Smart leaders understand that building trust is a foundation of everything they achieve.
As the old story goes, having trust is like a foundation of solid rock, giving strength and resilience to whatever you build on it. On the other hand, leaders who fail to achieve trust often find that at the first sign of trouble everything falls apart. Instead of solid foundations they have foundations of sand.
- Trust is strongly correlated with engagement. Research shows that a shift from neutral to high trust will double employee engagement. Shifting from low trust to high trust will triple engagement.
- Trust drastically reduces the time it takes to do business. Trusted leaders spend less time and effort persuading people and get higher compliance.
- Trust is at the heart of a flourishing workplace culture, leading to more creativity, productivity, better decision making and a high degree of flexibility. As Peter Drucker says, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’.
- Trusted brands make easier sales and can command higher prices.
- Trust is highly correlated with advocacy and the Net Promoter Score (NPS).
The Science of Trust
Until recently leaders have not paid much attention to it because little was know scientifically about how to create trust.
Now that is changing:
- From neuroeconomist Paul Zak, we understand the brain chemistry of trust and how it changes the way people behave.
- From evolutionary game theorists we understand the mathematics of trust, and why it is not so much ‘survival of the fittest’ as ‘survival of the most co-operative”.
- From morphological psychology, we understand how trust is formed subconsciously from six distinct judgements we make without even being aware of it.
Discover the Other
Discover the Other offers coaching, training and consulting for leaders wanting to reap the benefits of raising the level of trust in themselves as individuals, in their teams and in their organisations and brands.
We have over 20 years experience working with groups as diverse as politicians, police forces, ex-combatants, ethnic and multicultural groups.