The Performance Improvement Blog

Leader's Simple Guide to Building and Retaining Trust

Trust seems to be in short supply these days. Democrats don’t trust Republicans. Israelis don’t trust Palestinians. Christians don’t trust Muslims. CEO’s don’t trust employees and vice versa. It’s a sad state of affairs, given that trust is essential for compromise, collaboration, and co-existence. We will not follow a leader nor will we be engaged in the task unless we trust that leader. As human beings we need to believe that we can rely on others to keep their word, that they will do the right thing, and that they will not do anything that is harmful to us. Some leaders believe, apparently, that they can say and do anything to get what they want and then apologize, if need be, later. They falsly believe that control is more powerful than trust. It’s as if it is the earned right of a politician or an executive to behave in this way. The cost of this kind of behavior is a loss of trust by the people surrounding these leaders. 

Leaders can learn to build and retain the trust of others. Stephen M.R. Covey offers 13 ways to do this:      

1. Talk Straight
2. Demonstrate Concern
3. Create Transparency
4. Right Wrongs
5. Show Loyalty
6. Deliver Results
7. Get Better
8. Confront Reality
9. Clarify Expectations
10. Practice Accountability
11. Listen First
12. Keep Commitments
13. Extend Trust

I would move “keep commitments” to the top of this list. That’s usually our first opportunity to behave in a trustworthy fashion. From something as seemingly trivial as promptly returning a phone call to showing up at a meeting on time to arranging a promised jog change, we show that we deserve to be trusted.

Even if we work at building trust, each of us will at some point do things unintentionally that break down trust. For example, we miss an appointment, we forget to keep someone in the loop on a project, or we are unable to keep a promise that we made. We can recover; we must recover. Randy Conley lists five things we can do to heal the wounds. He writes:

1. Acknowledge that trust has been broken.
2. Admit your role in causing the breach of trust.
3. Apologize for what happened.
4. Assess where the breakdown in trust happened…
5. Amend the situation by taking corrective action to repair any damage that has been done, and create an action plan for how you’ll improve in the future. 

Why do we make it so difficult? It’s simply a matter of making commitments we can keep, following through, and apologizing sincerely if we can’t. Of course, it’s more than that, but that’s the essence of building and retaining trust. 

 

Addendum: Success is Half Strategy, Half Execution, and Half Culture

My previous post was about the impact of culture on two contrasting news organizations. In UK Parliament hearings yesterday, we heard another example of the negative impact culture can have on a media company. Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation, said he was not responsible for phone hacking and payoffs by the staff of his News of the World tabloid. Maybe he wasn’t involved in that criminal activity directly and maybe had no knowledge of these actions by his employees, but as CEO of the organization and as someone who has tremendous influence on workplace culture, he is responsible. He created, or, at the minimum, allowed to exist, a culture that recognized and rewarded news by any means necessary. The ends justified the means at News of the World. Reporters would do anything to get a news scoop and the more salacious the better. A CEO in a large organization cannot know everything that goes on but that person must instill appropriate values and incentives, for example, respect for the laws of the land.

 

Success is Half Strategy, Half Execution, and Half Culture

It sounds like something Yogi Berra said. Regardless of whether or not he did, it’s an engaging way for Martin Ashcroft, Editor-In-Chief of Business Excellence, to begin a post about the relationship between strategy, execution, and culture and how our thinking about these aspects of organization success have changed over time.  Strategy and execution are certainly important, but without a culture that supports employee engagement, long-term success is unlikely. He writes:

…the most successful companies seem now to be combining these two approaches in their 21st century strategies. The rigid sounding top-down economic approach has evolved as performance initiatives like lean and continuous improvement take hold. With the emphasis of these initiatives being on workforce empowerment, enlightened CEOs have begun to realize they may not have a monopoly on ideas. Companies are increasingly adopting a collaborative approach to strategic ideas, where contributions can be passed up the managerial chain from the bottom. Not only does this capture ideas that may otherwise have been missed, but as the most brilliant strategy can succeed only if it is properly executed, gaining workforce commitment to the organization’s future strategic direction can only contribute to its success.

The importance of culture is evident in a recently released documentary, Page One: Inside the New York Times. I saw it last night and although the movie is focused on the plight of newspapers in the digital age, what struck me most about this story was the contrast in cultures between NY Times and the Tribune Company after it was purchased by Sam Zell. Although both companies publish big city newspapers that are trying desperately to adapt to an instant, online news environment, their cultures are very different. And this difference in cultures appears to be what has made the difference in each company’s success. The NY Times is portrayed through the lens of a camera and director’s editing to be, at its core, humane, considerate, and respectful of its employees even in the competitive environment of deadlines and news scoops. NY Times leadership seems to be clear about its values and the importance of keeping to its core competencies, even while embracing the latest technologies. The Tribune Company, on the other hand, appears to have created a culture at the Chicago Tribune that denigrates women and rewards the owners at the expense of its staff. One is surviving and the other is in bankruptcy.

