❇️ Trust leads to performance Trust is the enabler of global business — without it, most market transactions would be impossible. It is also a hallmark of high-performing organizations. Employees in high-trust companies are more productive, are more satisfied with their jobs, put in greater discretionary effort, are less likely to search for new jobs, and even are healthier than those working in low-trust companies. Businesses that build trust among their customers are rewarded with greater loyalty and higher sales. And negotiators who build trust with each other are more likely to find value-creating deals. Human brains have two neurological idiosyncrasies that allow us to trust and collaborate with people outside our immediate social group (something no other animal is capable of doing). Parts of the cortex let us do an amazing trick: transport ourselves into someone else’s mind. Called theory of mind by psychologists, it’s essentially our ability to think, “If I were her, I would do this.” It lets us forecast others’ actions so that we can coordinate our behavior with theirs. To trust someone, especially someone unfamiliar to us, our brains build a model of what the person is likely to do and why. In other words, we use both theory of mind and empathy during every collaborative endeavor. And the other person intuitively does this about us, too. That means humans are constantly engaged in a two-sided trust game: Should I trust you? and How much do you trust me? At work the trust game has an additional factor, as social creatures, we naturally follow leaders and model our behavior on theirs. The influence they have means they can easily sabotage trust in two key ways: by stoking fear and wielding dominance. ‼️ Fear lowers the performance Fear is a great motivator in the short term but a poor one in the long term. If your boss occasionally pressures you on a deadline, it can push you to get the work done on time. However, if you know your boss will berate, threaten, or punish you no matter what, it ceases to affect your performance. This leads to learned helplessness: Employees cannot control or predict the boss’s tirades, so they avoid the fearmonger whenever possible and stay invisible by doing the minimum. Trust and fear are often related. Where there is fear, there will be less trust. If you want to create trust, then reducing fear is an important activity. #Leadership #Change #Trust #HPO
Trusting one another is something human beings do naturally. It activates brain systems that motivate teamwork — which, in the best case, makes work feel like play.
Nick Robinson
2mo
Hilary Sutcliffe Have you seen this HBR article?
it's about people - CHRO & Group General Counsel @Arvato Systems
2moI couldn’t agree more, Nikola! Trust is also the main foundation of psychological safety - the core element of high performing teams. I‘d love to see more and more leaders and managers embrace the science behind it and experience the effect it has on their teams 🙌