The Impassioned Workforce

I just posted a comment to a great article on Charles Green’s site “Trusted Advisor Associates”. If you operate anywhere near professional services, you couldn’t have missed the impact of Green’s book “Trust Based Selling”and his renowned work with David Maister “The Trusted Advisor”.  Charles Green and David Maister promote the idea of trust as a cornerstone to all business relationships and how building, nurturing and sustaining trust is the multiplier for profitable business.

I’d like to suggest that trusted relationships extend far beyond those you are selling to or advising. With the current market for talent, building trusted relationships must also be the route to getting, keeping and leveraging the most talented workforce.

Here are five ways you can build trust with your employees to develop a lasting and profitable relationship with them:

1. Allow time for trust to develop. Trust does not happen overnight. When you are working with new people acknowledge that you will both need to invest time in the relationship to develop trust and let them know you are prepared to do that. I don’t expect people to trust me from the first moment but I do want us both to be open to the possibility of trust.
2. Keep your promises! As a leader, everything you say will be interpreted as a commitment, and anything you don’t do after suggesting it will be interpreted as a broken promise. Don’t say or promise anything, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, unless you are 100% committed to following through.
3. Show them how to achieve their goals. All employees want to see personal progression. For some that might mean promotion, for others it may be something different. If you understand the goal that someone is working towards; understand and appreciate the needs that are driving them to get there; you can show them the way.
4. Allow them to prove themselves. Trust is a 2 way process and often one side has to reach out and offer trust before the other can receive it and reciprocate. If someone bestows their trust on us, we will often feel compelled to ’step up’ and validate the honour. Allow your people to prove their trustworthiness in increasingly high profile areas.
5. Trust in the power of mistakes. No-one is infallible. Mistakes happen. People mess up. Often the best opportunity for learning comes from the greatest errors. If we worry too much about falling and hurting ourselves, we never learn how to skate, ski, ride a bike or do anything worth doing. Build an environment where people do not fear mistakes but know that if they do mess up, you will guide them rather than berate them.

 I am sure there are many more ways you can think of to build and sustain trust in the workforce but these were the first 5 I could think of. Please feel free to add more!

As for Charles and David, maybe your next book should be The Trusted Employer!