Trust : why it matters and how a manager-coach can foster it

Building trust between employees in an organization is a key element to our promotion of the manager-coach.?

Trust is fundamental to our corporate value of standing together, and helping each other out as needed. In supporting their employees on a day to day basis, our manager-coach use feedback to foster a relationship of trust and transparency. Long term trust-based relationships must also exist between the managers and HR (talent development) teams for the development, training and performance of the teams. In many of the recent commentary circulating since the outbreak of the current COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting massive shift to remote working during national lockdowns, we’ve also heard lots of talk of the need for trust as managers can no longer physically monitor activity on their team, and some have found this shift unsettling.?

As a team your employees must believe in each other, and in you as their manager. In the absence of a trusting team spirit, communication, collaboration and performance inevitably suffer, as has been neuroscientifically and economically proven.?

Neuromanagement : the scientific link between trust and high performance

American neuroeconomist Paul Zak’s decades of research into the neuroscience of organisational cultures identified how to harness trust to engage high performing employees.?His 2017 book?"Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies"?shows leaders of organizations how to create and sustain a culture of trust, based on his 2001 study deriving a scientifically proven mathematical relationship between trust and economic performance. Zak’s work demonstrated a link between production of?peptide hormone and neuropeptide?oxytocin in the hypothalamus?and our social bonding and trust in another person.?

Once the neuroscientific link between oxytocin and trust had been established it paved the way for further research into what behaviours can be fostered to promote oxytocin production, and thus how to increase trust and social bonding and empathy, and conversely to avoid oxyctocin inhibitors such as stress. His research identified the following management behaviours that can be measured and managed to foster a trusting relationship :

1.?????Recognising and celebrating success?

2.?????Setting concrete and attainable stretch objectives that are challenging to reach.?

3.?????Empowering employees to manage and execute their work in their own way and have greater control over their work

4.?????Enabling employees to self-organise their roles

5.?????Sharing information broadly on the goals, strategies and tactics and reducing uncertainty by communicating regularly where the organisation is heading and why.?

6.?????Intentionally building relationships by expressing an interest in and concern for the team’s success and well being

7.?????Facilitating personal development and acquisition of new skills, regular feedback?

8.?????Asking for help and acknowledging the uncertainty

The research then measured these behaviours in managers in different organisations and correlated with their financial performance. The conclusion : Positive trusting relationships drive higher productivity, better quality work product and increased profitability.?

Zak’s neuroscientific approach showed that managers can?cultivate trust by setting a clear direction, giving?the individuals in the team?what they need to?act, and?then?get out of their way.?High-trust?managers?hold?the team?accountable but without micromanaging?and this in turn leads to business output and high performance.

What drives our feelings of trust?

The difficulty in the day to day business use of the word “trust” is knowing exactly what we are talking about, and that as a notion it can often feel a bit fuzzy or irrational, and difficult to explain.

Trust is often a subjective sentiment between yourself and another person, based on the interpretation of what is said, the observation of someone’s behaviours, a feeling of comfort in sharing information with them, or feeling that someone else has our interests at heart. To breakdown the elements behind our sentiment of trust, lets use a leading model from Charles H. Green and Andrea P. Howe’s 2011 book "The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust" (and the earlier 2001 David H Maister and Charles H Green book “The Trusted Advisor”) in which trustworthiness is depicted as an equation, the sum of credibility, reliability and intimacy divided by self-orientation.?

Credibility

Our words and credentials are crucial in business. As a manager it is important to consider whether your actions or convictions are believable. Also consider your legitimacy with the team : viewed from their perspective what do you bring to them? Consider the skills and experience you bring to the team: these may not be technical or operational expertise, but remember you bring your managerial reputation along with a network, connections, and influence. By being a credible manager-coach and demonstrating the behaviours listed above that Zak proved to generate oxytocin release you will be able to bolster the team’s belief in your managerial practices and gain credibility as their coach. In my early career I found myself leading a team of customer service coordinators, lawyers and translators who were more experienced and qualified legally and technically than I was. It was important to know what I brought over and above the legal or technical knowledge. I had to let the team know I was capable of credibly handling escalated files, that I was able to help them simplify the way they worked, running projects to improve process, put in place templates, checklists to help them, automate reporting to save time monitoring their case load : whilst I may not have had as much knowledge or experience as them on the law I brought other things to the team which bolstered my credibility. Similarly in my last team, as their manager I was the youngest team member, and I had the pleasure of managing a talented individual as she reached the 40 year milestone in the business and embarked upon her retirement. Always consider what contributes to your credibility in the eyes of the team, and bear in mind that your qualities as seen from below may be very different to the reasons you were selected from above to be the manager.

