Trust is where it’s at – trust us!
In the post-pandemic (& dare we say Brexit) world it’s clear that without trust, it’s harder to recruit and retain colleagues, meet organisational objectives and build strong customer relationships – but why has it become such a super value?
It’s fair to say that we’ve been through a rocky patch! People have re-prioritised and, having been through a time when psychological safety was hard to find, it’s become hugely important, even though we may not always realise it.
What is Trust?
In research published in 2021, Trust is defined as a ‘Willingness to accept vulnerability based on the positive expectations of the motivations and behaviours of others – but what does this mean in practice?
The research indicates Trust has three pillars, Competence, Compassion, and Integrity.
This is important because people will seek these pillars out – often unconsciously. As professionals, parents, recruiters, leaders, and basically any functions that involves collaboration with people, we must live and breathe these pillars to build Trust, which in turn, is key to success.
Impact of Broken Trust
- When recruiting, broken trust will usually lead to losing your chosen candidate or them not even applying in the first place
- For colleagues, they will be less likely to apply cooperation, discretionary effort, knowledge sharing, proven impact on problem solving, resilience and commercial return (up to 5% decrease on profit per trust point on a 1-5 scale in one very large-scale piece of research done)
- For leaders there is an increase of less productive leadership behaviours such as micromanagement, blame, high power distance (lack of empowerment and delegation)
How & Why does Trust get broken?
Leaders and recruiters are often baffled about why people don’t trust them. It often comes down to these three things.
- Discounting the impact of poor business planning/ change in priorities without proper briefing that is perceived and poor business planning (competence breach)
- Missing the fact their transpose their own perceptual filter onto decisions that should be informed by what is important for/ value by colleagues & candidates (compassion breach)
- Convincing themselves of the spin they’ve created which appears to others inauthentic at best and probably more like dishonest (integrity breach)
Pre pandemic many business struggled with leadership trust in colleagues – revisiting previous research, we proved the point of outcome and empowerment based leadership and management in about 2004, yet many businesses still work in cultures of high control, micromanagement and low trust.
A temporary deal was struck for many during the pandemic, creating compassion of their pressures and challenges and the need to manage from a distance, so it not surprising that the drive to get back to normal is jarring. People are still understanding what they need from their employers and some leaders are trying to regain visibility and control.
It suggests many leaders haven’t done what they need to trust the competence and motivation of their people, so have existed in an uncomfortable world of having to let a go a bit before they’ve tried to grasp back control.
However, using the old messages of connection, practicalities or productivity won’t work and bring leaders integrity, compassion and competence into question.
So what can we do to build Trust?
There is a world where we could proactively use our understanding of the functions of trust to plan for and then deliver on people decisions in a way the fosters and protect trust.
Trust isn’t won overnight. Leaders need to take time to honestly review the pillars of trust in their organisation and their own behaviour – not always easy and painless but worth it in the longer term. In the meantime, there are some simple actions that can go a long way.
- If we are asking people to come back to office we need to have authentic reasons for it and then actually make the changes to workspaces and working patterns in a way that shows those things were authentic priorities.
- When recruiting, make sure your process honestly reflects the opportunity and your culture, then do the basics well – brief candidates, respond in a timely manner, prepare for interview, and give feedback. These simple actions go a long way.
- Engage external expertise who can help you see your organisation through a fresh lens
- Listen to colleagues, ask for feedback (pulse surveys, regular conversations, starter & leaver interviews), be honest and act with integrity
Trust is the cornerstone of any good relationship – it’s essential – so let’s get building!
