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If you want trust, you have to invest in culture
This is an abridged version of an article that orginally appeared in HRZone.com - read the full article here.
Trust is big business. From Davos down, business leaders are consulting oracles like Edelman’s Trust Barometer or the CIPD’s Employee Outlook Report in order to increase trust in their organisations, inside and out.
It’s a perfectly sensible goal. To make trust work, however, organisations need to think clearly about what trust is, where it is found and how it is achieved.
Trust in action
In organisations with high levels of trust, employees are engaged, committed and bring their discretionary energy to work. They are more productive because they have more freedom and autonomy to apply their skills, knowledge and creativity to problem solving. In short, they are empowered.
Why, then, doesn’t every business simply remove the shackles and let its people loose to solve problems? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.
Making trust work
Employee freedom requires trust, but they are not one and same thing. A business cannot simply hand over responsibility and hope for the best. Trust-based employee autonomy cannot work without accountability, and accountability cannot function properly without a solid foundation of shared values and culture.
Making peers accountable to each other reduces the risk that autonomous problem-solving ends up with everyone pulling in different directions. It's a precondition for trust - but accountability alone offers no guarantee that people will be truly open with each other or treat each other fairly.
Vulnerability and openness
The problem is that accountability alone doesn’t allow for “vulnerability-based trust”, to borrow a phrase from Patrick Lencioni. This is the kind of trust that gives employees permission to admit to each other that they don’t have all the answers, or that they need help.
In our work, we’ve seen time and time again the breakthrough that occurs when employees trust each other enough to display this kind of vulnerability. You can almost physically feel the whole company relax its shoulders, breathe more deeply and let the energy flow.
It’s at this point that businesses become poised to reap the “low cost, high speed” benefits of trust – but it only happens after employees start to engage in a conversation about values, culture and what’s important to them.
This is because trust itself is not a value - it's an outcome of defining and following your values. Trust is not a commodity to be stored or a quality of individuals - it is an interpersonal, relational quality that arises as the result of the activities that promote shared values and behaviours.
Culture is an investment
Why do we talk about ‘investing’ in values and culture? Because figuring out your values and bringing them alive is hard work. It comes from asking deeper questions about what is important to the company (its purpose) and what is important to employees. When done right, however, investing in culture yields enormous dividends.
Granting more autonomy and employee freedom is just one piece of the puzzle. A healthy values-led culture gives you the basis on which to build accountability, foster openness and empower employees to trust each other to act freely in pursuit of a common goal. Less cost, more speed.