Creating A Culture Of Trust

According to Great Place To Work, from 2004-2008 the top 100 high trust companies out performed the next 100 by 43% in terms of revenue. In 2009, the year after the start of the global economic crisis, that grew to 126%. Building trust in your organization has a real impact on the business.

During her presentation, Building A Culture of Trust, Pollyanna Pixton asked everyone in the packed room to raise their hand if they trusted their entire management chain – all the way up to the CEO. Only two people – who worked for the same major insurance company – raised their hand. While the statistic is discouraging, it does say a lot for that insurance company. Insurance is a business of trust and that company is building it from the inside out.

Pixton described several ways we can foster trust in our teams:

• Advance each others’ intentions and don’t get in the way.
• Be proactive in moving work forward.
• Create honest and open communication, along with transparency.
• Share experiences, particularly failures. Stories of failures and what you learned are powerful.
• Build trust between teams.
• Accept risks collectively and create a safe place to fail.
• Let your teams figure out how to solve the problem or meet the business goal.
• Don’t take back ownership.
• Use team-based measurements. Measurements based on individual success impair team collaboration.
• Ask questions that help teams discover the solutions, such as: “How would you like to solve it?” and “What would you like me to do?”
• Achieve short goals to find early wins and celebrate success.
• Protect the team and the team boundaries.

As leaders, we also have to work to build the trust our teams have in us. To do this, we need to:

• be authentic,
• stay positive,
• trust and be trustworthy,
• put purpose over personal agenda, and
• provide continuous feedback.

After attending this presentation, I will be adding The Agile Culture: Leading Through Trust and Ownership to my reading list.

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