Deposit with "Trusted Bank"

Tom Duchene has been appointed to lead a team of the company's newly recruited software engineers who will lead a high-risk, high-reward collaborative project to produce names for an emerging biotech market A product of Signo. At the first meeting, the team felt that although other teams had tried and failed the project, Dussin had a strong confidence that they could finish the project on time. He has carefully inspected each team member, and he knows everyone's talents and shortcomings. During the meet-and-greet and subsequent progress meetings, he repeatedly expressed his confidence in all the team members.

The team brainstormed and set high standards for completing tasks on time and with quality. Dussin lets team members control their own schedules, letting them decide how to learn from each other through meetings. He struggles with the bureaucracy that overrides the team, giving the team access to the primary materials and knowledge resources it needs.

Duching's words and deeds sent a strong signal: He trusted the team, and every member of the team, all of which allowed the team to work quickly, learn from each other quickly, and be willing to take greater risks. In short, his trust boosted morale and laid the foundation for good results.

This story illustrates how important a role "trust" plays in the workplace, in order to pull together and get motivated. Trust in people shows recognition of their integrity (they think and do what they think), their reliability (honesty and reliability), and their friendliness (desire and caring for others). In other words, trust is a positive expectation of the behavior and desires of others.

Based on the experience of how others have built trusting relationships with you, reflect on your past behaviors in building trusting relationships and consider what changes need to be made in the future. The purpose of reflection is to provide a different perspective on the "trust bank" that exists in your organization. If the "trust bank" has a lot of "deposits" -- many individuals and teams trust you -- then you have a lot of resources at your disposal when it comes to building high-quality relationships. And, a lucrative "trust bank" account will help you do a lot of things. Trust investments are a good asset -- they yield flexibility, freedom, resources and security.

Investing in trust, that is, building a relationship based on trust, includes the following four actions: earning trust in words; earning trust in not speaking; earning trust in doing something; earning trust in doing something.

Trust by Words

Your words send a powerful message that not only expresses your expectations, but also opens the door to mutual trust. Communication around the "what" and "how" has a big impact on building trust.

Sharing information together Sharing information is valuable to others, and managers should show that they care about others and that they are trustworthy. Sharing information also makes others work better.

In any working relationship, all parties have different information, and the first step in building trust is choosing to share certain information. For example, between suppliers and customers, a good relationship usually means a willingness to share some confidential information. As George Advey, Chevron's business manager, put it: "Sharing information needs to be sincere and meaningful, so that a true partnership can be built. I've heard many managers say" We want to build partnerships with our customers', and when it comes to delivering on our partner commitments, such as sharing confidential information such as capital expenditures and manufacturing capabilities, it becomes empty talk." Instead, when information is actually shared, organizations Internal and cross-organizational partnerships can thrive.

Opening Your Heart Properly opening your heart can go a long way in building trust. It's human nature to be risky, which is why it's not so common in organizations. However, many leaders know the importance of opening up properly. According to leadership experts James Kouzes and Barry Posner, "Let others know what you approve of, what you value, what you need, what you expect, what you're willing to do, and what you don't want to do. What, that kind of attitude is revealing about yourself. The risk is there, but by letting others know that they are willing to take that risk, leaders actually encourage others to follow suit."

VeriFone is a fairly successful high-tech company The company, later acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, whose former CEO, Hatim Tybji, was known for trusting others. His exposure to his own shortcomings has led to a strong bond between him and his employees that has evolved into a company culture: everyone wants to be more open to others. Tibuji revealed how he built trust in a post-merger statement.

In his speech, Tibuji talked about what he was afraid of. Katherine Beall recalls: "He told us his personal anecdote. Once he went skydiving with his sons and he talked about how he dealt with challenges and timidity. The story was interesting. You can feel it. By the time he was terrified, one foot was hanging in the air. He conveyed a human feeling, he said, 'Hey, you see, I've had terrible experiences too.'"

When you expose Once you take the first step of your own shortcomings, it will have an impact on the relationship you want to build, making it more human.

Use Inclusive Language Your words can create distance and alienation as well as interdependence and trust. Using inclusive words like "we" conveys a sense of mutual identification that creates a picture of trust in your interactions with others.

This inclusive language is even more powerful when you share the honor with others because it brings pride and ties people together, as if to say, you trust and depend on people. By the same token, if you don't use these languages, the trust you and others may have can be lost.

Win the trust of not talking

"Peach and plum do not talk, and they will form their own way." If you don't speak, you can still convey the effect of trust like speaking. If you say something that negatively affects the integrity, reliability, and friendliness of others, you will quickly destroy the possibility of generating trust.

Don't Blame Others for Maliciousness As stated earlier, the key to building mutual trust is trusting the other's honest, reliable, and friendly motives. Unfortunately, managers often receive information that is either wrong or incomplete about the motivations and conditions of others. Hastily jumping to conclusions believing that others are malicious will inevitably destroy the relationship, and it will be difficult to restore it after that.

Don't slander others In the workplace, slurs are heard from time to time, and this disintegrates the foundation of mutual trust, making people cautious, beggar-thy-neighbor, and contrary to the desire to build good trust .

Shaming others is an act of control, an act of compulsion, a pathological drive for power, not a pusher of trust. Consider this example: Laurence Smith is a technician who works with a production manager known for his technical expertise, but who is a typical example of this: People at the same level are respectful and courteous, but they are extremely sarcastic to their subordinates. He often despises his subordinates, and he likes to answer their questions half-jokingly, "Have you really been to an engineering school?"

