Develop a Trust-Based Organizational Culture

Those who know me know that I have never been a big fan of controlling cultures, and always advocate for delegating control and authority to the teams as much as possible.

In this virtual world, the nature of our interactions have changed, and so have our traditional methods to oversee and ‘control’ employees. It is more important now than ever to build our corporate cultures on a foundation of trust.

Let’s align on what we mean by organizational culture.

An organization’s culture defines how employees behave within the organization or in the context of the organization (i.e. not just within the physical walls). It consists of shared beliefs and values that are lived by all - its leaders first and foremost - and consistently communicated through various methods. The consistent communication and role modelling of these behaviours ultimately shapes employees’ perception, behaviours, understanding, and guides their actions.

Wow - that’s probably the most jargon-y thing I’ve written so far.

There are many types of cultures, but what I’m most interested in, is how can an organization transition from a fear-based culture (“do as you’re told, or else…”) to a trust-based culture (“we have alignment on values and vision, so I trust that you will do the right thing”).

Why Trust?

Why did you hire each employee in your team? Because they are skilled, competent and have a positive attitude, yes? And in cases where you've taken on a new role and inherited a team, they most likely have way more experience than you in the subject matter. So the question is more why wouldn't you trust them?

Apparently common sense isn’t enough, so neuroscientist Paul J. Zak designed experiments to explain why organizations with trust based cultures have happier, more loyal and more productive workforces.

To quote the HBR article: "Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report: 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, 40% less burnout."

So that's for why. Now the million dollar question is:

How Do I Transform My Team /Company Culture?

Let me start by saying two things. First, it doesn't happen overnight, and second, it will be the culmination of many small consistent actions as opposed to a few flashy big events. You will probably not have a big celebration marking the day 'our new culture has started!'.

Unfortunately, some leaders believe that their role is to define the values, but see no responsibility in living them. So they print out big posters around the office with words such as:

'DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION' - but they see no issue in the homogeneous make-up of their leadership team

'EXPERIMENTATION MINDSET' - but they only reward big flashy results and don't celebrate learnings

'VULNERABILITY' - but could never admit to being wrong

I could go on.

So here are a few steps that have been proven to help shift company culture, when practiced consistently. Those are not the only ones (I like to keep articles short and sweet), but a good place to start.

1 - Make it a priority.

It might seem contradictory, but I think culture is probably one of the only things that cannot be fully delegated or outsourced. It has to be a top priority of the CEO, and every single leader of the organization.

Publicly announce that you are making this a priority, and why, and invite thoughts and feedback from all. Which leads us to...

2- Be vulnerable.

Do you really think you're going to get this 100% right the first time? I'm sorry but that's highly unlikely. Culture and values are not black or white. They are not binary. It's a lot of grey, and judgment calls that are driven by the interpretation of shared values, tainted by everyone's personal biases.

Get ready to share your journey, mess up, apologize, and continue on.

One note on vulnerability. I've seen that word used by leaders to explain some oversharing of personal information and traumatic life events in large meetings with no connection to the meeting's purpose. See my comments on oversharing below... Some may be OK with this and find it relatable, but it can also make some employees quite uncomfortable and have the reverse effect ("will they make me share my traumatic life event story?"). Keep vulnerability in context, and with a clear purpose for the audience you're addressing!

3- Share information and context.

If you're a senior leader, there are chances that you possess information you shouldn't share. As an over-sharer myself, I've learned that you should share information that others have the capacity and are in the right frame of mind to process and understand, otherwise it may be counterproductive.

Let me give a quick example here.

I treat my kids like intelligent creatures who can process information. A few months ago, I talked at the dinner table to my husband and kids about a robbery in the neighbourhood, where the robber infiltrated the house when the family was asleep, and made it to the second floor where the kids sleep.

In this case, my daughter was not mature enough to process this information in a mature way, and still has night-time anxieties thinking about robbers in her bedroom... mom fail.

That said, if you look at information sharing in most organizations, I am of the belief that most information kept from employees, or only shared with the select few, does not fall in that bucket. It's often not shared due to laziness ('I don't want to have to answer questions about this'), narcissistic tendencies ('I have this information because I'm more important, and it makes me feel good'), or plain omission. As a leader, it does take effort to share information, but it will in the end make your life easier as you can trust that you team has the context they need to make good decisions.

4- Delegate control.

I know it's uncomfortable. I know it's easier to say: 'do this this way', and ask for daily project statuses. It's more predictable. You know exactly what the team is doing and how, they come to you with the information, so you can feel like you are not micro-managing. But you are killing your team's creativity and productivity. And the other downside, is that you're creating unnecessary work for yourself. With the little information you have, you had to think through exactly what to build and how, and figure out how much time it should take so that you could tell your team what to do.

Instead, give them the context, the objectives, and the ability to craft their own roles, learning agendas, and processes that will get them to that outcome. Support them, listen to them, recognize the successes and learn with them from the failures.

As a final note for today, I’ve been asked this question before: ‘Does it mean that in a trust-based organization, the leader delegates all decisions?’

Nope.

I like to think about it this way: imagine all possible decisions one could make are grains of sand on a beach. Do you let employees roam free on the beach and pick any grains of sand they think would be the right ones to create a sand castle? No. They would be walking for hours, exhausted, searching for needles in a haystack. Your role is to define the sandbox, and let your team operate freely within that box.

More on that in a later post!