Building Trust in the Workplace

I wonder how many of you have been in situations where you have either told somebody “Just trust me” or have been told by somebody, “Trust me, I know that this is right or I know that this is good.” I thought to myself that it’s a statement that invites people to either place a lot of trust on a person; i.e. to believe in a person, to think that there is sufficient knowledge about that person that they can allow you to make a decision on their behalf sometimes. Or to believe that a decision that you made affecting something that they were doing, was a good decision. I think the more vertical you get in an organization, the higher you get or the more responsibilities you have, the ability to articulate some of your decisions or to explain decisions, gets to be at a premium. Very rarely are we able to say, “Here’s why I had to do something and I hope you understand.” More often than not, a decision is taken and you hope that people will understand that it was the right decision that you took.
I realized that the issue of trust is so central to some of the things that we do. The old adage is so true: ‘We judge others by actions; and we judge ourselves by intent.’ When other people do things we look at what they do. We look at the action or the behavior and we make a judgment. But when we do things we look at our intent or ask the question “Why did I do something?” We use 2 standards: we ask the question ‘what?’ for others and for ourselves ‘Why?’ ‘Why’ helps us to understand a particular situation and ‘what’ is based on what we see without understanding why a person did it.

So often as leaders, we find ourselves in situations where we cannot explain behavior, for whatever reason. Either it’s confidential, or there are other things involved. But we expect people to trust that the action we’ve taken is the right action. I suspect that many of you on this call are in that position, that you take almost arbitrary decisions without having the ability to explain why. And people who watch those decisions have to trust you, be able to say that what you did was a good decision, or what you did had the basis of a good decision, without being able to understand why.

In my own life I have found that more and more decisions have to be taken that very rarely do we get the chance to explain. You have to trust that people trust you. This brings up this whole area of trust. We expect so much of trust today in our lives, in our workplace.

What is trust? Aristotle living in 384 BC writing in the rhetoric says, “The trust of the speaker by the listener was based on 3 characteristics:

1. Intelligence of the speaker: the correctness of his or her opinions or their competence.
2. The character of the speaker: their reliability which had a competence factor and an honesty factor – a measure of intentions
3. Goodwill of the speaker: the favorable intentions towards the listener.

I don’t think much has changed in 2300 years. It’s pretty much the same. Intelligence, character and goodwill are still good measures of the trust that we have.

Richard Williams, author of ‘Building trust in the Workplace’ says that psychologists are just beginning to learn how trust really works. Research suggests that trusting relationships are threefold.

• Predictable
• Caring
• Faithful

How do you build trust in the workplace? How do you get people to trust you? How do you get people to look at some of the actions that you have to take and say that they believe that they were the right actions even though they may not have understood the reasons behind it.

David Bowman, a human resource expert, says that there are 5 ways to build and 5 ways to lose trust in the workplace. I want to give them to you just as he has written them.

1. Establish and maintain integrity. That’s the foundation of trust in any organization. Integrity must begin at the top and then move down.
2. Communicate vision and value. Communication is important as it provides the artery for information and truth,
3. Consider all employees as equal partners. Trust is established when even the newest rookie or part-time or the lowest paid employee feels important and part of the team.
4. Focus on shared rather than personal goals. When an employee feels everyone is pulling together to accomplish a shared vision rather than a series of personal agendas, then trust results.
5. Do what’s right regardless of personal risk. We all know intuitively what’s right in nearly every situation. Following this instinctive sense and ignoring any personal consequences will always create respect for those around us.

Then he goes on to say that there are 5 ways to lose trust from your workers.

1. If you act and speak inconsistently. Nothing confuses people faster than inconsistency or contradiction in your behavior.
2. If you seek personal rather than shared gain. One who’s out only for himself or herself, especially in a team environment, quickly loses the respect and trust of others.
3. Withholding information. When communication channels shut down, both top-down and bottom-up rumors start and misinformation is believed to be real 
4. Lie or tell half-truths. Untruthfulness is a quick way to break a bond of trust.
5. Be close-minded, unwilling to consider other’s ideas and points of view.

How is it with you, my friends? Do you have trust? Do people believe in the things that you do? Are you able to take decisions and know that people will instinctively follow you even though they don’t understand the decision or the reasons behind it but know that you are a person they can trust and so they will trust the decision?

That’s a premium for us in organizations to be able to have that level of trust. But trust is built up. It’s value that you place in the bank. My prayer for you this morning is that in your decision-making, that you will find that employees or people, who work with you in the team, are able to trust you implicitly. Because when you have their trust, then you are able to have positive energy that allows you to walk forward confidently. And my prayer is that each of you would have a reservoir of trust in your spheres of work that will allow you to work boldly.

May God Bless You All.