Trust Builds Great Employees

The glue that holds all relationships together — including the relationship between the leader and those they lead is trust, and trust is based on integrity.

When employees do not trust managers and leaders, various forms of organizational fallout are likely, including low engagement (people seem like they don’t care), high turnover and reduced innovation (no creative solutions or ideas).  Rebuilding trust isn’t easy, just as with customers who lose trust.  If employees don’t trust their boss or their boss’ boss, they begin to question how they fit in with the company and will have less pride in the organization overall.

Individuals can enjoy their work and have a strong sense of accomplishment, but Trust has to be present for employees to do go beyond the call of duty, to be innovative.  The more groundbreaking the innovation needed, the more trust must be present. Trust is built over time as people get to know each other.  Employees must trust that their co-workers and direct supervisors are competent (head trust) and will do the employee no harm (heart trust).

A single triggering event, such as a restructuring or other organizational change, can reduce the level of trust employees have in leaders.  As can other single events, such as a manager who takes credit for an employee’s work or lies to them.

Most of the time, trust erodes as a result of small subtle patterns of behavior that employees experience on a daily basis that go unaddressed. For example, working with peers who fail to prepare for a meeting, are slow to respond to e-mail or who gossip regularly. While they don’t get addressed, they don’t go unnoticed.  The result of such unaddressed behavior is that employees leave the company or, worse yet, they stay. They become the working wounded – they stay, they complain, they do as little as possible, eventually bringing others down with them.

The Reina Trust and Betrayal Model describes three main types of transactional trust:

• Contractual trust—trust of character. Do people do what they say they are going to do? Do managers and employees make clear what they expect of one another?
• Communication trust—trust of disclosure. How well people share information and tell the truth.
• Competence trust—trust of capability. How well people carry out responsibilities and acknowledge other people’s skills and abilities.

The key thing about transactional trust is that it is reciprocal in nature; you have to give it to get it.  There are specific, concrete behaviors that build trust.

• Ability: the manager’s ability to do their job.
• Understanding: displaying knowledge and understanding of employees’ roles and responsibilities.
• Fairness: behaving fairly and showing concern for the welfare of employees.
• Openness: being accessible and receptive to ideas and opinions.
• Integrity: striving to be honest and fair in decision-making.
• Consistency: behaving in a reliable and predictable manner.

So take a look at your employees, what does their behavior say about their trust in you.  If it doesn’t look good, take the steps now to begin the process of rebuilding trust.

Trust in Leadership declines

The shaky economic and employment climate in the U.S. continues to make headlines.  In a recent poll of 1,857 U.S.-based employees identified another issue for employers to worry about: a lack of employee trust in management.

Among the findings:

Only 14 percent of respondents said they believe that their company’s leaders are ethical and honest.

Just 12 percent believe their employer genuinely listens to and cares about its employees.

A small 10 percent of employees said they trust management to make the right decision in times of uncertainty.

And just 7 percent said that senior management’s actions are consistent with their words.

Poor communication, lack of perceived caring, inconsistent behavior and perceptions of favoritism were cited by respondents as the largest contributors to their lack of trust in senior leaders.

It seems that a strong indicator of management mistrust is lack of shared values.  If a company truly wants to engage its workforce, drive trust and gain loyalty, it must implement a culture that recognizes individual behaviors that contribute to the company’s values and goals, and sadly, this isn’t common practice. … Only 8 percent of employees say they are frequently recognized for demonstrating behavior consistent with their company’s stated values.  And I hate to add that simple Thank You’s and other types of simple acknowledgement of employee efforts is sorely lacking in todays workforce.  Are we all so busy we forgot the fundamentals?

 

 

Is your organizational culture what you think it is?

In my role I have the opportunity to work with leaders at all levels of all kinds of organizations. About half of my work involves leadership skill building and team process effectiveness; culture for the most part makes up the other half.

It is impossible for me to go into an organization without subconsciously (maybe consciously) assessing the culture of their work environment. I observe and listen for how people are expected to behave, to perform, to treat each other and their customers.

I often hear about practices and philosophies from the leadership that clearly is not in practice within the organization.  And I can say that you need to use a lot of diplomacy to tell the CEO, “I know what you’re saying happens, but it doesn’t happen that way”.  It’s hard to hear that you have tried to build something a specific way and that way is not happening.

Whether an organization has intentionally created their culture or that culture evolved by default, it does have a culture that is tangible and observable. If your culture was created by default, it is likely that unintentional values or norms exist. If you consistently see conflicts,
blame, poor performance, and frustration, your culture is eroding employee morale with every passing minute! Let’s look at two very powerful systems which may reinforce undesirable valued behaviors in your organization.

