Building Trust Within an Organization, Part IV

Catch up on the previous blogs in this 4 part series here:

Building Trust Within Organizations Part I

Building Trust Within Organizations Part II

Building Trust Within Organizations Part III

As mentioned earlier, it is easy to destroy trust and increase cynicism towards the organization. And trust levels are low or in decline in organizations which:

• Leadership views employees as fungible, as mere pieces on a chess board to be manipulated to serve their own ends. Day-to-day the treatment is transactional. You are paid for a service you provide. No more, no less and no loyalty.
• When top leadership surrounds themselves with others that have obvious shortcomings, whether they are in it for personal gain, or simply sycophants or lackeys doing what the top leadership asks of them regardless of the ethics or consequences.
• And if the leadership is viewed as simply incompetent, cynicism will rise, and people will have little loyalty or trust to the organization or the leadership.
• Ethics violations, which are anathema to employees, are one sure way to destroy trust as is managing the staff through fear, intimidation or threats. A boss who shouts at or threatens subordinates is one sure sign of a low trust environment.
• When organizations proclaim one thing publicly or to staff, but in reality, are secretly pursuing different agendas, when ultimately exposed, those secrets will destroy trust.
• Similarly, when actions are taken without any explanation or communications, or seemingly logic, trust will also suffer.
• Inconsistency of policy implementation, or creating a policy and then having subjective enforcement, where some can get away with violations but others suffer for violations is favoritism and will destroy trust, as does nepotism, which provides opportunity to some over others simply due to accidents of birth or connections.

[Related Blog: Surveys Only Matter to Employees When Feedback Is Valued By Leadership]

These components are necessary to move to a trust-centered environment:

• First off, there has to be a desire to create or enhance a high level of trust within the environment. And that has to start at the very top. Creating a trusting environment is not a bottom-up process.
• There has to be acceptance that whatever the current situation, that change is necessary. If leadership sees no reason for change, then it simply won’t occur.
• And among the leaders there has to be personalities that have the ability to change. People with low openness scores are usually very resistant to changing the status-quo. Having the right leadership in place with the right personality to effect change is a pre-requisite.
• Issues that are damaging to trust must be dealt with openly and directly. Assuming that they will resolve themselves or can be ignored with no intervention taking place will scuttle any changes that are being implemented.
• The organization needs to undertake an assessment of the behaviors and issues that are occurring or perceived to be occurring that are damaging to trust. Without a roadmap the organization is flying blind.
• One successful approach to building trust is to identify shared and common goals that all can agree to and that all can work towards. For instance, revenue targets are not inspirational for those not affected by revenue improvements, especially in situations where increased revenue means more work without more pay. Identifying goals that are meaningful to all is important.
• Those mutually agreed upon and shared goals should be delineated. Whether those goals are between the individual and organization, between two or more agencies, or between nation-states. Having a shared vision of the end-state enhances the ability for the various components to build trust together.
• Once identified those behaviors, actions and processes that enhance trust need to be implemented, at the very top of the house and then replicated down through the levels. Lower-level managers must have clear explanations regarding what is acceptable and unacceptable policy and practice.
• And those policies and practices must be maintained over the long run.

[Related Blog: Do Your Employees Trust You?]

Measuring trust to assess the starting point and progress

• The best way to determine the current level of trust in an organization and to determine which policies and practices are enhancing or denigrating trust is to go to the people within the organization and ask them.
• Focus groups are a good starting point, and then using the focus group findings to ask everyone in the organization their thoughts and opinions is critical. For one way to show people that you value them is to listen to them and act on what they tell you.
• A periodic assessment of how you are doing in enhancing trust in the organization is a very effective way to measure and if properly implemented to get the whole team focused on the essentials of creating a trusting environment.

Like the personality characteristic of openness, the level of trust a person is willing or able to give is not a binary condition. People are not either trustful or distrustful. Rather trust exists along a continuum. It is both situation specific and personality specific. There are those at the higher end of the distribution who are naturally inclined to be trusting. And there are those at the lower end of the distribution that are cynical to the core and do not trust anyone or any institution regardless of any efforts to build trust. Change efforts within any organization will have the most impact on those in the middle of the distribution, but that doesn’t mean that those at the lower end are a lost cause. With careful actions and a long-term orientation, even those who are extremely distrustful, might be able to trust a bit more. Organizations that are thoughtful around issues of trust are more successful in building and maintaining employee trust long-term.

To see the references used for the entire Trust series, click here.

Want to learn more about measuring employee trust? We are offering a Trust survey, which can be administered on its own or added to a census survey. Contact us for more information.