TRUST – the reality of this Company/Personal ‘Value’

When was the last time someone betrayed your trust?  I bet you remember it clearly.  You will have experienced a series of emotions – first of all hurt then maybe anger, shock, frustration, annoyance at having trusted in the first place or maybe even pity that the person/organization was put in that position in the first place due to unforeseen circumstances. Whatever the emotional reaction there will have been some change in behaviour, however minute.  As a result you may have decided –

• Never to trust that person/organization again
• Seek revenge or retaliate in some way
• Carry on but tread carefully
• Tell everyone you know this person/organization can’t be trusted in an attempt to protect your circle of employees, friends etc.

Outcome vs Value

So what happened?  In his excellent article of 23^rd March 2023 Payton Shand advocates that Trust should be an outcome not a value.  He argues that everything the company/person does should be geared towards building trust.  Trusting without first testing the water would appear to be rather foolish and can catch us out.

It’s probably true to say that we formulate our approach to trust based on our own perception of it – “I wouldn’t do it so don’t expect anyone else to” which can be open to mis-interpretation and mis-understanding.

Often trust is broken when a more important value comes into play.  We see this in governments all the time in the form of broken manifestos and in companies when profit is threatened.

Organisational values

Companies often pride themselves in including ‘Trust’ or ‘Trustworthiness’ in their company values but what does it actually mean?  The question to ask is ‘if I was to walk round your organization and see everyone behaving in a trustworthy manner, what would that look like?’  Trust me to do what exactly?

• Get to work on time?
• Meet deadlines and targets?
• Not to overspend on budget?
• Be kind and considerate to my colleagues?
• Always own up when something goes wrong?
• Keep my word?
• Keep the office surroundings tidy?
• Call out inappropriate behaviour?

Trustworthiness will very definitely mean different things to different people and will almost certainly be called out when another value takes over.  Define it clearly and make it an outcome not a value!

Pat Hutchinson, Quadrant 1 International Ltd  pat@quadrant1.com

Is that meeting really necessary?

Several years ago I worked with an organisation who called their UK sales reps into a meeting every Monday morning to report on the previous week.  There were at least 30 and each one had to contribute.  They were allowed to take their laptops into the meeting so the practice was for each rep to continue working whilst waiting for their turn to speak.  Effectively no-one except the Sales Director was actually listening to each presentation.  Add up the cost of all these salaries, the travel costs and the cost of lost time potentially speaking with customers and this was an extremely expensive exercise.

Of course, things have changed now – the pandemic has probably been responsible for the explosion in on-line meetings which of course are less time consuming and require less travel.  Commendable for all sorts of reasons.  So why is it I still hear of people switching off the camera, carrying on with emails, eating their breakfast and, in one case, going to take a bath while the meeting is in progress?

Regular meetings usually lose their flavour after a while and become a chore.  I’ve even heard people say ‘Crikey we’ve got XYZ meeting coming up – what are we going to talk about?’  What a complete waste of everyone’s time!

Making Meetings Valuable

The best way to evaluate your proposed meeting is to use the Alignment model as follows –

Purpose

What is this meeting for? What do you want people to DO as a result?  If it is just information dumping then send them a report, a spec, product release notes or something else – don’t waste their time in a meeting with all the associated costs.

Identity/Role

Who needs to be there and what role are they playing – facilitator, action taker, expert, learner, explorer.  If people don’t have a role to play don’t invite them – they will thank you for it!  Equally if you get invited to a meeting where you have no perceived role then have the courage to ask if its necessary for you to be there and what role you will be expected to play.

Values/Beliefs

Is this meeting important and, if so, what is important about it and to whom?  What do you believe about the outcomes?  Are they positive beliefs or negative?  If negative can you reframe them into something positive and look for the possibilities so that you don’t arrive at the meeting as a ‘naysayer’?

Capability

If the stated outcomes for the meeting are agreed upon do you and the organisation have the capability to carry them through?  If not what’s missing and how are you going to fill the gap?  Do you have the resources to do so?

Behaviour

If you achieve this outcome what behavioural changes would you expect to see in the organisation or team?  Are these acceptable and do they add value to the organisation?

Environment

How would achieving this outcome impacted not only your immediate environment,  but that of the team, the organisation and even possibly the community?

Taking these few simple steps before setting up a meeting will help you to –

• Stay focused
• Maintain employee engagement
• Cut costs
• Achieve outcomes
• Free up time

Happy meeting!

> > DOWNLOAD A FREE PDF OF THE Q1 MEETINGS ALIGNMENT MODEL < <

Pat Hutchinson, Quadrant 1 International Ltd  pat@quadrant1.com

PS – When you try this approach, please do write to me and let me know of your successes!  I look forward to hearing from you.

