Distrust is rampant. It’s worldwide. It’s pervasive across all types of organizations in the business world. Even though the trust of CEOs is at an all-time low, we can help heal the distrust that may exist in your organization and boost your trust-factor among your employees.
Related article: How to get Accountability in The DNA of Your Team
As humans, we are wired to trust, we want to trust and have a connection with our fellow employees. Organizations can’t ‘buy’ the trust of their team, but they can create and foster it through increasing engagement and avoiding common pitfalls.
An organisation that continuously activates the reward network is more productive and effective. An organisation that continuously activates the pain network suffers from three common leadership pitfalls:
- Pitfall #1: Asking for feedback yet not acting on it
- Pitfall #2: Unemotional or not compelling mission, vision values
- Pitfall #3: Ineffective delegation
When we activate the reward network, an organization inspires intrinsic motivation in their tribe. This intrinsic motivation creates an environment where your talent wants to rise up, be accountable, honour the organization’s mission, vision, values and deliver consistent results.
Trust Drives Talent
Accountability is deeply tied to promises and trust. Safety, belonging, and mattering are quickly damaged when accountability is dropped. In my experience, trust is broken in three levels: capability, commitment and character.
- Capability: Is the organization truly capable of doing what was promised? Capability breaches of trust are the easiest to fix if a company moves swiftly and is transparent.
- Commitment: Is the organization committed to following through on what was promised? Commitment breaches can be tricky. When an organization repeatedly drops commitments, we must find out what the underlying cause is. This can be achieved through leaders working with an executive coach and discovering/determining what they truly want to achieve. This can also be achieved by listening to the feedback from the employees.
- Character: If an organization keeps making promises and breaking them, who are they, really? Empowered and engaged employees want to be part of an organization they can count on. Character breaches are the hardest to fix since the employees now doubt what the organization totally stands for.
Breaches in capability, commitment and character can take months or even years of demonstrating consistency to win back trust. The organizations that I’ve worked with typically see positive results begin within 6-18 months, depending on the level of Critter State among their team and the severity of the breach.
Trust Drives ROI
55% of CEO’s think that a lack of trust is a threat to their organization’s growth. But most have done little to increase trust, mainly because they aren’t sure where to start. Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report:
- 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
Consider your organization’s capability, commitment, and character. How are you doing? We can help you to do an Employee Engagement Survey and give you the results on our unique ”Heat Map” report. Contact me to arrange this quick survey or email: jake@thrive-cm.com
First seen on Forbes.com
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