The four principles for building a relationship founded on trust
Posted on | February 7, 2010 | No Comments
Interpersonal soft skills are significant in their ability to build relationships forged on trust. Honest communication, mutual respect, even where there are differences of world view or personal opinion, integrity and ethical behaviour, contribute to underpinning the trust factor. Trust is required in constructing healthy communities and organisations, and when it upheld, has been seen to unleash creativity, engender empowerment, optimise teamwork. Fostering a culture of trust, therefore, rewards communities and organizations that hold true to the principles as a highly valuable intangible asset. Both Jack Welch and Warren Bennis maintain it as a key component to business succcess and yet few companies or institutions seem to manage in enfranchise trust sustainably because of a failure to transmit it as a cultural norm.
The characteristics of trustworthiness include integrity, reliability, fairness, caring, openness, reciprocality and, within appropriate caveats that does not transgress a core value set, loyalty. Organizations and institutional policies might promote a culture of trust by promoting open communication, by modeling behaving in socially responsible and ethical ways to every employee.
According to Charles Green, creator of the Trust Equation, ‘the way we use the Trust Creation Process model is really just outcomes of the principles we hold.’ What I understand Charles to impute, it that who we are and what values we hold to be true, informs how we engage and behave with others across the board.
Green maintains that the only way to become trusted is to act consistently from a set of core principles and the four specific principles governing trustworthy behavior that he cites are:
1) A focus on the Other (client, customer, internal co-worker, boss, partner, subordinate) for the Other’s sake, not just as a means to one’s own ends.
We often hear “client-focus,” or “customer-centric.” But these are terms all-too-often framed in terms of economic benefit to the person trying to be trusted.
2) A collaborative approach to relationships.
Collaboration here means a willingness to work together, creating both joint goals and joint approaches to getting there.
3) A medium to long term relationship perspective, not a short-term transactional focus.
Focus on relationships nurtures transactions; but focus on transactions chokes off relationships. The most profitable relationships for both parties are those where multiple transactions over time are assumed in the approach to each transaction.
4) A habit of being transparent in all one’s dealings.
Transparency has the great virtue of helping recall who said what to whom. It also increases credibility, and lowers self-orientation, by its willingness to keep no secrets.
According to Green, applying these principles to all of our actions will develop the fullest potential of trust that bonds and binds relationships, and thereby, builds longevity and reward born from such a strong tie.
As this erudite research on trust reveals, ‘Trust has several beneficial effects. It helps build teams, where trust acts as a bond of tying people together. It reduces energy otherwise required for controls. It helps in cases of conflict. Overall, it reduces task complexity.’
The benefits trust rewards us with professionally, socially and personally, are worthy of our time, attention and investment to explore, accomodate and demonstrate. Make no mistake. your ‘relationship capital’ is being accounted for with every interaction, so it is a wise person that conducts themselves with every meritricious endeavour of creating relationships bound and bonded in trust.
Tags: behaviour > Core Values > creation > focus > Interpersonal Relationships > Models > principles > Relationship > soft skills > trust > Values > Willingness
How to build a positive organisational culture
Posted on | January 18, 2010 | No Comments
The majority of businesses do not fully realise the potential of their workforce and need to benchmark skills and behaviours organisationally. Codes of conduct are the guiding principles and ethical standards set by the employer. Both the employees and the employer are required to comply with it in all of their actions. Managers can do much to create a productive atmosphere through constructive engagement. People management is a learned skill and managers need to have a framework within they relate to their teams objectively and foster a postive culture organisationally.
Performance typology
Defining the key competencies and behaviours of an effective manager includes the ability to inspire high levels of teamwork, and the qualities that are exemplifed in values, ethics, character, knowledge and demonstrated in superior people skills. Often managers are promoted without sufficient grooming or training to take on the roles that allow them to navigate the complexities of individual, team and hierarchical interactions Competencies are the outcome of being appropriately qualified to perform a task and are observable or measurable skills, knowledge, and abilities.Knowles (1975) uses the following typology for competencies:
Knowledge
Understanding
Skill
Attitude
Value
These benchmark the distinguishing standards between superior and other performers and are requisite in managers who are frequently the role models to employees and therefore inform the culture enfranchised organisationally. Time invested in training in soft skills competencies provide tangible bottom line results.
