Perspectives on Trust

Trust is a critical pillar of a healthy corporate culture that enables people to move beyond continuous quality (process) improvement and align for “major” innovation to solve complex problems. We will view trust from different perspectives within a Corporation and then shift to the topic of “public trust”.

Cinder to Flame helps Corporations maximize cost containment and quality in service delivery through a strategic program that builds a healthy corporate culture to ignite “major” innovation.

Trust enables corporate capacity for innovation and must be studied from multiple perspectives. Do employees trust their manager? Do team members trust each other? To what extent does the manager trust their employees? Do employees trust the senior management team? And so on…

Trust has been connected to autonomy and the formation of self-directed work teams where barriers to sharing novel ideas and engaging in experimentation are diminished. Less direct supervision and permission to engage in cross-functional collaboration (e.g. for project work) has been associated with corporate capacity for innovation. Autonomous work also serves to break down power relationships that can occur whenever managers and leaders are present.

Burcharth, Knudsen and Sondergaard published their study in the journal of Business Process Management, entitled: The role of employee autonomy for open innovation performance (2017). Time, freedom and independence render the flexibility required to experiment - this is fundamental for innovation.

Trust within and between teams is also important. Studies have shown that trust is associated with willingness to raise more novel ideas and share knowledge across a Corporation. Lack of trust restricts corporate capacity for “major” innovation.

Employee trust in leaders has been studied by Stephen M.R. Covey who developed a behavioural-based model of trust with two branches: character (intent + integrity) and competence (results + capability). Employees were asked which branch was more important with respect to trust in a leader. Character ranked higher than competence.  

Ken Dovey (2009) explored the role of trust in collaborative learning, innovation and as a competitive organizational strategy. He categorizes trust as a social capital resource and encourages leaders to focus on creating a corporate environment that nurtures trust through relationships, networking and partnerships.

Corporate communication is often the vehicle employed to promote employee trust. However, the frequency and varied modalities of communication utilized, may not yield trust. Lack of trust is linked to employee attendance, turnover rate or employee disengagement (which is difficult to detect).

I’ve observed that collaboration is more valuable than communication because merely sharing decisions or plans does not positively engage employees and build trust. Given opportunities to provide input before decisions are made and action plans are crafted, enables employees to contribute ideas for successful implementation of innovative solutions.

Corporate values often include “trust” or capture other values such as respect, teamwork and curiosity which when translated into behaviours, engage people and foster trust. The challenge is translating words into action. Are leaders cultivating corporate trust? Do they live the corporate values and model the associated behaviours?

In Corporations, trust is linked to autonomy and capacity for “major” innovation. When the management team trusts their employees by allocating time and space to exercise creativity, generate novel ideas and experiment with innovative solutions, this instills employee trust. Trust is a reciprocal relationship.

A different perspective on trust is “public trust”. All levels of government, public service employees and administrators, and any organization that receives public funding need to earn the trust of the people they serve. Decisions (e.g. funding services or raising taxes) require due diligence to consider the broader impact. For example, providing services that require more money are not innovative solutions, especially when they have a negative impact on the cost of living for people.

Transparent, honest and holistic messaging from all levels of government nurture trust. For example, is a temporary tax break a political ploy? Is there another area where the government intends to recoup any lost revenue through (less obvious) taxation or reduction of services?

Is your municipality, province (state) or country ready to explore more sustainable solutions to solve complex challenges such as affordable housing and food insecurity?

Does your health care organization require more innovative solutions to prepare for the unprecedented growth in the aging population that will result in a greater demand for health care and funding?

How can your private sector Corporation help support healthy cities and communities?

Explore the services description specific to your corporate sector, so that we can begin a conversation about possibilities: https://www.cindertoflame.ca/services

© Deborah (Ellen) Wildish, Cinder to Flame 2022-Present. All Rights Reserved.

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