Trust (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) is the ‘firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something’. In other words, trust is something that we, individually, decide, based on how we view other people.
Trust is integral to effective leadership – leaders must motivate and inspire people to follow them. Trust creates more efficient organisations, reducing staff turnover, absenteeism, stress and the costs of doing business. And it is leaders who build trust. At times of great uncertainty and threat, only the most trusted leaders will inspire the confidence and commitment needed to ensure success.
Trust affects relationships between individuals and groups. It helps to bind people together and create real teams. Trust also encouraged people to feel more committed to their organisation, to stay longer rather than change jobs, and to feel less stressed.
Measuring trust
It is easy to ask people ‘Do you trust your manager?’ but this is not a very reliable indicator or trust - the question on its own allows people to choose their own criteria.
Six dimensions of trust identified by the Institute of Leadership & Management are:
1. The ability to perform their role competently
2. Their understanding of the jobs of the people they lead and manage
3. The fairness with which they treat people
4. Their openness to others' ideas and opinions
5. The integrity with which they behave, being principled, honest and not hypocritical.
6. Their consistency, predictability or reliability in their behaviour.
No one can say ‘I trust him or her without some measurement of behavioural measurement e.g.
- Did the leader intend to do what she or he did?
- Did the leader intend the outcomes of their behaviour?
- How likely is it that the next time the leader intends these same outcomes, that they will occur?
- How likely is it that, in other situations, the leaders’ intentions and the results will match in the way they did this time?
Some of the questions we may ask ourselves which will project our future behaviours towards a leader or team members and affect our working relationships.
How can we predict behaviours of others? How can we help leaders to become emotionally aware of themselves and their impact on others?
Whilst there are many personality profiling tool in the market place Allen Partnership utilise the DiSC Dimensions of Behaviour profiling tool which will enable you to authenticate and support the decision making process about people, their behaviours and development opportunities.
How someone perceives your behaviour is difficult to control; how they will attribute motives and intent to your behaviour is even harder to control.
If you want to bring out the best in people, understand how to manage them more effectively, understand your behavioural leadership profile, know how to influence other behavioural styles and create win win relationships follow the following link to our profiling tool and download a sample profile report.
Call or email and enquire about how we can help your leaders build trusting relationships with others, impact on day-to-day performance and build effective teams that will enable your company to grow in these difficult economic times.
