The Importance Of Trust In Organizations

Trust is the belief and confidence in the integrity, reliability and fairness of a person or organization.

Trust is an essential human value and is the grease that keeps teams running smoothly when conflict arises. It is difficult to acquire, and if abused, harder to salvage.

People become nervous and defensive with one another if any of the following occur:

-- Decisions are perceived to be unfair.

-- Behavior is unreliable.

-- Business strategies are unpredictable.

-- People fail to follow through on commitments.

-- People make excuses or lie to cover up mistakes.

-- Work stragegies and systems are unreliable.

People who were raised during the partial eclipse of the industrial age, the baby boomers and their parents, learned to do

This little "white" lie was sanctioned if not ordered from the top down. And, similar matters of integrity occur even today, when little white lies serve to cover up mistakes.

Since the rise of the information age, organizations can no longer view their employees the same way as their physical, financial and inventory assets. These assets are owned. People are not. Therefore, the organization 's personnel success or failure hinges on relationship quality and longevity of the relationships it forges with employees. And, long term relationships are based on trust.

Trust is so important to group relationships that people worry or become angry and discontented if trust is damaged. Or, they become numb and with the numbness come complacency, apathy and broken loyalty. Work slows down, profits shrink, and the talented, discontented worker moves on to greener pastures when the opportunity arises.

During a recession threats of job loss breed complacency. After a recession, leaving an organization to find another because of irreconcilable values is the mark of a good leader - a badge of

For example, group problem solving tends to break down in low trust environments and becomes creative and productive in high trust environments. That is why it is so important for leaders to purge fear-based, top down practices from the team dynamic.

The rub comes in the shift between Industrial and Information era technologies. The first exposes the employee to narrowly defined tasks and expectations. There are dues to pay because tenured employees or a chain of command dynamic rules advancement and contribution.

The Information age dynamic, on the other hand, embraces emotionally intelligent leadership dynamics, the ability to system think, creatively problem solve, measure results and nurture group process. This is on the people side. On the work side, accomplishing quality work, refining processes and operating lean makes payroll.

A talented new hire with a solid skill set is hard to retain if a pecking order or tenure process gets in the way of learning and contribution. The work and people balance becomes a high wire act because job satisfaction requires balance between getting good work done and the psychological satisfaction of people doing the