Reliability

Your integrity is also key. Can the team count on you to follow through on your words? Do you “Walk the Talk”? If you say you favour collaboration, do you actually encourage and enable it? If you say you are available for them, do you actually have time in your diary, leave your door open and are you really actively listening when they come to talk to you? When they need your support, do you give it? When they are waiting for your validation or decision is it forthcoming? Do you reply to their mails? And is this always the case, or does it change from week to week??

Ensuring a consistent approach between what you say and what you do is key. The various demands on a manager’s time can lead you to be pulled in several directions to the detriment of your availability to the team. In my last role I travelled a lot, co-facilitating leadership training modules over four continents a year. This business travel, coupled with vacation and weekend travel recovery days, as well the seemingly endless flow of meetings, meant I was not very often physically at my desk in the open space. After a few months I realised I wasn’t as reliable as I could be, and so in addition to the regular team meetings and 1:1 slots I booked a no-agenda weekly recurrent meeting, where I would guarantee I’d be free. It was informal, but regular. As a Brit, we named it Tea(m)Time, and it was around afternoon tea time, and involved a convivial cup of tea with whoever needed my time. This helped me to ensure I walked the talk and was available for the team as I’d promised to be. What would help your team to view you as a more reliable manager? What concrete steps can you put in place??

Intimacy

Judging the appropriate level of proximity and intimacy with your team is essential. This is an element I find quite challenging to get right. As a social extrovert it’s my natural tendency to foster relations. However, having lead three difficult rounds of redundancies with people I’d worked closely with for years, socialised with, and knew intimately, I promised myself not to “get too close” professionally in future. I’m never sure if I set the cursor in the right place throughout my different management experiences, but I am proud to still be socially in touch with many of the people I laid off in the economic downturn of 2007-2008, as well as members of my HR team in London, and I still have close working relations today with my learning and development team from my previous role in Paris. I’m very conscious that intimacy is an important element of trust and that finding the right balance isn’t all about afterwork drinks, team buildings and seminars but is built in the day to day relations with the team. Do they feel safe working with you? Do they share their thoughts and feelings with you? How well do you know each other on an individual and personal level, and as a team? Do you feel comfortable being vulnerable in front of the team, admitting when you don’t have the answers, and asking for help from their collective intelligence? Do you understand their motivations and needs ??

Self Orientation

The denominator of the trust equation is self-orientation. A high level in self-orientation destroys trust and undermines the numerators of credibility, reliability and intimacy. Paying attention to the individual and collective needs in the team is fundamental to trust. Perceptions of selfishness, hidden agendas, office politics, ego or a desire to “win” at the expense of others will undermine the team’s trust in you as their manager. You need to truly focus on their needs, rather than your own, in order to build trust. I’ve had first-hand experience of management who ignore emails, don’t answer requests for validation, ignore planning constraints and fail to provide feedback, turn up late for meetings or cancel them at the last minute, and only pay attention when it suits them when they are in need of information to present upwards. This focus on self rather than the needs and expectations of the team is highly damaging to the trust relationship, and damages both motivation and performance in the team. The ability to take a coaching posture, demonstrate true empathy, use powerful questioning and active listening to the needs of the team are key skills for managers to display to lower the undermining risk of a perception of self-orientation. Clearly a manager-coach who focuses time and effort on developing the individuals in the team, their wellbeing and fostering a convivial collective working environment with transparency and sharing of information and regular feedback will lead to a higher performance from the team.?

I’ve focussed quite deliberately above on the teams’ trust in you as a manager. Before concluding, a further question to ponder is whether as a manager you put trust in your teams as a default, or whether you believe that the team needs to earn your trust. Consider the consequences of the two different postures and the impact of trust on your managerial style. With trust in the individuals in the team, you will probably be more readily open to delegate and empower them, provide autonomy and enable them to take initiatives. On the contrary, a lack of trust can lead to micromanagement and a command and control approach.?

If you are interested in digging deeper into your trustworthiness as a manager-coach then consider taking a few minutes to complete the?Trust Quotient Assessment ?which measures trust at the individual level as well as the aggregated trustworthiness of a department, team members, or organization. The Trust Equation provides a scientific, analytical and actionable framework to think about how as managers we help our teams and the individuals in our teams to improve their working relationships and as a result business performance.

Alan Lambert is an International HR leader currently working at the Corporate HR Strategy division of a global energy major