In a nutshell, his style is one of lack of trust, and in turn, the people under him neither trust him nor feel safe. This lack of trust keeps Smith from learning, the production manager's skills from being imparted, and the team's overall ability to be undermined and thwarted by these behaviors from building effective relationships.

Being Trusted by Making a Difference

In addition to your words, your actions can also convey trust in you and make others trust you too. The following actions will benefit you greatly.

Relinquish control When you empower others to make decisions and complete tasks, you are transmitting trust, especially if doing so means you must rely on others to achieve outcomes that affect your destiny. Subordinates see empowerment as a signal that their boss trusts them and they will do what is good for others and the organization.

Of course, managers are empowering every day. But the hard question is whether managers actually give up control and delegate responsibility to others whenever the need arises, such as when the future of an idea or product depends on lower-level employees. The act of empowerment will motivate others to exceed your expectations, as the senior sales director of a large company said: "I once assigned a subordinate the task of giving a project presentation to a potential client. I took a risk with a full understanding of his abilities; also a trust in him. I didn't expect him to be very active and did a lot of preparation for the demo. He did a great job with the demo, we got that contract, he The performance is completely beyond my imagination and gives me confidence."

Another way to transmit trust to a useful resource is to send the valuable resource into the hands of others. If the resource is more valuable, the signal of trust sent is greater will be stronger. Sometimes sharing resources is providing access to items, other times providing emotional resources (such as support and encouragement), and still other times providing attention resources (such as time).

Pursuing openness is critical to building effective business-to-business partnerships. Cyndie Bender is the CEO of Median Travel, and by building extensive information sharing with her clients, she has developed solid client relationships. In the highly guarded tourism industry, she pursues an open policy and regularly discloses all fees, costs and profits (including shipping and hotel reservations) to customers in service contracts. This way, customers can see how much Median is paying to meet their needs. The open-door policy demonstrates that Median believes its customers can act with integrity. In Bender's view, that's why Median's relationships with its clients have flourished.

Ask for Advice Asking for advice in good faith is a powerful tool for building trust. When you ask others for advice, it shows your ability to trust others. In turn, you get advice from others, which in turn promotes the deepening of your mutual trust.

A manager who regularly solicits opinions from his employees asks them this: "Can you offer new ways to do this job, you are better than me, I need your opinion on this matter, if in my How will you handle this?"

Another example is when a project manager admitted at her retirement farewell party that she had been doing this job for more than 25 years and that she liked every aspect of the job. every moment. She recalled that on her first day at work, her boss gave her a set of project files to read carefully and then give some ideas. He also fully supported the first project she came up with, and they successfully completed it together.

Looking back, she is filled with emotion for the trust and support she received. It was those experiences that paved the way for her future success. This story illustrates that trusting others at the beginning of a relationship can lead to a qualitative leap in the improvement of the relationship later on.

Asking for advice builds trust, but it also exposes some of your weaknesses. As expert Dale Zand points out, when people get advice from others, "they are more likely to be harmed. There are several possibilities, for example, that they may be seen as weak and unable to complete their own work, and at the same time, they can be misguided.” Also, seeking advice or feedback in good faith is a way to give up control because you don’t know what kind of advice you’re going to get.

Gaining trust by not doing something

In building trust, doing certain things, or restraining yourself from not doing certain things, both are equally important, just like the relationship between speaking and not speaking. Trust is fragile, and once broken, it will be hard to recover.

To maintain trust with others, avoid the following things.

Avoid Censorship and Surveillance Managers often "delegate" someone a task and then start overseeing, not knowing it's a trust-destroying dynamite. The more you constantly monitor others to make sure they do what you tell them, the less you trust each other. Also, censorship and oversight mechanisms make it difficult for people to show that they work because they are trusted, because if people don't work, they will get caught and suffer certain consequences.

However, "doing nothing" may mean you're giving up the safety net that pervades corporate organizations. For example, when you're doing a large presentation that requires others to participate, your choice is to either rely on others to build on it, or you have a backup plan in case they sit idly by.

As your work becomes more and more dependent on the cooperation of others, the latter approach will make your work unsustainable. You'll also find that doing so damages the trust your team members have in you. When you stop doing the precautionary work, the close relationship of trust between the two of you will slowly build. However, you will find that it is not easy to get yourself to trust others in this way. That means you have to stop doubting the abilities of others and discard the "control everything", "govern everything" philosophy that may have been instilled early in your career.

Avoid Punishment Trusting a person or group to do the right thing also means that you won't criticize them for doing the wrong thing. Trust means trusting a person and his efforts. Sometimes this effort yields higher-than-expected returns, while other times the returns can be lower than expected. But you should believe that even that is better than not trusting people in the first place.

Punishing others for taking a risk that did not produce the desired results is short-sighted. Taking risk is necessary for both individual and organizational success. Punishing it will discourage everyone from taking any more risks.

Another punishment is the public punishment of poor performers, a humiliating behavior that some see as "tough" and "necessary". As everyone knows, this not only undermines trust, but also chills the eyewitnesses.

This shows that trust plays an extremely important role in a business. Trust creates better human relationships, and both parties can expect honesty from the other. In this relationship, both parties have greater latitude for reliable and flexible grasp. With trust, less time will be spent monitoring others or figuring out their motives. With a relationship of trust, you know that others have your best interests in mind. Trust sows the seeds of learning and flexibility in the team.

This text is excerpted from Energize Your Workplace by Jane E. Dutton, published by Jossey-Bass, Inc. with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Copyright 2003 by the publisher. Translated by Yang Tong.