Trust is increasingly recognized as an essential element of successful personal relationships, effective teamwork, and large-scale commercial relationships. The amount citizens of one country trust the residents of another has even been shown to correlate with the amount of trade between the countries.
Evaluating the level of trust in a relationship is an often evaded and sometimes sensitive task. My work coaching top executives and facilitating work groups has taught me that the “trust topic” is much easier to discuss once we realize that trust has at least five constitutive components. Examining each aspect of trust, one by one, leads us to better judgments and more fruitful conversations.
Sincerity
Capacity
Competence
Consistency
Care
When we say that we trust or mistrust a person it means that we have evaluated their:
1. Sincerity — Does what the person says match their internal conversation? Are they telling us what they honestly believe and truly intend? Once a person establishes a reputation for (more…)
Here’s how the process works. The day before meeting, your coworker brings you a list of five or six key objectives, detailing her progress on each. During the review on the following day, you simply assess the data and discuss how performance compares with objectives. Depending on the employee, this can be a short thirty-minute process, or take as long as two hours. [If you do this weekly or every day, as you might on a tight deadline or vital project, the meeting might last ten minutes. –Tony]
When an employee comes into your office, she should always bring a pen and paper and be required to take detailed minutes of the meeting. Once the meeting is over, the employee should make a photocopy of the minutes for your file. [This is a bit dated! Have the employee email a summary. For high value employees, use a (more…)
Almost all job postings, yours included, describe the absolute minimally acceptable qualifications. Why aim low? You know people will stretch their credentials and experience a bit to apply, so describing the least you will accept will attract many résumés that are totally inappropriate. Sound familiar? Here’s the antidote, with credit and thanks to Vistage speaker Barry Deutsch, my guru for job ads. Some of his advice and training for hiring managers is here. Click here for much more from him.
Based on my memory of his talks and seeing the principles applied by many of my clients, here are some of the keys for writing an ad that attracts the right candidates:
When searching for a person to fill a job opening it seems natural to describe the history of the person you are seeking. That’s a mistake.
You’re not in business to hire people.
You’re in business to create results. Therefore…
Don’t describe the person–describe the results that person must produce to be successful.
Spend more time on what the person will be doing than what the company does.
Good candidates will go to the website to learn about you. Disqualify the ones who do not.
Write it from the seeker’s point of view, in the second person.
You love to help people get in action on their problems
You can’t walk away from your desk until everything is double checked, logged, and filed.
Describe breakout success
Too many job ads and descriptions detail the minimum requirements.
Describe outstanding success in detail, with numbers and vivid examples.
Make it interesting and compelling; describe a place the right candidate would be eager to go every day.
Sell your culture and values. Employees who resonate with your fundamentals will be productive long-term.
I was thrilled to read in today’s New York Times the comments of $5B SunGard’s CEO, Cristóbal Conde. He shifted his management style several years ago after reaching the limits of the very methods that had brought him near the top.
Early on, I was very command-and-control, very top-down. I felt I was smart, and that my decisions would be better. I was young, and I was willing to work 20 hours a day. But guess what? It (more…)
The Great Recession has led many of my executive coaching clients to reduce 401(k) contributions, celebrations, work hours (through furloughs), and cut other employee perqs. These leaders often explain the reductions as prudent adjustments to avoid layoffs. Employees, unfortunately, are likely to react by becoming less trusting and cooperative with their employers, as this new research illustrates.
“Even something that is not so strong as a vindictive action—something simply perceived as a negative act,” [Professor Boaz] Keysar says, “escalates quickly.”
The researchers paired up participants for several games of give and take. In one a designated leader decided how much of $100 to give to a partner. In another, leaders decided how much of $100 to take from their partners. … Subjects in the study also consistently reacted better to receiving something than to having it taken from them, even when the gift left them with less money, say $30 instead of $50.
Leaders, however, thought they were being fair … “They did not anticipate,” Keysar says, “that the other person was going to perceive them as doing something negative.” What’s more, he discovered that as the game wore on, each successive round saw partners grabbing more and more as they alternated the taking role. Perceiving the takers as selfish, the participants became less generous.
All the best companies have bottom-up management. That means those staff who actually meet customers, or run operations, tell the boss what works, rather than vice versa. It means delegating responsibility in order to empower staff. Imperious, dictatorial leaders who are out of touch with the shop floor do not achieve sustained success.
–Luke Johnson
Chairman of Channel 4 and Risk Capital Partners
in The Financial Times
Study indicates that employees who are trusted by managers do better work and are more loyal to their employer.
A Closer Look at Trust Between Managers and Subordinates: Understanding the Effects of Both Trusting and Being Trusted on Subordinate Outcomes
The authors propose that trust in the subordinate has unique consequences beyond trust in the manager. Furthermore, they propose joint effects of trust such that subordinate behavior and intentions are most favorable when there is high mutual trust. Findings reveal unique (more…)
What coach has had the greatest impact on a client? The man with the strongest claim may be Earl Woods, whose famous client is his son, golfer Tiger Woods. How did Earl Woods become such a fantastic coach?
By studying, as I have, with the most important influence on executive coaching, Werner Erhard. Some of Earl Woods’s coaching wisdom is below, excerpted from the 1996 article in Sports Illustrated about Tiger being chosen Sportsman of the Year. It is all pure Werner Erhard.
“What I learned through est [created by Werner Erhard] was that by doing more for myself, I could do much more for others. Yes, be responsible, but love life, and give people the space to be in your life, and allow yourself room to give to others. That caring and sharing is what’s most important, not being responsible for everyone else.
“Which is where Tiger comes in. What I learned led me to give so much time to Tiger, and to give him the space to be himself, and not to smother him with dos and don’ts. I took out the authority aspect and turned it into (more…)
I watched the famous “Gloria” films this weekend, more properly known as Three Approaches to Psychotherapy. Gloria, the patient, generously agreed to have filmed sessions with each of the three great psychotherapists of the 1960s: Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, and Albert Ellis. It must have been quite a day for her!
Carl Rogers actively worked to wrest control of counseling from the medical monopoly established by Freud and Jung, opening the work to (more…)
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