Having goals and a plan to reach those goals is certainly important. Following through on plans is also important. However, neither strategy nor execution matter if you have a culture in which employees feel devalued and don’t trust their leaders. Pat Zigarmi and Judd Hoekstra make this point in a post about culture at the WD-40 Company titled, What’s Killing Your Change Initiatives? Quoting the CEO, they write:

“Faced with the complexity of most change efforts, organizations need to gain everyone’s buy-in,” said Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40. “When peers become change agents together, they can become catalysts for the change process.”

One of the most likely suspects is an organization’s culture. According to Ridge the motive for the crime is usually fear of the unknown. He said leaders must remove the fear by including rather than excluding employees from decision-making processes related to the change. An inclusive, agile, high-involvement, transparent and trustworthy culture enables change, whereas a bureaucratic, secretive, low-trust culture can kill it. “The tone at the top sets the agenda for a trusted change effort and creates the culture where it can thrive,” Ridge said.

Out of fear or out of ignorance, managers tend to intensify their control behaviors when faced with competitive pressures and a need for change. The Tribune Company turned over leadership to someone who appears to have been more concerned with a quick return on his investment than the civic responsibility of the press. Many organizations under stress stop listening to their employees. Strategic planning reverts back to executive management, execution comes in the way of top-down directives, and the very people who are essential to making the company succeed are left out in the cold.

 

Trust, Employee Engagement, and Customer Service

The latest "10X10" (ten tips and ten resources) from RealTime Performance is about customer service. It's a useful list of ideas for improving employee performance as it relates to customer service and a book title that corresponds to each suggestion. Employees can read these books to learn more about each idea.

The key to most successful relationships with customers, as it is in all relationships, is a sense of mutual trust. This "10X10" offers some suggestions for building trust. For example, one tip is:

Grant employees as much autonomy as possible when working with customers to meet their current and future needs.  At Ritz-Carlton, every employee has the ability to exercise judgment in spending up to $2,000 per day, per guest to resolve issues and enhance the guest experience. What companies like Ritz-Carlton have realized over the years is that the least costly solution is the one that happens immediately. The more time a customer complaint or an issue has to grow, the bigger and more costly it becomes. Trust your employees to resolve customer issues when and where they happen.

Being responsive to customers, even if you can't fulfill their requests, helps build trust. We know from our own experiences as customers that we quickly lose trust in people who take an unreasonably long time to do what they said they were going to do. And giving employees the responsibility and authority to resolve customer issues, goes a long way toward building their trust in you, as well as enhancing employee engagement.  

Grimm Stories

I heard Lisbeth Schorr once say, "No data without stories and no stories without data." She was pointing out both the sterile nature of numbers and the misleading nature of stories when describing populations. As we seek to describe human behavior in organizations her advice is important to keep in mind. The percentage of employees who indicate on a survey that they are satisfied with their work doesn't tell me how Bill becomes and stays engaged each day. An anecdote about Jane's excitement and success in a new job doesn't tell me the level of engagement in that organization.

Valerie Gribben, a medical student, writes in the New York Times about the meaning that fairy tales, have in her hospital rotations. Fairy tales are, for many of us, our earliest exposure to stories. Ms. Gribben had put aside these fables when she became a serious medical student, but now sees them in the characters she meets each day. She writes:

I found my way back to stories. The Grimm fairy tales once seemed as if they took place in lands far, far away, but I see them now in my everyday hospital rotations. I’ve met the eternal cast of characters. I’ve taken down their histories (the abandoned prince, the barren couple) or seen their handiwork (the evil stepmother, the lecherous king).

Fairy tales are, at their core, heightened portrayals of human nature, revealing, as the glare of injury and illness does, the underbelly of mankind. Both fairy tales and medical charts chronicle the bizarre, the unfair, the tragic. And the terrifying things that go bump in the night are what doctors treat at 3 a.m. in emergency rooms.

So I now find comfort in fairy tales. They remind me that happy endings are possible. With a few days of rest and proper medication, the bewildered princess left relaxed and smiling, with a set of goals and a new job in sight. The endoscopy on my cross-eyed confidante showed she was cancer-free.

They also remind me that what I’m seeing now has come before. Child endangerment is not an invention of the Facebook age. Elder neglect didn’t arrive with Gen X. And discharge summaries are not always happy; “Cinderella” originally ended with a blinding, and Death, in his tattered shroud, waits at the end of many journeys.

Whether hospital patients or managers in organizations, it is easy to relate to people as statistics. This many kidney transplants; that many strokes. This many salespeople met their goals; that many have stayed in sales more than four years. But what about their stories, grim or otherwise? What can we learn from their tales of love and loss, caring and neglect, dispare and joy? Crunch the numbers...but also look into the heart and soul of each person.