Rewards and Incentives

Whether you have formalized values and valued behaviors or not, rewards and incentive systems can cause distinct behaviors, some good, some not good. For example, if you desire a team culture but your organization offers only individual compensation, you will likely see “I win, you lose” behaviors by team members.

A few years back a client described the following inappropriate, incentive-driven behaviors by a salesperson. The company paid a very low base; over 70% of sales staff compensation was in the form of commissions. One salesperson negotiated with a few of his big clients to sell
them product at the end of each quarter. The sales person enjoyed commissions on these sales. Then, one month into the new quarter, he would process returns of that product and refund the client’s money. He was generating commissions on “ghost” sales. This went on every quarter. Everyone – the salesperson, the client, the finance team of his company – knew what he was doing and tolerated this behavior. Eventually the company changed the rules about commissions on product returns, but the damage had been done.

 Recognition and Messaging

Every time you publicly celebrate someone for a behavior or action, you are reinforcing that behavior or action. If you recognize a player for goal accomplishment but everyone knows that they’ve taken inappropriate short cuts (for example) to reach that goal, you are reinforcing undesirable actions.

Even praising the RIGHT behavior can have unintended (and undesirable) consequences. One client celebrated a staff member who learned the wrong materials had been shipped to a client. That person packed the right material and drove to the airport just in time for overnight shipment by UPS. Recovery was expensive but the materials arrived on time. The client celebrated this terrific proactive solution and such recoveries became more frequent. The client realized they needed to celebrate solving the “why do we ship the wrong materials?” problem more than celebrating the recovery!

You don’t have to be a CEO to create values clarity in your own workteam. If you experience unintentional values in your workplace, start setting values expectations now.

Accountability – A desired behavior

When I meet with potential clients I try to better understand the challenges they are facing and how I may or may not be able to help them.  I typically ask a series of questions about their current state, about their desired state, and then about the priorities for addressing identified gaps.

One of the biggest concerns raised is often times the lack of accountability across their organization. Many times organizations implement a training session in an attempt to change behavior.  Something I always bring up is that “skills building alone” does not change behavior.

In my experience, there are some excellent ways skills building (training) can address leader behaviors and practices in a workplace. And, training will result in leaders demonstrating desired behaviors only if the organization’s culture supports leaders modeling those new behaviors.

We have all experienced training participants learning new skills and practicing those skills – quite effectively – in a structured rehearsal setting during the training. Observing those players demonstrate those skills could lead one to believe, “OK, they’ve got it now!” However, until desired behaviors are observed in the workplace, on the job, in real-time, one must believe that the training hasn’t translated into workplace behavior.

SKILLS for holding others accountable are different from ACTIONS for holding others accountable.

If skills have been effectively taught but desired actions are not observed, there are other things getting in the way. Attention must be focused on eliminating any policies, procedures, systems, or dynamics that hurt or hinder the demonstration of desired behaviors.

Four Steps to Consistent Accountability

Accountability is a huge requirement in the high performance, values-aligned culture. Our proven culture change process helps senior leaders be explicitly clear about performance and values expectations, and then hold all organization members, from senior leaders through front line staff, accountable for exceeding those expectations.

Our clients have had tremendous success creating consistent accountability by implementing these four steps:

1. Process Coaching – senior leaders need guidance on how to proactively champion their desired high performance, values-aligned culture. Experienced consultants coach the senior leadership team on these steps and other vital activities to ensure traction.
2. Create clarity – Create specific & measurable performance goals. Define values in behavioral terms. Get agreement from all players to embrace both.
3. Gather & Share Data – Monitor performance progress regularly and provide feedback on the good, the bad, and the ugly. Create a custom values survey which ranks the extent to which leaders demonstrate desired valued behaviors each day. Share these results within three weeks of final data gathering. Run the values survey twice annually. Successive runs of the custom values survey will include staff as well as leaders.
4. Praise & Redirect - Regularly celebrate high performers and great citizens (those who demonstrate desired values). Promptly redirect leaders and staff to increase performance to standard or better citizenship. If a values-aligned player struggles to meet performance expectations, reassign them into a role where they contribute. If they are unable to contribute in any role, you need to lovingly set them free – let them find employment elsewhere. If a player does not demonstrate desired valued behaviors, you must reaffirm values expectations and observe closely. If they can make the shift to values-alignment (it is rare), celebrate! If not, lovingly set them free.

What accountability systems have you or your organization had success with to increase accountability for performance and values?