knowledge, and skills to do what you commit to doing. Bosses choose this one because in order to feel comfortable delegating to team members they need to trust that the team member can do the job they have committed to doing.

Standards: Holding and meeting clear standards for performance. The trick here is to be able to align your standards with the other persons. I might have a completely different set of standards for completing a project than you do. If we don’t communicate that, up front, we may run into trust issues that may result in micromanagement or things not getting delegated properly.

For more information on building a trust with your “community” whether it be online or with your team members, peers or bosses, check out our short (under 7 minutes), free Corcast series with Adam Linkenauger and Becky Freemal. Another related article can be found here.

 

TEAM EXERCISE:

In your next team meeting you might want to consider going over the six elements of trust with your team and have them answer the following:

1. What 2 elements are the most important to me in building and maintaining relationships at work?
2. People jeopardize trust with me when they ________________________.
3. The element of trust I need to focus on delivering to my team members this week is…

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Cortex Leadership, Cortex Leadership Consulting, Leadership Coaching, Leadership Training, Lynda McNutt Foster, Richmond, Roanoke, Trust

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