9. Cultivate the Risk-Trust Dynamic

Employees must trust management and, reciprocally, management must trust employees. Case study after case study shows that where there is trust, “great places to work” can flourish. As I talked about in earlier chapters, great places to work are not the organizations that become famous for putting out bowls of free M&Ms or letting employees take extra personal days. Historically, great places to work are organizations where the culture of engaged employees—and the policies that sustain and engage them—creates a competitive advantage, lower turnover, consistent stock growth, and market share growth. And a key workplace component that underpins all of these is trust.

Trust is nothing more than the willingness of a person to be vulnerable, the willingness to give of herself. The more an employee trusts someone—a coworker, a boss—the more she allows her preferred self to emerge. (The preferred self is that person who emerges when there is alignment between the person’s personal attributes and the organization’s goals.) And as Martha Stewart might say, “And that’s a good thing.” The emergence of a preferred self is an essential quality—if not the essential quality—of an engaged and highly productive employee. Let’s look a little deeper at trust, what it means specifically, and how to foster it in the workplace.

Given how trust is key to a successful business, it may seem to be an ephemeral topic, something hard to define and even harder to create. But you may be surprised to learn that quite a bit of research has been done on how to foster trust, and on the detriments and drawbacks of a workplace that lacks trust.

The Great Place to Work Institute was founded in San Francisco in 1991 by Robert Levering and Amy Lyman. The work of the institute springs from decades of research that Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz first published in their 1984 book The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. Not long ago, the Great Place to Work Institute put forth consensus attributes of great places to work. The institute says that the first element that makes a great place to work is that the work itself is interesting and challenging. Second, there is a high level of camaraderie in the workplace. And third, an overarching, high level of trust operates in the workplace at all times.

The Great Place to Work Institute defines trust in two ways. First, there is the trust that management displays. This is the trust that management has in its people. This trust is expressed through the day-to-day behavior of management, and that behavior must be a model for what management expects of its employees to 1) behave in high quality ways, 2) work hard on behalf of the company, 3) produce goods and services at highest quality, 4) maintain honest relations with clients and customers and each other, and 5) provide input and ideas that propel the company forward to achieve competitive advantage. That my sound a little dry and academic, so let me put it to you plainly: A “great-place environment” is dependent on the entirely novel idea that leaders and managers should treat their employees as if they are all big boys and big girls who have brains. They should treat their employees as capable and worthy. They should treat them as though they are members of a team, rather than hired hands. Too simple a concept to be effective? Read on.

It’s not that hard to foster this kind of workplace culture, because it is not about policies and protocols, but human behavior. Let me give you an example. When workers are trained at the Four Seasons Hotels, one central tenet of that training—one of the foundations by which all their on-the-job behavior should be judged—is this motto or slogan: We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentleman. Any action that an employee takes should be seen in light of that motto. When a hotel guest asks for extra help, the employee’s response should be what a lady or gentleman would do for another lady or gentlemen. It’s not about policies or protocols; it’s about behavior.

Now, when a company is trying to be a great place to work, that atmosphere can be fostered when people ask themselves—before each and every action, until it becomes a habit—is this how I should behave to a member of my team? Is this how I should behave to a thinking and considerate adult? Is this how I should act toward someone capable and worthy of trust? If the answer is yes, then the behavior is proper, and it’s not something that you have to check in a reference manual.

Next, this trust needs to flow from leaders and managers to employees, but it also must flow back from employees. The employees must trust that the leadership is acting with the company’s and the employee’s best interests in mind, even if it may not seem so with some decisions, at first blush. That trust isn’t always easy to earn (or maintain), but the employees have to trust that the leadership cares about them, not only as a means to an end (for example, profit and enduring competitive advantage), but as people. And leadership must demonstrate that it cares about what its people care about, too.

When you have this dynamic, where trust is shared on a two-way street (employee-to-employer and employer-to-employee), the workplace welcomes an atmosphere of accountability and ownership. On the one hand, employees have a reason to feel responsible for outcomes and for sustaining this sense of trust by taking actions that are worthy of trust. On the other hand, the more the leader or manager is able to trust, the less inclined he is to micromanage the employee. When the trust dynamic is working particularly well, it only accelerates. As employees demonstrate more and more reason to be trusted, more and more trust is granted. As leaders grant more and more trust, employees take more and more ownership of their roles and outcomes, because they know that there is not a backstop; there is no one playing behind them, no one there to correct their errors. This is the workplace dynamic that breeds leaders—leaders who are brought up from within, not leaders who are brought in from outside just for their skills. (Those kinds of leaders must be acculturated to the new workplace environment, at great cost of time and money and at gross costs of time and money if the acculturation proves impossible.)

