The name of this blog comes from our mission at INFLUENCE: “To empower people with clarity and confidence.”
Our objective is to provide brief but meaningful topics (under 500 words) that inspire, educate and empower leaders through resources both inside and outside of INFLUENCE. This week’s edition is provided by David Salmons.
Last week we posted about a corporate stress strategy described by Laurence Lock Lee that has less to do with “self-care” and more to do with “us-care”. We noted that, according to Lee, building high-trust cultures are the way leaders create teams with the flexibility to thrive in situations that otherwise could lead to organizational collapse.
As a follow-up to that post today, we offer some additional thoughts on how to create high-trust cultures, primarily drawn from the work of writer Dom Nicastro at CMS Wire, a digital magazine for leaders read by over 3 million subscribers.
Going to the subject matter experts, Dom interviewed a number of Human Resource executives who champion cultures of empathy and trust in their organizations. One of those executives was Valerie Junger, CPO at Quantcast, who set the tone for the article by offering the following sobering thought: There’s no amount of Zoom calls that will make up for bad company culture.
She supported her provocative statement by observing that companies that didn’t and don’t take a hands-on approach to culture have struggled the most over the past two years, adding: “Without close bonds, compassion and trust between colleagues and teams, it’s almost impossible for productivity levels to be consistent when in-person teams are suddenly separated because of… the pandemic.”
She went on to offer examples of how she and her team lead – and lean into – a culture of trust. Expanding on some if her examples, we see:
- Engaging and staying engaged as leaders in ways that produce positive emotional responses, for example through quick employee wellbeing check-ins or surveys.
- Creating “opportunities for people to connect through online events, mentoring programs and other programs that foster collaboration even in remote environments.”
- Seeking to understand and invest in employee concerns, be they local initiatives or more global passions, in order to contribute to their personal sense of value and mission.
- Offering health and wellbeing resources, such as the digital platforms Aaptiv and Headspace.
- Actively encouraging a culture which allows employees to interact in a more casual and unscripted manner, particularly as the boundaries between work and home have diminished.
- Demonstrating trust by balancing requests for flexibility with the requirements of the business, meaning less of a paranoid response to these requests, and more of a personal consideration that accommodates requests when employees demonstrate a reasonable productivity.
- Improving the sense of corporate connection through increased executive information sharing, with a genuine emphasis on how decisions affect employees.
In conclusion, “At the end of the day,” says Junger, “employees want to feel supported, trusted, and given the opportunity of autonomy, all of which require a foundation of empathy.”
And to that, Vuram HR Manager Patrice Williams adds, “Trust is the key factor that encourages and motivates people to enjoy their work and form a lasting bond,” which is why his company’s guiding principle of Freedom with Responsibility can be defined as an environment in which people receive flexibility because they are cared for and trusted.