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How to examine workplace trust amongst your team by Lukas Michel
By Guest Contributor Lukas Michel
Author of Agile By Choice, Lukas Michel, explains how to examine workplace trust within your team with a practical exercise.
Agile builds on trust. And trust is the fastest management concept. When there is trust, you can delegate decisions to people at the cli- ent front and short-cut lengthy approval processes throughout the ranks of hierarchy. To increase speed in your organization, you need to examine trust. This is why trust creates more value than any other management concept. Delegation depends on people-centric man- agers who trust their employees to get the job done.
PEOPLE
• When leaders are good, employees trust them. When leaders are excellent, employees trust themselves.
• Trust is a normal thing when dealing with people: as trust is a risk, it is part of performance.
• When people talk about trust, it’s always when it’s missing. Its appearance is its non-existence.
• Trust does not work without trusting yourself – and this requires courage. Reducing control requires trust.
LEADERSHIP
• Eighty per cent of your attention and time will be taken up by the members of your team whom you don’t trust.
• To achieve speed, leaders need to let go, trust and reduce control. Mistrust starts a demotivation spiral. It always starts with the leader and with low expectations, ignorance of • competence, mistrust of accountability, the feeling that we know better than others and the tendency to over-control.
• Mistrust does not require justification. Trust requires justification
RELATIONSHIPS
• Giving trust creates the duty to return it (reciprocal). It tends towards equilibrium. This means that trust has a price. More trust means less traditional control.
• People come to institutions but leave leaders. This says a lot about trust and relationships.
SYSTEMS
• The boundaries of trust are where the system collapses – this is where the organization is at risk.
• Trust increases speed, reduces transaction costs and builds commitment.
• With trust, there is no need to tweak systems to get things done. This reduces the time required to act.
• Trust as a control has low transaction costs. It works without the need for formal contractual agreements.
• Every commercial transaction requires trust.
• Trust is the only resource needed for survival in an economy of speed.
• It is not control that undermines trust. Trust needs control. Control is a prerequisite for trust. It is important to get that balance right.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LUKAS MICHEL is the owner of Agility Insights AG, based in Switzerland, and CEO of the AGILITYINSIGHTS.NET, a global network of experienced business mentors. Over the course of his 40-year career, he has worked with executive teams around the world, focusing on management and agility for a diverse range of local, national,and global organizations. Lukas is the author of The Performance Triangle, Management Design, People-Centric Management and Diagnostic Mentoring.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukasmichel/
Suggested Reading
If you have not yet experienced the benefits of agile but don’t want to miss the trend, then Agile by Choice offers a gentle introduction into the core concept and the prerequisite of people-centric management. This book offers a new way to think about how you lead people, how you use your own resources, and how you personally perform at your peak.In line with his previous books, Lukas Michel presents a diagnostic self-mentoring approach with 21 exercises for leaders to learn about agile and people centric. This book initiates the shift to strategic agility with your team to establish leadership everywhere.
Other books by the author
Today’s dynamic business environment requires new ways to man- age, lead, work, and organize. Traditional paradigms of efficiency, agency theory, transactions and scale are replaced or augmented with principles that focus on people, self-organization, and purpose for greater innovation and growth.
To expand on his previous books, Lukas Michel presents new research, practical applications and the experience with People- Centric Management, agile organization and work on the system to establish new management where people unlock their talent, master greater challenges and perform at their peak.
The book offers the legendary People-Centric Diagnostic that forces the reader to decode and rethink the many assumptions underlying their management model and systems. In combination, the people-centric model, the three-step process and action agenda will help executives establish leadership everywhere to succeed in a dynamic environment.
It is a new era. To win in an increasingly dynamic and volatile environment, leadership teams must be agile – they must be flexible enough to react to early signs and act on them quickly.
An agile company needs good decision-making at all levels – from the centre to the periphery, tapping into the full potential of the people, operating model, information technology and leadership practices. And decisions are made by people. This guide forces you to re-examine the assumptions underlying your leadership and how agility within your company can be built through a three-point, people-centric approach. The author’s insights will help you understand your options, make the choices required to successfully coach your team, and start creating agility as a competitive advantage today.