The Leader’s Edge: The Requirements to Build a Culture of Trust

How do you know if you have a culture of trust in your company, your division, your team?

• Is the culture at your workplace open and supportive?
• Do you and your colleagues feel safe to bring all of your skills and talents to the job?
• Is there an attitude of respect for differences, including people and opinions?
• Do people listen to each other? Are they genuinely interested in what is being said?
• Are meetings engaging and productive?

If you answered yes to these questions, then you and/or someone in the leadership of your company has been consciously working on this from the inside out. If you had some “no’s” and you’d like to change that, read on.

As leaders, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to help create a culture of trust in our organizations. Stephen Covey speaks to this in his book, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything,  “There is abundant research that shows specifically how trust increases value, accelerates growth, enhances innovation, improves collaboration, strengthens partnering, speeds up execution and heightens loyalty.”

Everything we do in our organizations is touched by trust.

If trust is part of the culture, the speed at which goals are accomplished increases and overall costs decrease. Conversely, as trust dissipates, everything takes more time and costs more on every level.

As you practice the principles of trust, you will definitely experience benefits at home, with friends and in all your relationships.

The principles and practices come from years of research and application of many CEOs and academics. Covey has led the way in saying, “Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust. Nothing is as profitable as the economics of trust. It’s truly the one thing that changes everything!”

Trust is actually a competency, a skill with principles and practices to guide you. I have used these for decades with a number of organizations. They are not a magic pill but a set of processes that become practices. Like anything we learn, it takes focus, commitment and practice.

Three principles for creating trust

At Ryzio we have simplified much of the research on creating trust into three principles: Authenticity, respect/caring and genuine listening. These sound easy and they actually may be that in our closer relationships. However, in the workplace, there are levels, layers and sometimes obstacles that don’t exist with close friends and family. These skills involve lifelong skill building in becoming more authentic, understanding the fine nuisances of respect and deeper listening. As you are able to master these, you feel better which creates less stress and takes less energy to do your job.

This article was written by Marti Glenn, Ph.D., Ryzio Clinical Director