It’s a phrase we see all the time – especially on our currency.
It’s not one we always hear in our cubicles, offices, and meeting rooms.
This favorite five-letter word of PR and advertising and communications and branding consultants – trust – has been plumbed and probed through innumerable surveys and opinions. Most of those polls deal with the outlooks of external constituencies, measuring the barometer of our feelings toward public institutions and officials, toward industries and individuals.
Yet not so much exists about the bond between employees and leaders, and how to establish that trust in the first place.
Steven Covey talks about the 13 behaviors of a high-trust leader. Forbes and Fortune columnists opine on the ten (or fewer) signals of executives that showcase trust. Read them carefully; few words guide new (and old) C-suiters on exactly how to build those relationships.
And yes, relationships drive trust. We’ve got to know that leaders have our backs, that they’ll do what they say they’re gonna do, and that they be real, or ‘authentic’ (as the current verbiage goes). That’s a commonly accepted trust platform.
As employees, we’d add more:
- Ask us what we’d do about the issues if we were in your shoes. Chances are, we’ve lived them … intimately.
- Listen. We don’t always get to dialog with leaders.
- And talk with our customers. They, too, can pinpoint challenges and opportunities.
In this world of phone and Internet spying, of data breaches and mining, just make us promises you’ll keep.
*You fill in the blank.