Did you know that higher levels of trust are correlated with improved performance? Not just at the individual level, but across the organisation. Research from in the last decade has measured how much people trust their manager, and seen that the higher the trust, the better the organisation has performed relative to similar organisations. Your Vice Chancellor and their team might be interested!
So how do you enable managers to build trust? Going around saying ‘Trust me, I’m your Manager’ isn’t likely to hit the spot is it?
Below is the classic set of statements that are used to define what ‘trust’ means in an organisation context. When assessing trust levels within an organisation, employees are asked how much they agree with the statements.
- Managers here can be relied upon to keep their promises
- Managers here deal with employees honestly
- Managers here treat employees fairly
- Managers here are sincere in attempting to understand employees’ views.
It’s tempting to say these statements are just common sense and would be part of any normal
expectations of a manager. Maybe the answer is to simply add these behaviours to a management competency framework? Except it’s not quite that simple…
What does ‘dealing honestly’ mean? How much information are managers allowed to share with employees, how much do they themselves know? Some leaders may believe they have good reason NOT to be honest about specific organisation challenges, since employees will only worry about matters outside their control. If managers are asked direct questions by their team about potential changes, the manager may have been told not to reveal what is happening until all details have been finalised – is the honest thing to say ‘Not all details are finalised so I can’t talk about it yet’ or to say ‘this is what I know so far… but the details haven’t been finalised’?
Similarly, what does ‘treating employees fairly’ mean in practice? We all think we know what
fairness is until we are faced with difficult choices. For example – are some people ‘trusted’ to work from home while others are not? How are choices made? Are some people allowed more flexibility because they have caring responsibilities, while others without such responsibilities are not? Is this fair? Are some people offered development because their manager thinks they are ready, while development is withheld from another based on the manager’s judgement, even if every body wants access to the same opportunity.
Is it fair to offer people who work hard an ‘opportunity’ that is in fact more work? Should we expect a manager to devote time to ‘sincerely understanding’ a colleagues’ views if some of those views clash with the manager’s personal values? Should a manager spend a lot of their managerial time with people who are struggling, and leave the more capable and confident to sort themselves out – or is that to remove feedback and development time from those who are doing most to move the organisation forward?
How are leaders and managers to deal with internal competition – academia can be a very
competitive place – what role does fairness have in the drive for excellence, the competition for resources and the increasing constraints on budgets experienced in many HEIs?
If we can’t develop trusting environments in HEIs, if we can’t find ways to navigate the challenges of working together, if we can’t role model a high-trust workplace to our students– what hope will those students have of learning to develop trusting environments in their future worlds of work?
To develop a management and leadership group that is broadly perceived as fair, reliable,
understanding and honest requires some meaningful engagement across the management and leadership group – it is so much more than assuming that ‘everyone knows what those words mean’.
Activities such as exploring complex case examples, looking at real events that have happened in the organisation, considering the implications of choices about what is shared and what isn’t will all make a real difference. Maybe your frontline supervisors and junior managers don’t feel trusted themselves – how will this impact their ability to grow trust in their teams?
If you want to build trust, you need to think about intentionally across the leadership team and
entire management population – not just as a set of practices for individuals, important though these are.
Top Tips for Managers to build trust with their teams.
- Do what you say you will do (don’t over promise!)
- Be consistent in what you expect from your team, erratic demands reduce confidence and performance
- Acknowledge individual contribution and the value of team work
- Delegate thoughtfully, too many employees find the only reward for hard work is more
work! - Deal with poor behaviour and performance quickly, nothing de-motivates your best
performers more than seeing other people ‘getting away with’ under-performance. - Have non-transactional conversations with your team – find out who they are, share some non-work stories, ensure everyone can occasionally relax together even if only for 10 minutes over coffee.
About the author: Hedda Bird, BSc, MBA, MSt (cantab), Fellow CIPD is Managing Director of 3C Specialists and has written ‘The Performance Management Playbook’, (Pub: Pearson 2021).
This article has been kindly repurposed from the 3C Specialists in Performance Management and you can read the original here.