The issue of trust can make or break an organization. According to Harvard Business Review: “People crave transparency, openness, and honesty from their leaders. Unfortunately, business leaders continue to face issues of trust. According to a survey by the American Psychological Association, one in four workers say they don’t trust their employer, and only about half believe their employer is open and upfront with them.”
Related article: How do You Cultivate Passion in Your Organisation?
Decisions driven by emotions
90% of our decisions of our behaviours are driven by our emotional brain. This means we are highly emotional beings driven by deep subconscious patterning. When we learn how to tap in and connect to deep subconscious patterning and how to give people what they truly crave at subterranean levels, we get peak performing teams that trust us and trust their organization.
The brain’s pain network gets activated when we feel physical pain eg: lack of safety, social exclusion (no belonging), bereavement (loss), betrayal (unfair treatment), and negative social comparison (no mattering). Our reward network is activated when we feel things like physical pleasure (safety), cooperating (belonging), having a good reputation (mattering), being treated fairly (trust), giving to charity .
The foundation of trust is safety, belonging and mattering
What happens when we have a culture that is full of fear, stress and confusion? Our team does not experience safety, belonging and mattering, therefore a culture of trust can’t exist. How do we move through a culture of fear towards a culture of trust? At Thrive Change Management we use some pretty cool and practical neuroscience-based tools and techniques.
Is Your Team Engaged?
Ask yourself, how engaged is your team? Engagement is directly related to trust. One of the easiest ways to assess your team is to have them participate in an Employee Engagement Survey twice a year. Be sure to make cultural changes based on the answers they give you.
- Have them answer questions that are based around safety, belonging, mattering.
- Make sure that they can add comments and that their anonymity is protected. Your team won’t answer honestly if they feel that their answers could come back to haunt them in the form of losing their job.
- Compare how engaged you ‘think’ your tribe is vs the feedback you receive.
This experience is very telling and uncovers blind spots which open the door towards putting processes in place to increase team engagement. There are 4 proven & trusted Neuroscience-Based tools we use that can help you:
- Create a Shared Identity
- Align with Strong Mission, Vision and Values
- Engage with Cultural Rituals and Appreciation
- Communicate with Transparency, Feedback, Fairness
As leaders, our companies exist to make people’s lives easier. We provide products and services that make people’s lives better and that solve problems. But a funny thing happens when our teams don’t feel connected. Productivity decreases, our teams become disengaged and our profits plummet. Creating a culture that is engaged that trusts their leader isn’t as cosmic as it seems, there is a formula.
ROI
Trust creates reliable environments. Enriched environments are more reliable. Reliable and enriched environments equal ROI. A more enriched, interactive tribal environment is good for the brain and good for the business. What do we mean by enriched? This environment is interactive and stimulating, which increases the surface area of brain cells. The result? Team members making more connections, solving problems faster, figuring things out faster and innovating better.
A brain in a more reliable (trust their leader) and enriched (stimulating) environment will have more connections which equals more meaning (personalizing things around you).
Thrive Change Management can help you build a more enriched, interactive tribal environment by rethinking the work environment in ways that encourage people to be more welcoming of challenges and problems and give them the tools to solve the problems as they encounter them. Contact us for more information or email: jake@thrive-cm.com.
First published on Forbes.com
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