Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for a special complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern). Founding Associate Pat Zigarmi and Trust Practice Leader Randy Conley will be speaking on the topic of Building Trust and Transparency in Your Organization. The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 1,000 people expected to participate.
Immediately after the webinar, Randy Conley will be answering follow-up questions here at LeaderChat for about 30 minutes. To participate in the follow-up discussion, use these simple instructions.
Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat
- Click on the COMMENTS link above
- Type in your question
- Push SUBMIT COMMENT
It’s as easy as that! Randy will answer as many questions as possible in the order they are received. Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.
We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies. Click here for more information on participating.
Hi –
a few questions for me:
1) do you have a reference link or site for the Atlanta Consulting Group statistics you quoted connecting trust to productivity
2) we have a 10 year statistical sample from corporate employee surveys that demonstrate that we are not moving our “trust in leadership” metric. What are you thoughts in terms of how to most effectively discern what the underlying issues are and how to move executive behaviours that have been contributing to these results?
thanks
lee
Hello Lee. If you’ll send an email to webinars@kenblanchard.com we can send you further information about the Atlanta Consulting Group study. Regarding your second question…the ABCD Trust model is an excellent tool to diagnose and analyze the environmental conditions related to trust. On an individual basis we also offer a 360 assessment that identifies gaps in perceptions of trust.
Thanks for joining us today!
Although evident, is there any data from market studies that show the relationship between profitability and trust?
Hi Rick. Yes, there are different research studies and articles that highlight the connection between trust and profitability. If you’ll send an email to webinars@kenblanchard.com we can send you more information on research studies and statistics.
How do you go from the reality of where you are currently to begin the process of building more trust? What are the role and responsibilities of the people with whom you are building the trust?
Great question Railene. I suggest using the TrustWorks ABCD Trust model as a way to diagnose the conditions related to trust in relationships. As I mentioned to Lee, we offer a 360 Trust assessment that identifies gaps in trust between a leader and his/her boss, peers, and direct reports.
Really good presentation! Truly enjoyed it. Despair that my company will never get there….has a mission statement with values, but bears no relationship to reality. Some monetary goals presented, always doing what I’ve always done …..sometimes that is applauded as ‘doing well’, sometimes ‘doing poorly’ ….mostly related to turnaround time and level of staffing. No recognition for years of toiling away when understaffed. Very depressing!
It does sound depressing and frustrating. I wonder what is behind this behaviour. I wonder what the gains are.
Kathleen – I hear your frustrations. Don’t lose heart! Sometimes the most you can do is try to be a change agent within your own sphere of influence. I encourage you to use the TrustWorks ABCD model to build trust in your own work relationships. If you have direct reports, teach them the model and use it as a common language to address issues of trust. Start a revolution one person at a time!
So many companies believe that short term gains outway long term one’s. It takes resources of time and money to roll out a change initiative, and the process is often not tangible for some time, so there is no trust in the process.
True! At the same time, there are some simple solutions to building trust, which don’t require huge investments in either time or money. Ensuring simple things like recognising people for small achievements, building a culture of saying “thank you” and keeping promises made are good first steps.
Good point Heather. Ken Blanchard likes to say that companies are more interested in the flavor of the month and rolling out the latest management fad rather than following up and reinforcing the one that’s already rolled out!
Not to beat a dead horse Randy, but so true! This is a very big pet peave of mine. Such a waste of money to just go through the steps of e.g. a 360, and then do nothing with it. Which will waste time and lower the trust level even more. Thank you for your response and time!
This is regarding the LPoV. You mentioned that there is a general reticence from leaders across the globe. What do you think fuels this reticence? And how does one manage this resistance?
Asha – I think the reticence is the general hesitation to self-disclosure. It can be a scary, vulnerable step for leaders to reach this level of self-awareness on their LPOV and then share it with those they lead. It relates to the JoHari Window concepts of opening up your “public” window through disclosure and receiving feedback. Our experience has shown that the effort is well worth the payoff of increased connection to leader and the employee commitment, engagement, and loyalty that results.
how do you address middle managers who feel that they are not empowered to create trust and transparency or that these elements are not evident above them. Middle managers may feel that somehow this responsibility falls only to sr. management or that they are confined to work as directed by sr. management.
