Trust ➠ Greater Productivity?

Can trust lead to greater productivity? The simple answer is yes. Let’s explore why it’s true.

Background

One of the things that most employees hate is being micromanaged…not only having their boss continuously looking over their shoulder, but regularly criticizing the approach they’re using.

The reason that bosses micromanage is that they are insecure. They don’t trust others because they fear that any mistake that one of their employees make will reflect negatively on them. In other words, their lack of self-esteem, places too much emphasis on what others, in particular their boss, think of them.

Conversely, bosses who are secure in their own abilities, readily admit their mistakes knowing:

1. We’re all human…which makes us prone to making mistakes.
2. We learn more from our mistakes than the things that go well.
3. We can always fix a mistake.

They know that’s as true for their employees as it is for them. Consequently, they find it easier to trust others than their less-secure counterparts.

You may be wondering: What has this got to do with productivity?

Trust ➠ Greater Productivity

There are several reasons why trusting your employees leads to greater productivity.

First, anyone with whom we deal including our employees will live up to or down to our expectations. When we trust them to do a good job on a timely basis, we credit them with being intelligent people who desire to do their job well and produce accordingly.

Conversely, when we’re micromanaging them, when we demonstrate that we don’t trust them, they’re constantly concerned about their jobs, they feel denigrated, frustrated and develop a why bother mentality…these feelings absorb much of the energy which prevents them from being as productive as they could be.

Second, employees who feel trusted are left to their own devices which assures that they are using approaches that feel comfortable and natural to them. Anyone who has tried using another person’s approach to a task and found that approach awkward knows that they could have produced the result more quickly, and effectively, using their own approach.

Third, employees who feel trusted are more comfortable experimenting with new approaches…approaches that could lead to efficiency and greater productivity. They experience the fun and excitement of exploration plus heightened self-esteem as they find more effective approaches.

Now that we’re aware of the reasons why trust increases productivity, let’s see what it takes to develop the ability to trust.

Learning to trust

First, we must learn to trust ourselves. Trusting ourselves isn’t binary; it isn’t a matter of either trusting yourself or not. Trust, like virtually everything in life lies on a spectrum. That spectrum runs from not trusting ourselves at all to trusting ourselves completely. Where we fit on that spectrum depends on the situation we’re facing.

There are some situations that we’ve repeatedly dealt with successfully. We don’t have to think about what to do, we just take action and get the desired result. At the other end of the spectrum we have situations in which we have little or no experience and are left wondering: How do I deal with this situation?

We can learn how to trust ourselves, regardless of where we are on the spectrum, by reminding ourselves:

1. We’re all human…which makes us prone to making mistakes.
2. We learn more from our mistakes than the things that go well.
3. We can always fix a mistake.

You can confirm the third item on the list by:

• Each morning, shortly after rising, reminding yourself of situations you’ve faced when you had no background or experience and the result that you achieved.
• Commit yourself to approach each problem during the day trusting that you can solve the problem because you always have.
• At the end of the day, shortly before retiring, revisit your day twice. The first time, recall the successes you had in trusting yourself. The second time, recall the moments when you didn’t trust yourself and ask: What will I do the next time I’m faced with that situation?

Do this simple exercise daily and you’ll find that within a week you’ve already begun to trust yourself more. After a month or two, trusting yourself will be your default way of thinking.

Once you’re in the habit of trusting yourself, you’ll feel comfortable trusting your employees. They will rise to your heightened belief in them and reward you with greater productivity.

That’s when you’ll know that trust leads to greater productivity.

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If you’d like the leaders in your organization to learn how to use the numbers more effectively and dramatically improve the productivity of your workforce, contact me to learn more about these resources:

Resources

Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal program helps you identify and nurture emerging leaders who elevate all around them to higher levels of performance and greater job enjoyment.

Financial Awareness & Strategy program where employees learn to identify opportunities to improve financial results and prioritize these opportunities on the basis of which produces the greatest impact with the least effort. Greater financial awareness = Better decisions.