Did you know that higher levels of trust are correlated with improved performance?  Not just at the individual level, but across the organisation.  Research from the last decade has measured how much people trust their manager, and seen that the higher the trust, the better the organisation has performed relative to similar organisations.   Your CEO and their team might be interested!

So how do you enable managers to build trust?

Going around saying ‘Trust me, I’m your Manager’ isn’t likely to hit the spot is it?

Taking a look at the questions used to measure trust gives a great indication of where to start.  The questions asked how much employees agreed with the following statements:

• Managers here can be relied upon to keep their promises
• Managers here deal with employees honestly
• Managers here treat employees fairly
• Managers here are sincere in attempting to understand employees’ views

It’s tempting to say this is just common sense, so we should simply add these behaviours to management competency frameworks.  Except it’s not quite that simple…

• What does being honest mean?
• How much information are managers allowed to share with employees, how much do they know?

The implication of these questions is that the behaviours should be seen across the management population, meaning that senior leaders need to be honest about what is happening in the organisation.  Some leaders may believe they have good reason NOT to be honest about challenges, since employees will only worry about matters outside their control.

Similarly, what does treating employees fairly mean in practice?  We all think we know what fairness is until we are faced with difficult choices.  For example – are some people ‘trusted’ to work from home while others are not?  How are choices made?  Are some people allowed more flexibility because they have caring responsibilities, while others without such responsibilities are not?  Is this fair?

To develop a management and leadership group that is broadly perceived as fair, reliable, understanding and honest requires some meaningful engagement between managers.  Activities such as exploring complex case examples, looking at real events that have happened in the organisation, considering the implications of choices about what is shared and what isn’t will all make a real difference.   Maybe your frontline supervisors and junior managers don’t feel trusted themselves – how will this impact their ability to grow trust in their teams?

If you want to build trust, you need to think about it intentionally across the leadership team and entire management population – not just as a set of practices for individuals, important though these are.

If you would like to speak to us about tools and techniques to help managers build trust with their teams, and how we could help,  drop us a quick email, and we can fix a short teams call.

Hedda

01491 411 544

info@3cperform.co.uk