Trust Will Make or Break Your Company

Trust is an integral part of human nature. It is the most important difference between a good relationship and a bad relationship. From an early start, trust is sought for, responded to, valued and nurtured socially, personally and in the workplace. What most people don’t realize is that trust is a RESULT! Trust is earned. Trust is a verb. It takes action to foster trust within yourself, your colleagues and your company.

Trust is a very powerful force, and one that has people following leaders, because they honour that trust and inspire people to believe in what they advocate and stand for. Someone who aspires to earn trust must consistently be a person with strength, a leader with integrity and a gifted communicator. The three most powerful traits that foster trust include: reliability, sincerity and competency in the work area that is being a good job at fostering competence, it often falls short in the admirable character traits of integrity, reliability, sincerity and honouring commitments and promises.

Powerful, effective leadership skills are what makes and keeps a company successful. Without trust and integrity, a business relationship, a partnership, a joint venture, a contract or team will be short-lived. Consider that trust and the traits that establish trust are the glue that keeps your companies highly productive.

Creating an excellent rapport and relationship in the workplace is developed and maintained with clients and team members when we practice the art of “care” in those relationships. Care means providing your diligent focus, your participation and your input on a regular and consistent basis. All these elements, practiced and mastered, foster trust and ensure successful relationships.

Trust is not a company theme or a local success element, it’s a universal work ethic. Regional trust is no longer sufficient to ensure sustainability; rather it takes a global culture of trust to succeed in the global transient energy industry of today.

While we are globalizing with international energy agendas, there are many different factors than can create or disintegrate results. Focusing on the following critical checklist will position you for stronger results and success:

1. Integrity – Foster a culture of Integrity. Define integrity within your organization, so everyone knows what it means and definitions don’t vary. Integrity can be defined: Doing what you said you would do when you said you would do it – in other words, being on time, on budget, on target and on schedule.

Simple things like making the meeting when promised, delivering on the day agreed upon, paying bills on time, honouring client requests all lead to the path of trust and success. What structures have to be in place prior to the commitments, so that these things execute easily and fluidly?

2. Trust – Fostering a culture of trust is the result of day-to-day consistancy in what is promised to be delivered. Follow the breakdowns to see the break through. When things are not consistent, create a new structure to support it. When reliability is haphazard at best, stop the current system and reload with reliable structures that your team “creates and implements.”
In the energy industry, joint ventures, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions are all part of the business development process. As these industry growth strategies materialize, trust is even more important to ensure success.

3. Leadership – Foster a culture of leadership, whereby every person on the team is responsible for accountability, results and profitability. Taking 100 percent responsibility for outcomes and developing a no-blame culture is critical for personal development and individual results. Imagine your organization flourishing if we stopped blaming and start creating with new and stronger structures for success. 100 percent responsibility for outcomes? Would productivity rise?

4. Communication – Business is a network of conversations. Therefore, mastering the art of communication will result in things getting done, people being guided properly, nothing left unsaid, and a lot of space for understanding and unity. Communication is the glue that holds it all together.

5. Balancing Macro and Micro Management– Two other very significant factors that can also impact trust and productivity are that of micro-managing a business, juxtaposed to that of macro-managing.

Micro-management does not see the bigger picture and through being possibly petty and a stickler for detail, jobs can be delayed. People can be questioned and challenged unnecessarily, resulting in a lack of incentive, while undermining a position, causing frustration, creating delays and a lack of trust and respect.

Macro-management, on the other hand, could result in not paying serious attention to detail, thus creating a lack of support within the business, by not paying attention to what is happening and not focusing on what is vital to make the project work. The welfare of the employees may be overlooked, and this in turn, could lead to despondency and low productivity.

Balancing the management of projects and people between micro- and macro-management is the key. While looking at the big picture, attention to detail is critical.

Trust is a result. It’s the result of your word coming into existence and being kept, day in, day out, to yourself, your team, your project and your company. Trust is manufactured in the little things – the day-to- day commitments which ultimately create the big picture results. Fostering trust means fostering success – it’s just that simple.