How many of the following are ongoing issues in your office?
- High employee turnover and absenteeism
- Negative water cooler conversations
- Slow decision making and low innovation
- A seemingly never ending series of crises
- Stagnant or diminishing profitability
If you answered “yes” to one or more of the five issues listed above, your office is suffering from low “T” and the prescription for a return to health rests squarely on the shoulders of leadership. So what is low “T?” It’s low trust and the single most common and debilitating impediment to successful organizations.
The good news is low “T” is easily cured. Leaders just need to acknowledge the disease and implement a trust building prescriptive culture. Why not set a goal of starting that process on January 1, 2016? Here are a few ways to head down the path to recovery:
In every interaction with every person, ask yourself: “What can I do in this moment to strengthen the trust between us? Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner
You don’t build trust by getting louder; you build trust by getting closer. Richard Fagerlin
Take a younger employee to lunch and ask them a lot of questions and listen-to-learn. Jon Mertz
Terminate toxic people, even the star performers. Bob Vanourek
Build a foundation of organizational trust to soften the blow from the next breach. Barbara Brooks Kimmel
We have a great tool to help you. For the third year, Trust Across America-Trust Around the World has assembled, with the help of dozens of global experts, an annual TRUST POSTER. The 2016 theme is 52 Ideas That YOU Can Implement to Build Trust. It not only makes a great inexpensive “gift of trust” for the holidays but provides many of the keys to reversing the cycle of organizational mistrust. These are just a few suggestions on ways to use these posters that are already in place in many organizations for 2016:
- Hang one in your office as a conversation starter with visitors, employees or colleagues.
- Give them as gifts to key influencers in organizations suffering from low “T.”
- Send them to clients along with the suggestion to place on their bulletin boards in the employee lounge as well as share an “idea a week” in their management team meetings.
- Mail them to remote employees.
- Give them to your kid’s teachers, send one to the mayor and police chief, and share them with local business owners.
Everyone can benefit from high “T” in 2016!
Read more about the 2016 poster at this link.
Do your part by joining our movement today!
Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO & Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help responsible organizations build trust. She facilitates the world’s largest membership program for those interested in the subject. Barbara also serves as editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.
Copyright 2015, Next Decade, Inc.
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