Do you trust the leaders in your organisation?
Or maybe a more important question is, do your team trust you?
If they don’t, I’ve got some bad news for you.
Only 1 in 12 of them are engaged.
Yep, you read that right.
When employees don’t trust organisational leadership, their chances of being engaged are only 1 in 12!
1
in
12.
That’s a scary stat.
But like always, I’ve got some good news for you too.
When trust is established, the chances of engagement skyrocket to better than 1 in 2.
So, if your answer before was no, you’re at high risk of having not engaged (or actively disengaged) people. (If you don’t know the difference between engaged, not engaged and actively disengaged, I’ve broken it down here)
Here’s the opportunity though.
Imagine the difference it would make if you went from having only 1 in 12 people on your team engaged, to 1 in 2.
It’d be huge.
So, herein lies the million dollar question.
How do you establish trust?
Well, first we need to understand what trust actually is.
Charles Feltman defines trust as:
“Choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.”
While he defines distrust as deciding “what is important to me is not safe with this person in this situation (or any situation).”
Every interaction you have with your team is an opportunity to build or break trust.
Every. Single. Interaction.
This means you always need to be aware of what you’re doing, and intentional about how you’re doing it.
Because, when it comes down to it, the difference between your team coming to you with an issue or hiding it from you comes down to a risk assessment – is it safe to do that or is it not safe.
I’m going to break down the anatomy of trust next week to help you really understand what builds and breaks trust, but for now I have a question for you.
What are you doing, consistently, to let your team know that it’s safe to make something they value vulnerable to your actions?
Comment below.
Because if you don’t know, maybe their risk assessment is telling them that it’s not safe.
And if that’s the case, you’re looking down the barrel of 1 in 12 engagement.
Trust me, it’s worth thinking about.