Anonymous Engagement Surveys – why they don’t work!

I was discussing Employee Engagement Expectations with a customer recently and he happened to mention that they had just completed an anonymous engagement survey. He was disgruntled because, although the survey suggested pockets of people who were likely to leave the organisation due to lack of recognition, as just one example, he didn’t know who or where they were and couldn’t therefore take action.  In other words –

‘Someone somewhere in the organization is unhappy about something but we don’t know the details and can’t therefore have a progressive conversation’

So why do organisations involve themselves in the anonymity of such surveys?  Frankly its due to a perception (not always reality) of a lack of trust.

In other words they believe that employees will be more open if they don’t have to put their name to something.  Doesn’t this reflect on the very organisers of the survey who unconsciously believe the organisation can’t be trusted?

Engagement tools are really useful for retaining talented staff!  But they have to be used properly.  Dan Harrison believes that employee engagement is a two-way process – it’s as much the organisation’s responsibility to keep staff engaged as it is for them to be engaged.  A survey should be the foundation for a conversation on an employee’s expectations.  For example, if an employee wants recognition, in  what format does he/she expect this, who from and how often?  If an employee is looking for development – in what areas, when and what format?  OK so it won’t always be possible to fulfil expectations but at least the employee receives the message that the organisation is interested in them and will consider them when opportunities arise.

Such an approach requires trust so pre-framing the exercise is crucial.  Employees must understand that the tool is to be used for improving engagement and not for anything else.

If you would like to know how to assess groups of employees, individuals or even the whole organisation for engagement expectations quickly and effectively, and to see the results instantly on an easy-to-read visual dashboard so that you know with whom to have progressive conversations please get in touch at pat@quadrant1.com or on 07768 922244 or find more information here. You can also read further about engagement analytics in this blog.

In the meantime ‘Stay Engaged!’

Pat Hutchinson

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Don’t expect feedback from internally referenced people

The feedback black hole

You’ve just completed a great project, met the deadlines and brought it in on budget. You are feeling good but nobody says a word? As days go by nothing comes back and you start to doubt your success. The internal dialogue ramps up to a point where you become totally focused on whether or not you did indeed complete a successful project. You venture to ask a couple of questions of the people from whom you may have expected some positive feedback but the bemused looks set you back even further so what’s going on?

What’s happening?

Unconscious behaviour patterns are playing out here. You may have a high need for recognition and appreciation because your external reference system means you value other peoples opinions, external qualifications etc in order to measure your own success. Internally referenced people, on the other hand, measure their success against their own internal measures. They include the word ‘I’ to a large degree in their conversation and don’t need others to tell them they have done a good job. They will be bemused when externally referenced people ask for feedback and unconsciously view it as ‘needy’.

No feedback needed, thanks

Internally referenced people don’t take kindly to feedback because unconsciously they have a high degree of certainty that they are right (they are not always of course!). The unconscious thinking is that ‘if I don’t need feedback then nor does anyone else’. Consequently they don’t give it out and if they do it can sounds contrived and awkward. This type of behaviour can often come across as ‘confidence’ and will invariably help the internally reference person up the promotion ladder. They can also be very hard to give feedback to so here is a tip for you –

If you want to give feedback to an internally referenced person start with ‘Of course you probably already know this ……..’

If you would like to know more please get in touch with us 07768 92224 or  pat@quadrant1.com. Sign up to our newsletter

FREE WEBINAR: Organisational analytics for people

Organisational analytics for people

HIGH PERFORMING LEADERS, TALENT AND CULTURE

Free 1 hr webinar for people development professionals 

Friday 12th November 10:30am

USE OBJECTIVE DATA TO INSPIRE A CULTURE OF ENGAGEMENT, IDENTIFY TALENT AND DEVELOP LEADERSHIP COMPETENCE FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE

Webinar Highlights:

• Discover how objective data can support your people plans and business objectives
• Live demo of online interactive dashboards and simple traffic light colour scheme to visualise group and individual data
• Get your own free personalised example of your unique data

Download the brochure here

We will show you how you can:

CULTURE:

• Assess organisational culture and discover risk areas
• Explore the impact of individual and group behaviours on team dynamics
• Understand engagement and fulfilment levels across the business
• See how individuals values align with business objectives and goals

TALENT:

• Easily pinpoint strengths and identify High Potentials
• Drill down to each employees’ key factors
• Retain top talent by understanding what is important to individuals and groups

LEADERSHIP:

• Measure senior and emerging leadership competency
• Gain insight into the specific set of behaviours that impact each competency
• Implement actionable development plans that provide guidance and generate enthusiasm

All attendees will receive their own personalised example of their unique data

Quadrant 1 are delighted to be hosting this webinar in partnership with Tribero Ltd.