Nurturing Trust in Organizations

Trust is Not a Commodity

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One of the challenges in nurturing trust within an organization is the risk that we will objectify the word 'trust," and approach it as though it were a tangible commodity that either exists or does not exist.

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A more useful way of looking at trust is to see it as a fluid state of personal experience, its presence or absence totally defined by the eye of the beholder. To illustrate this personalized definition of the presence of a trusting environment, one is reminded of an adaptation of an old line used to illustrate how many experiences end up being defined through a personal lens. This line? "I know good art when I see it."

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Fluid, Subjective Experience

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Because "trust" is a fluid experience, it is created in real time based upon each interpersonal transaction between the employee and that employee's "centers of influence" within an organization. (Examples of these centers of influence are: the employee's relationship with his or her manager, organizational congruence issues such as leaders "walking the talk," and clear methods of rewarding and/or reinforcing performance).

Trust must be continually generated through each new interpersonal encounter, on a day-to-day, transaction-by-transaction basis.

 

A “Trust” Framework

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The variables that contribute to the experience of trust are elusive. However, we can still describe a framework that assists in creating a trusting environment within an organization. This framework, and its initiatives, can include:

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• Clearly crafted organizational values, describing the optimal behavior and treatment of all stakeholders.

• An active, experiential interviewing process, involving a wide swath of current stakeholders, interviewing for qualities of character, good faith motivation, and the presence of a "mensch" personal style.

• Orientations, training and/or as-needed coaching in the interpersonal communication skills necessary for the nurturing of trust experiences (reciprocity, open-ended questions, active listening, etc.).

• Organizational systems and leadership behavior that illustrate follow through, talk/walk congruence, active managerial encountering of the "bad apple," and reward systems and incentives that truly reward attitudes and actions conducive to the trusting experience.

 

First Steps in Nourishing Trust

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Let’s make things easier for us in our roles as leaders. Let’s start things off by following a path that employs an incremental approach.

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These incremental steps are most potent when occurring at the most intimate "centers of influence," such as the daily transaction between employee-manager and between employee-employee.

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Let’s take an example from the world of “design thinking” that reminds us that good things take time to create. An early adopter of applying design thinking towards human interactions is seen in a book by Tom Kelly, The Art of Innovation (2001). As the founder of the industrial design leader IDEO, Kelly described the "deep dive" experience employed by his design teams. As these teams engage in the creative process of designing a new product, they employ the incremental, iterative approach of first creating a very rough product prototype, and then refining and polishing it over time.

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Such an iterative process can serve as a model for us in developing trust: we must take the first step, realizing that we will not have achieved "completion." We do this knowing we have to start somewhere, and we will need to strive to keep improving the original “prototype of the trusting environment” through our daily transactions with all our stakeholders.

 

Just as IDEO's prototype is fluid and is evolving in an iterative manner, so must our prototype of the trusting environment be viewed. Trust is an interpersonal experience that is given new life with each new, ongoing, personal transaction.