In the new knowledge economy, encouraging initiative is needed throughout the ranks. Involvement in an organization is no longer optional. A manager can work towards engaging personnel to achieve its objectives and increase the triple bottom line. The new ‘knowledge-centric’ enterprises are characterized by flattened hierarchies and multi-tasked workforce. Managers are assuming more leadership and coaching tasks and must work harder to provide employees with resources and working conditions they need to accomplish the goals they are hired to fulfill. Mining the talent by empowering human capital is now the prime focus of organizational success. A critical feature of knowledge-based enterprises is that they are invested with a significant culture of empowerment, or decision-making authority. Communication is vital to stimulate a creative workplace in a mature, seasoned culture and creativity in communication is key to implementing a high performance culture. In brief, managers now work for their staff, and not the reverse. Employee empowerment shifts managers’ mind-set and affording them with more time to engage in implementing agile decisions and keeping their eye on critical issues that require immediate action.
Building and protecting your reputation
Posted on | January 14, 2010 | No Comments
The value of a business increasingly lurks not in physical and financial assets that are on the balance sheet, but in intangibles.
—The Economist, June 12, 1999
The reputation of your business is what precedes it in the marketplace, be you service or product. Building a reputation based on customer centric service, standing by your brand promise and placing an emphasis on happy customers sows dividends in the short and long term. Businesses and organizations must manage their reputation by communicating with their clients and customers and management must embody honesty, fairness, responsiveness and consistency in dealing, conducting business in a manner that ensures long-term success. People are loyal to companies they feel good about.
How you deal with employees and customers creates the reputation you develop.They are key to the success of every business. Many companies fail to understand the importance of developing and maintaining a consistent reputation as trusted, reliable and treats everyone fairly. The culture of the organization informs the perceptions of the public at large and learning how to assess what kind of reputation your organization has improve upon your approach each employee, customer and client, each of whom has an influential ability to impact the reputation for better or worse.
If the reputation of an organization is tarnished, it is a lengthy and expensive job to shift negative perceptions that have been created by the key constituencies. Management must strive to communicate clearly to employees a culture where they expect them to treat each other and everyone they come in contact with while representing the company in a manner that is consistent with the brand values. When employees deviate, it is important to re inforce those expectations and that behaving in a manner inconsistent with the culture is unacceptable as the values and perspectives build the reputation perception.
Tags: building > capital > constructing > measuring > protecting > Relationship > Reputation
Manage your reputation through good choices.
Posted on | August 11, 2009 | No Comments
Human Values drive sustainable success
Posted on | June 20, 2009 | No Comments
Understanding the power of quality relationship management depends a good deal on an awareness of people’s behaviour and preferences. Soliciting from any group, community or department, what motivates, inspires and provides satisfying experiences is key to creating strong bonds and powerful alliances that drive buy in and support, no matter the context.
Currently relationship management, across all it’s various attributions, is poorly understood and even more abysmally executed. If the current understanding of relationship management is simply to monitor and respond to negative commentary on your reputation, your brand, your business or your services, or to follow up and cross sell when the customer or client has fallen off your radar, this is no better than shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted it. It’s about listening, responding, reciprocating, acknowledging, modelling ethics and values, everywhere you are or your business is active.
The value of building and maintaining a reputation built on the seven principles of human givens (accountability, boundaries, respect, responsibility, honesty, support and trust) means creating co ooperative alliances and rewarding relationships. This cannot be short cut, avoided, underserved or manipulated. We are each being held to account on our behaviours in regard to our commitments and on this we stand or fall in peer assessment.
There is no excuse now, given the quantity and quality of tracking technologies and social media assets, not to create a formidable and very manageable strategy to build and sustain quality relaltionships and use all positive testimonials, word of mouth recommendations and quality referrals to build personal and professional capital as well as business advantage. To fail to implement such a strategy is to be asleep at the wheel in a fast moving and competitive world.
Tags: Alliances > Array > Attributions > Behaviours > Bonds > Business Advantage > Competitive World > Excuse > Experiences > Good Relationship > Group Community > Human Givens > Human Values > Media Assets > Negative Commentary > Peer Assessment > Quality Referrals > Quality Relationship > Radar > Relationship Management > Reputation > Rewarding Relationships > Seven Principles > Stable Door > Sustainable Success > Testimonials > Underserved > Wheel > Word Of Mouth
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