According to a latest poll by the CIPD, lack of trust was voted as the biggest barrier to effective leadership with 45% of the votes. Other votes went to lack of on-the-job training (22%), lack of succession planning (19%) and organisational structure (14%).
The importance of TRUST is even more vital when a leader needs to coach his people in order to further develop them. From our hands-on coaching programs' experience, we found out that one of the major barriers to coaching effectiveness is the lack of trust between the manager and his/her report. No matter how skilled, how well-intentioned, how good people-manager one may be, if the trust between them is not there, coaching is not going to work. And the solution? Forget about coaching and start working together or how you can establish trust between each other. Lack of trust may be one-way or reciprocal but it is the manager's call to address it.
But how easy is it to tell whether there is real trust or not? Trust is often is masked by good interpersonal relations between co-workers. However, a good rapport and communication are only prerequisites of a trust relationship and not indications.
Few people within an organization will openly say they don't trust their boss. It is almost a taboo issue. Therefore, one needs to bring it up skillfully. Exploring it from a solution focused angle could make the process more constructive.
Indicative questions could be: How can we improve trust building between us even more? What is already working in terms of trust in our relationship? Suppose we had 100% trust between us, what would happen differently then?
How do you assess the trust level you have with your reports?
Photo Copyright: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_scusi'>scusi / 123RF Stock Photo</a>
BACK TO NEWS
