Business Skills
Im achten Teil unserer Serie zum Thema „Führung“geht es um Vertrauen. Dabei ist es wichtig, dass zwischen Führungskräften und Mitarbeitern, aber auch innerhalb eines Teams gegenseitiges Vertrauen herrscht. BOB DIGNEN erklärt, wie sich dies erreichen lässt
How to build trust within your teams
TRUST IS A CLEAR SUCCESS FACTOR FOR FIRMS, YET IT IS ALSO IN A STATE OF CRISIS
“In my team, we don’t have time to worry about trust. We just need to get the job done — fast!” I heard this comment from a client some ten years ago while I was leading a training session in Germany on the role of trust in international teams. It was an interesting and challenging statement. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, and so the discussion moved on to another topic.
But the comment stayed with me and got me thinking. Was this guy right? A lot of people talk about trust as if it’s essential for today’s leaders and the teams and organizations within which they work. But is this just one myth among many others in the field of so-called management science?
In this article, we take a closer look at trust and its relevance for leaders today. We examine what trust really means, correct popular misconceptions about the concept, examine its real benefits for teams and look at the barriers to developing trust at work. And we offer a practical tool that you can use in your teams to develop the trust necessary to deliver better results. Sounds too good to be true? Just trust me, and read on!
1. Trust matters!
So, was that client of mine correct all those years ago? Is trust a luxury rather than a necessity? Actually, there is very strong evidence confirming the positive value of trust. Interaction Associates published a study in 2015 showing a clear correlation between high performance in organizations in terms of revenue, and high levels of trust among their employees.
Organizations defined as “Trust Leaders” were two and half times more likely to be high performing revenue organizations (HPROS) than those that were not. In addition to stronger revenue growth, these organizations also scored higher on other important performance indicators, such as building customer loyalty and maintaining a competitive market position. So, it seems that trust really does matter.
In spite of its value, however, trust seems to be at critically low levels in many organizations. In a survey quoted in the Harvard Business Review in 2016, a very bleak picture was painted: “We surveyed approximately 9,800 full-time workers, ages 19 to 68, in Brazil, China, Germany, India, Mexico, Japan, the UK, and the U.S. Our most striking finding was that fewer than half of all surveyed professionals have a high amount of trust in their companies … and 15 per cent report ‘very little’ or ‘no trust at all’.”
With trust as a clear success factor, yet in a state of crisis in so many organizations, it becomes a leadership imperative to engage more deeply with the concept.
2. What is “trust” exactly?
Although the term “trust” frequently comes up in conversations, it is a surprisingly complex concept. It can be both a starting point (a cause) and an outcome (an effect). Trust can clearly develop over time as relationships grow, until we happily say that we trust each other. On the other hand, we often demand trust up front as a basis for effective collaboration: “If only we could trust each other more, we could perform so much better.”
If we examine trust more closely, it seems to be no more than a feeling, an