Are you finding your meetings and collaboration lack energy? And that people are reluctant to stand out from the crowd and share ideas, because they’ll be judged and castigated for bad ones? That may well be because there isn’t enough trust between them, or throughout your workforce as a whole.
This is why trust is so important. When employees trust each other, and trust their managers and senior leaders, working environments are happier, more productive, more collaborative and more creative. At a time when the working world is changing faster than ever, this trust and positivity can be vital to taking advantage of new opportunities, and building a long-term workforce that’s loyal and talented.
In practice, working out how good trust is within an organisation – and whether or not improvements need to be made – seems like a difficult endeavour. But as you’ll discover in this blog, the Leadership Trust Index (LTI) can quantify trust levels and set you on the right track for success.
What are the complications around measuring trust?
Trust isn’t a tangible concept which means it can be vulnerable to subjectivity across a workforce. What trust means to a senior manager might be very different to how it’s viewed by a regular employee in the office or on the shop floor. This can make it very hard to pin down a common meaning of trust and measure performance accordingly.
We believe that trust in the workplace consists of three elements: employees trusting their employer; employer trusting employees; and all employees trusting each other. With this standardised definition in place, it can be easier for everyone within a workforce to give feedback and become open to conversations around improving trust.
How can the LTI solve these complexities?
Referenced in a recent Forbes article, the Leadership Trust Index (LTI) is the result of years of development focused on quantifying levels of trust within organisations, and identifying potential areas for improvement. It’s a unique trust metric that has been academically verified and is suitable for use in the public, private and third sectors alike.
Determining an LTI score is normally based around a survey that all employees within an organisation complete. The data that an LTI assessment generates can be used to benchmark trust levels, and then measure how trust improves over time as organisational and process changes are implemented. That way, organisations can work towards improving their trust levels in a logical and practical way, similar to how they would go about improving their bottom line, Net Promoter Score or customer feedback ratings.
What difference does a better LTI score make?
Improving trust levels through a higher LTI score doesn’t just make for a happier working environment – it makes practical and meaningful differences to a business’s performance, too.
Research by the Harvard Business Review has uncovered the scale of what high-trust organisations can achieve. On average, compared to similar organisations with lower trust levels, they benefit from up to:
- 106% more energy
- 76% more engagement with work
- 50% more productivity
- 50% more loyalty (measured as the proportion of the workforce planning to stay with their employer for at least another 12 months)
- 40% less burnout
- 11% greater empathy between employees
All of these benefits positively impact the bottom line, because it gives an organisation an empowered, motivated workforce that collaborates well and is emotionally invested in the long-term success of their employer.
How can the Trusted Executive help with your trust levels?
At the Trusted Executive, we are pioneers in leadership and are experts in helping organisations like yours understand the concept of quantifying trust, then benchmarking and improving your LTI score over time.
All our LTI work is focused around the ‘Nine Habits of Trust’, a theory which channels the nebulous idea of trust into more tangible areas that employees and businesses can work on. These habits are divided into three pillars:
- Ability: delivery, coaching, consistency
- Integrity: honesty, openness, humility
- Benevolence: evangelising, bravery, kindness
We can help you conduct a full LTI assessment throughout your workforce, work out your benchmark LTI score, then develop an action plan of changes to make, based on these nine habits. That way, we can take you on what we call a ‘Journey of Trust’, pinpoint the people and processes where improvements can be made, and embed long-lasting cultural change within your organisation through a programme of coaching and workshops.
Discover more about our Leadership Trust Index – download our datasheet here.
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Dr John Blakey is the author of ‘The Trusted Executive’ (book) and Founder of The Trusted Executive. Read John Blakey’s Forbes executive profile.