Hi Kim. I think you address it by emphasizing the importance of leaders at any level, particularly those in middle management, have a responsibility to themselves and those they lead to create and nurture trust in their individual relationships. Often times middle managers have “assumed constraints” about what they can/can’t do. Encourage them to break out of that pattern of thinking and move forward in creating a culture of trust and transparency…even if it’s only within their own team or department. Good luck!
Thanks Randy – nicely stated and I appreciate your time to reply
Hi Everyone–Randy is here now and looking through the questions. If you have a question, be sure to add it to the list.
1. Kindly provide an example of how an organization lacking a core culture supporting trust and transparency can launch a new initiative where the organizational culture does so.
2. How does an organization promote, then reinforce the alignment of core values, mission, vision, with an intentional corporate culture of trust and tranparency?
Mary Anne, At my organization, the senior managers met to talk about the issues and come up with what they thought might be a good frame work going forward. Then they senior managers met with middle level managers to open the discussion and get ideas and feedback to refine a tentative model. They the senior managers and middle managers met with the front-line employees in several meeting (for instance one senior manager, the HR Senior manager, and one middle manager with 10 employees) to go through the same process. Then after putting all of the information together, a final series of training meetings was held for review and finalization with all levels.
We ended up with a set of six corporate values and an employee appraisal system that held us accountable to those behaviors. Instead of a numerical value, we gave these categories labels and gave six examples of the behaviors for each categories. Managers with direct reports had six categories they were responsible to act on. It has worked well to consolidate the culture and hold us accountable to a stated set of values – so behavior becomes more consistant.
Hello Mary Anne. Creating or modifying an organizational culture is a large undertaking that has many facets. As you mention, it takes alignment of the organization’s vision, mission, and most importantly values that play out in every-day operational life. I would suggest you check out the Organizational Culture solutions on our website at http://www.kenblanchard.com and discuss your situation with your Blanchard consulting representative. Good luck!
Thanks, Randy. I think one big challenge that Asian managers in particular face is about receiving feedback. My perception is that probably this is not as big an issue in the West. What is your opinion about it?
Hi Asha. Yes, cultural norms (both on a national/country level and an organizational level) certainly play a factor in how LPOV is implemented in an organization but I believe there is cross-cultural applicability in that all leaders/followers want to have a productive relationship and LPOV is a tool to accomplish that goal.
Excellent presentation! The analogy of the vase is great – that once it has been broken it is very difficult to piece back together. The discussion was about the need to build trust and transparency using the ABCD model. I was wondering if you or Pat could share any thoughts or suggestions for “quick” repair tools that one might use when there has been an event that has resulted in a “crack”?
Also, at the beginning of the presentation you reported statistics regarding the percentage of employees who trust their leaders. Is it possible to obtain a link for those references? A big thank you to the Ken Blanchard Company for hosting the web seminar! There aren’t too many free things out there – I consider the opportunity to participate a gift!
Hi Julie! I’m glad you could join us. An effective way to repair broken trust is to use the ABCD model to 1) Assess – review what caused trust to be broken. Was it an A B C or D, or multiple, issues. 2) Discuss – use the ABCD model to discuss what trust building behaviors would look like to repair/prevent trust being broken in the future. 3) Plan – create an action plan by identifying 1 or 2 key issues that each person wants to focus on to build the level of trust in the relationship.
Good luck!
Thanks Randy! It is good to see how the ABCD model can be applied for a quick fix too. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I would like to thank everyone who attended our webinar today on Building Transparency & Trust in Your Organization and for joining us for the online chat here at LeaderChat.org.
Feel free to continue the discussion by replying to these comments. If you have any additional questions specifically related to this topic or today’s webinar, please contact us via email at webinars@kenblanchard.com.
Best regards,
Randy