Trust Leads To Productivity
Total HR Management believes that trust is the foundation of all positive relationships in a business or organization. If trust is inherent to a corporate culture, it greatly helps to ensure future productivity. Trust is one of the strongest bonds that can exist between employers and employees, between co-workers, and between employees and clients; trust is also one of the most fragile. Once you damage it, it is the most difficult facet of a company culture to rebuild. A culture of trust can be fostered in your organization if you steer clear of actions that undermine trust and support honest communication.
Trust in organizations is dependent upon the degree that these three main components are experienced:
- The capacity for trusting means that you believe in trust and are willing to trust others.
- The perception of competence is made up of the perception of your ability and the ability of others with whom you work to perform competently.
- The perception of intentions is the perception that a person’s or company’s actions, words, and decisions are motivated by mutually-serving rather than self-serving motives.
Once established, trust is a powerful motivator that helps to increase productivity. It is essential to prevent hurting your organization by avoiding these five basic ways of damaging trust.
Four Ways to Damage Trust In An Organization
Trust Is Essential In A Corporate Environment
For trust to exist in an organization, there must be a certain amount of transparency . When this transparency is undermined and violations of trust are revealed, the company is damaged.
Here are four ways that trust is most commonly damaged:
1) Lies of Commission: Obvious lies with the intention to deceive or confuse. Such lies when revealed impact the whole organization. Coworker relationships are undermined by lies of commission. If it’s not the whole truth, if it requires preparation and wordsmithing, if you need to remember the details to ensure you don’t change your story in the retelling, you are probably telling a lie. At the very least, part of your story is a lie. Can you imagine the impact of lies on an organization when the liar is a senior manager?
2) Lies of Omission: A lie of omission is a deliberate attempt to deceive another person by omitting portions of the truth. Lies of omission are particularly egregious as they give people false impressions and attempt to influence behavior by omitting important details. Once again, the more powerful the perpetrator of the lie of omission in the organization, the more significantly trust is affected in a company’s culture.
3) Failure to Walk the Talk: No matter the work program, cultural expectation, or management style, you will destroy trust if you fail to demonstrate the quality or behavioral expectation, if you fail to walk the talk. Words are easy; it is the behavior that demonstrates your fulfillment of actions that helps employees to trust you. You cannot, as an example, state that participative management and employee empowerment are the desired form of leadership in your organization, unless you demonstrate these expectations in actual policy.
4) Fail to Do What You Promise to Do: Few employees expect that every statement, goal and projection that you make will come true. If the majority of them do not come true, then trust is undermined For Example: Sales will be up 10%. No layoffs are anticipated. We will hire ten new employees this quarter. My assignment will be complete by the end of the first quarter. If you make a statement, commitment, or projection, employees expect what you said to happen. If it does not happen, it should be addressed and not ignored. You destroy trust if the end result never occurs and this issue is not addressed.
When a business enters difficult times, you can avoid destroying trust by communicating honestly and frequently about new challenges when they arise. With our delivery of the best practices in human resource management, Total HR Management helps our clients to establish a positive culture of trust. By treating employees with respect and carrying through on stated policy, a company can build an effective culture of trust that will help to improve long-term productivity and profitability.