For leaders who are freed of the onus of micromanagement, and who know that they can look the other way and not be taken advantage of, they too are freed to engage in activities that leaders are supposed to do, activities that can truly give a company competitive advantage. Not babysitting. Not dreaming up punishments. Not patrolling the hallways looking for people who are coming back late from lunch. But being creative and imaginative in future planning and process optimization. Cheerleading. Managing by walking around.

In workplace environments like that, where the trust factor is very high, when “the nickel stands on its edge” the management and leadership will push it over to the side that favors the employees, and conversely, when that nickel stands on its edge, the employees will push it over to the side that favors the company.

The next natural question is this: How do you create an atmosphere where trust emerges? First, you have to establish a workplace philosophy that assumes the following: Employees are not there to cheat or to be on the dole. In fact, leaders and managers have to trust that employees are there to make a contribution. Think back to Theory X and Theory Y Management, which I wrote about earlier in this book. Take to heart the fact that many people want to be led, yet they don’t want to be overly supervised. Accordingly, leaders and managers must look at their people not as assets to be policed and lorded over, but as resources capable of helping the organization achieve great competitive advantage, which also works to everyone’s personal advantage as well.

To achieve this, leaders and managers have to be trustworthy. They have to establish patterns of doing the things that they say they are going to do; they have to follow through. It’s no different from the way you react to people in your personal life, is it? If someone repeatedly lets you down on promises, you develop doubt and mistrust. If you are in a bind and their promises really must be carried through on, your natural inclination is to reach in, call, prod, and micromanage, because you distrust their ability to follow through. The same is true in the workplace. When leaders or managers say they are going to get something done, they’d better follow through. Otherwise the employees quickly develop cynicism and distrust for “just another empty promise from management.” This means leaders and managers must be consistent and transparent.

Second in building trust, leaders have to communicate the truth of the business situation, and, accordingly, they have to be clear when communicating what they expect from the people. You might notice that many of the best places to work in America are often organizations that have transparent processes, decision making, and even financials. The leadership lays it all out there: where the organization is against goal, how well it did last month, what must be achieved by each department to achieve the next goal. That’s a key element for fostering teamwork, trust, and camaraderie.

Does this mean that leaders and managers have to be Pollyannas? Or Little Miss Sunshines? No. But they have to cheerlead, be consistent, be highly communicative, and request the behaviors that will achieve outcomes valuable to the organization.

Contrary to what some of you might think, creating trust has little to do with money. Money has value, but it doesn’t have core value, and it doesn’t ensure cultural value. After all, who would turn down money? You give it away; people are going to take it. You give them bonus checks; they are going to cash them. However, with or without the bonus checks, employees sense whether leadership cares about them, based on how much trust has been engendered in the workplace environment. In an environment where there is mistrust, the bonus checks are just like that one-time bouquet of flowers, the dozen bagels that turn out to be a fluke. They are just empty symbols.

Let’s drill down a little more and take a closer look at the nature of trust.

As valuable as trust is, it is nothing more than the ability for someone to be vulnerable. When I say vulnerable, I don’t mean in a manner of psychological immaturity. Instead, I mean that you are open. That you accept suggestions and don’t mind when people expect things of you. It means not getting defensive when criticized, because you don’t feel threatened at your core in any real way. You feel secure, even when your work is questioned, because the questioning is done with the goal to improve the competitive position and productivity of the company through your work, not to call into doubt your motives or intentions. In these settings, your preferred self can emerge, because you know that your open trusting self isn’t going to be attacked or stabbed in the back. And when you are this open, it frees you up to do the work without distraction. All of your capabilities can be applied, and you can become absorbed in your work. That’s when people produce their best, because their own sense of pride in their work is being exercised and exerted for themselves, for their teams, and for the advancement of the business goals of the organization. Every tier, every layer of the workplace environment is in sync, including the emotional and physical intelligence of the employee.

