Recession Success: How Trustworthy Are You?
“Trust in our leaders and institutions is at an all time low, so how do you engender trust within your business?” asks executive coach and author Blaire Palmer in a recent HR Zone column. The solution? Coach and develop the people in your organization to trust more readily and be more trustworthy themselves, she says.
Leaders earn that trust by being credible, reliable, by developing intimacy with others and by demonstrating they are motivated by more than self-interest. But the real test, she says, is how leaders are perceived by others:
Without trust, it is almost impossible to lead. At a time when organizations are asking for more than ever from their workforce (work longer hours, be more creative, achieve more with fewer resources) leaders must be able to convince employees that the strategy is right — that success is possible and that effort will be recognized.
In companies where trust has been seriously damaged by previous generations of managers, new and existing leaders need to move beyond a commitment of words — which, alone, does nothing to build trust — to actions, and lots of them, she says. And this happens time and time again in companies where leaders may have had only the most genuine of motivations from the beginning.
In the current environment, one can safely assume that employees that are usually more comfortable with risk will now be displaying cautious traits, such as being wary to trust authority figures that have the power to fire or demote them. That’s why, Palmer says, “instead of assuming people trust you just because they did in the past, assume that they need more evidence of your integrity and moral fiber at this time.” Trust is always a two-way game between managers and workers, she says:
Only when they can see that decisions are made fairly are powerless individuals able to trust those with more power. If leaders are wondering why they trust their people but trust isn’t always returned, remind them of the power that comes with authority.
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