Building the Culture of Trust
By Dr. Arch (Keith) Barnes – April 15, 2011
I was once called for jury duty and empanelled in a civil action brought by a middle-level manager of a large corporation who had been, he claimed, wrongfully dismissed for failure to meet performance standards. Employed for twenty-six years by the defendant, for the last seven or eight years he had been told repeatedly the things he must do to remain on the payroll, but he had failed to comply with all such requirements. As part of the potential jury vetting process (voire dire), I was questioned by both attorneys. As a management professor I felt especially well qualified to serve but the first question, or rather my answer to it, saw me removed from the jury panel. The question was, “Should an employer show loyalty to employees for long-term service?”
My immediate answer was, “Certainly… but it’s a two-way street.” I intended to expand on my answer but was interrupted by the plaintiff’s attorney, who said quickly, “Your Honor, I peremptorily challenge this panelist as an impartial juror,” and I was gone.
Loyalty in all relationships, personal or otherwise, is vital. But it must always be both ways if there is to be any chance for the relationship to be mutually beneficial. Loyalty develops slowly and is based on mutual trust… and it is extremely fragile, can be destroyed rapidly. As I said in my last article on this topic, trust is one of the keys to building the high levels of commitment necessary for a culture of quality and excellence. So how is trust to be built and sustained?
Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate ways to build trust is in identifying the four most common ways in which trust is undermined in business (and not-for profit) organizations:
Inconsistency
People need to feel the security and confidence that comes when they are treated in consistent ways. Any manager (and any employee) is likely to have good days and bad, based on mood alone, perhaps, or dictated by circumstances, but if these produce significant shifts in the way we treat others in ordinary exchanges then such inconsistency will inevitably lead to mistrust.
Insincerity
If a manager tells an employee that his/her work is greatly appreciated, with no criticism, and then, when time comes for a formal review, say, pay raise consideration, and then critical comments suddenly surface, these reversals will produce an immediate and large drop in trust. There should be no surprises in anyone’s formal performance evaluation!
Secrecy
While at every level in an organization there’s need to be appropriately careful about information of a proprietary nature, erring on the side of openness is always better than the opposite. When people feel left out of “the loop,” they invent their own information and will often spread potentially damaging misinformation in the form of rumors. This is one of the most insidious manifestations of a lack of trust.
Favoritism
Many managers make the mistake of spending disproportionate amounts of time with those in their organization they see as “winners.” While this is natural enough, it is fraught with two kinds of trust-busting reality: It takes away valuable time that could be used to positively influence those persons who could benefit from counseling and encouragement and it creates the perception (sometimes valid) that when the time comes for promotions or pay raises, those same “favorites” will get preferential treatment.
In contemplating the state of your organization and when attempting to improve the cohesion of all the people on the payroll, their level of commitment to a credo of quality, think carefully about how you treat your own people. Equally importantly, communicate your concerns on this topic openly with all the other supervisory personnel to build a solid understanding of the traps that so often exist in the form of the above four most common errors. Openness, in fact, in a word, is the key to building trust with anyone under any circumstances.
Some might argue that the kind of workplace environment I insist will build trust, invites various forms of advantage-taking. Granted, there is a greater likelihood for being “used,” in any open system… but despite such risks, the benefits to be gained far outweigh such negatives.
I acknowledge completely that some people are more “fragile” than others, and that no two people are alike in the ways they respond to uncertainty, to challenge and opportunity. For those reasons there will always be a need for fine-tuning. But you can be certain of one thing: If you are indulging in any of the Trust-Busting behaviors above, or others of a similar mature, the organization will never maximize on a commitment to quality.
By Dr. Arch (Keith) Barnes – April 15, 2011
I was once called for jury duty and empanelled in a civil action brought by a middle-level manager of a large corporation who had been, he claimed, wrongfully dismissed for failure to meet performance standards. Employed for twenty-six years by the defendant, for the last seven or eight years he had been told repeatedly the things he must do to remain on the payroll, but he had failed to comply with all such requirements. As part of the potential jury vetting process (voire dire), I was questioned by both attorneys. As a management professor I felt especially well qualified to serve but the first question, or rather my answer to it, saw me removed from the jury panel. The question was, “Should an employer show loyalty to employees for long-term service?”
My immediate answer was, “Certainly… but it’s a two-way street.” I intended to expand on my answer but was interrupted by the plaintiff’s attorney, who said quickly, “Your Honor, I peremptorily challenge this panelist as an impartial juror,” and I was gone.
Loyalty in all relationships, personal or otherwise, is vital. But it must always be both ways if there is to be any chance for the relationship to be mutually beneficial. Loyalty develops slowly and is based on mutual trust… and it is extremely fragile, can be destroyed rapidly. As I said in my last article on this topic, trust is one of the keys to building the high levels of commitment necessary for a culture of quality and excellence. So how is trust to be built and sustained?
Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate ways to build trust is in identifying the four most common ways in which trust is undermined in business (and not-for profit) organizations:
Inconsistency
People need to feel the security and confidence that comes when they are treated in consistent ways. Any manager (and any employee) is likely to have good days and bad, based on mood alone, perhaps, or dictated by circumstances, but if these produce significant shifts in the way we treat others in ordinary exchanges then such inconsistency will inevitably lead to mistrust.
Insincerity
If a manager tells an employee that his/her work is greatly appreciated, with no criticism, and then, when time comes for a formal review, say, pay raise consideration, and then critical comments suddenly surface, these reversals will produce an immediate and large drop in trust. There should be no surprises in anyone’s formal performance evaluation!
Secrecy
While at every level in an organization there’s need to be appropriately careful about information of a proprietary nature, erring on the side of openness is always better than the opposite. When people feel left out of “the loop,” they invent their own information and will often spread potentially damaging misinformation in the form of rumors. This is one of the most insidious manifestations of a lack of trust.
Favoritism
Many managers make the mistake of spending disproportionate amounts of time with those in their organization they see as “winners.” While this is natural enough, it is fraught with two kinds of trust-busting reality: It takes away valuable time that could be used to positively influence those persons who could benefit from counseling and encouragement and it creates the perception (sometimes valid) that when the time comes for promotions or pay raises, those same “favorites” will get preferential treatment.
In contemplating the state of your organization and when attempting to improve the cohesion of all the people on the payroll, their level of commitment to a credo of quality, think carefully about how you treat your own people. Equally importantly, communicate your concerns on this topic openly with all the other supervisory personnel to build a solid understanding of the traps that so often exist in the form of the above four most common errors. Openness, in fact, in a word, is the key to building trust with anyone under any circumstances.
Some might argue that the kind of workplace environment I insist will build trust, invites various forms of advantage-taking. Granted, there is a greater likelihood for being “used,” in any open system… but despite such risks, the benefits to be gained far outweigh such negatives.
I acknowledge completely that some people are more “fragile” than others, and that no two people are alike in the ways they respond to uncertainty, to challenge and opportunity. For those reasons there will always be a need for fine-tuning. But you can be certain of one thing: If you are indulging in any of the Trust-Busting behaviors above, or others of a similar mature, the organization will never maximize on a commitment to quality.