Not to get too idealistic about this or to imply that this trusting disposition is heaven on earth and easy to sustain, but maybe you have been blessed to feel this way at one time or another in your life. You hear from professional athletes that they were “in the zone,” or that “the ball seemed larger than usual.” “The hoop seemed bigger.” “I couldn’t miss.” “All the noise fell away.”

In the workplace all the “noise” that falls away in an atmosphere of trust is the office politics, the micromanagement, the suspicion. And it can produce spectacular results. Try it, and see.

Let me ask you something: Would the activities, actions, and behaviors I am suggesting in this chapter cause a wave of disbelief in your workplace? If your workplace has an element of mistrust, then these actions by leadership and management—if implemented suddenly and with no follow-through—would indeed cause disbelief.

Remember the story I told in an earlier chapter about the fellow in a ho-hum relationship who unexpectedly brings home flowers? Or the company leader who suddenly brings in bagels? The first time you do this, everyone will be waiting for the bad news, the layoffs, the budget cuts. But if leaders and managers are consistent, and the actions they take to foster trust are not done just once and never revisited, but consistently publicly stated and backed up with action, then you will start to win over your employees. Moreover, by announcing your intention to foster trust, it’s like writing a promise to your spouse or business partner and taping it in a prominent place. It’s a public statement. It can be referred to as a reminder. It increases the pressure for leaders and managers to live up to what you have promised, or risk wide condemnation. If leaders and managers announce, “We’re going to do this! Please watch us. Guide us. Challenge us. This is our stake in the ground.” That’s when you begin to gain credence among your workforce, a credence that is affirmed and built on by consistent action and consistently clear communication.

Companies that do this badly are the ones that try the flavor of the month and are not consistent and disciplined. Metaphorically, these are like people who jump from fad diet to fad diet, never sticking to one consistent approach that would achieve the desired outcome: losing weight. And what’s the result of that? Discouragement, defeatism, and the abandonment of the cause. These types of companies are unwilling, unaware, or just plain incapable of revising their philosophy about people in the workplace.

One more SAS story to wrap up this chapter. Years ago, when we were putting together our corporate policies at SAS, we decided that we would not have a time clock (for punching in and out) and we would not have a sick leave policy, with a set number of sick days allotted to each employee. Sounds crazy, right? It may have seemed to others that we were reckless with our trust and setting ourselves up for abuse, especially with the sick leave policy. But our feeling was this: If you’re sick, you’re sick, and you should stay home. We announced the “no-policy policy” and let it be known that we “trusted” our people to behave responsibly and as adults, with the expectation that it would not be abused. We provided lots of freedom with equal responsibility—with a reminder of the reality of less-than-adult behavior—“be absent for five or six consecutive Mondays or Fridays, and expect to be dismissed.”

The principle behind this policy was that we trusted our employees to behave and act as adults. However, we also recognized that employees who call in sick when they are not sick obviously want to be somewhere else. And believe me, we gave a couple of people the permanent chance to be or work somewhere else. We found that the vast majority of people responded very well to this approach. The more we treated them as adults, the more they acted like adults. SAS experienced consistently low absenteeism. Beyond how the policy was received (and it is still in place and working today), this approach goes back to the Montessori approach, which we put in place at SAS’s day-care and child-care facilities. We gave SAS employees a great deal of freedom, but we made it clear that freedom came with responsibility—the responsibility to themselves, to their coworkers, and to the company. We expressed our trust, and we were repaid with trust, enduring loyalty, and much more.

A final word on trust and lack of trust in the workplace as seen through a major federal government intrusion into the prerogatives that companies have to deal with the people they employ. Prior to the passage of the Family Medical Leave Act in 1993, many companies had sick leave policies that provided for paid or unpaid time off for employees who were too ill to come to work. However, few companies had provisions in these policies to allow employees to stay at home to care for a sick child or other close relative. To stay at home for other than personal illness was a clear violation of policy and subject to disciplinary action. Nonetheless, many employees, with few alternatives available to them, called in sick to care for a sick child or relative, knowingly violating policy. Many were caught; some were terminated.

Some of these employees saw this as wrongful discharge, found lawyers, moved the complaint up the food chain to Congress, and Voila!, the Family Medical Leave Act. And, for me, the root of all this is a pattern of distrust that began when companies treated employees as though they would abuse any privilege.