Todeo Net

In Stephen Covey’s great book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People“, he talks about the ‘emotional bank account’, where you have to build a credit in your relationship with the individuals who you work with (and everyone else as well!).

If what you do isn’t ‘trustworthy’, then all you have done in your gentle listening and asking great and interested questions to build, is to ‘debit’ your account. And if you do more of this than the credit you build, then you will never get your folks on your side. But what is trust?

You can’t invest more wisely than by listening fully to what interests the person you are in conversation with. So, ask more questions about what they tell you. Easy as that - it’s a simple tool, but really builds trust too.

Here are a few other things which generate their trust in you:-

1. Tell the truth

   Sounds simple, yet often it is done without thinking. On busy days what you say does get taken in, yet you forget. Don’t! People hang on what you say - so it must be the truth!

2. Keep promises (or don’t make them)

   A biggy this. What you say holds a far greater importance to the person you say it to than maybe you, who say so much stuff all day long. If you say you will do something for someone, then do it - or don’t say you will.

3. Follow through on what you say you will do

   And separate from promises. Actions. Your people look on you to facilitate their delivery of the business. You can smooth things out, make things happen, provide resources. So if you say you are going to fix things, then please do it! Hey, even more, do a little more!

4. Don’t be interrupted - give yourself fully in a conversation

   When you are talking with your people make sure you give them full attention and the courtesy of enough time. Put them first not second (or even third). Switch your phone or pager off. Put off other interruptions.

5. Be fair to all

   By ensuring that you treat all of your people the same, you will build their trust hugely. It is a sense of sharing and caring that comes from everyone, even you, being equal in an emotional sense, so building a common bond.

6. Have no favourites

   You need to be disciplined enough that you have no closer ‘friends’ than everyone. If you treat some people more ‘equally’ than others, it sure gets noticed, creates divisions and loses that pulling together which you need.

7. Be consistent

   Your folks get twitchy if you are erratic in your behaviour and attitudes. By modifying your behaviours to be consistent (and if you aren’t have someone tell you).

8. Stick to your own rules - model behaviours

   And in the thing about consistency and fairness and no favourites, remember you. You cannot be different. You cannot afford to behave in a way that shows favouritism to yourself.

9. Understand mistakes and help others learn and not be afraid

   Your people who you want onside need to be nurtured and cared for. Encouraged and engaged. It needs you to be able to relieve their fear of getting things wrong. Your people can make mistakes. It’s OK! Then you will get them experimenting and trying stuff - all of which will be generating great solutions. Let them!

10. Realise what’s important to others may not be apparent

    People always have things which are important to them - and it isn’t always their work! So find out what it is and honour that - it builds their trust in you, because you value them.

11. Face people with issues rather than tell others

    If you have issues or problems with people, be honest with them and let them know. It’s about what they do and not about them as people - but be honest enough to work with them and not talk about them behind their back

12. Let go sometimes - trust them to do their best

    Your people try their best - by acknowledging them for this, they will trust you more and more.

Building trust is not only the most valuable thing that you can do with your people, but it is the most important thing that you must do.

© 2005 Martin Haworth is a Business and Management Coach. He works worldwide,
mainly by phone, with small business owners, executives and corporate leaders. He
has hundreds of hints, tips and ideas at his website,
http://www.coaching-businesses-to-success.com.
(Note to editors. Feel free to use this article, wherever you think it might be of value - it would be good if you could include a live link)

…helping you, to help your people, to help your business grow…

In creating “flow manufacturing” or just in time manufacturing the idea at Toyota was to make sure the flow was hardly ever broken or interrupted. After all the idea was to maximize on production and the way to do this was to keep an assembly line moving.

For this reason a worker’s main responsibility appears to be to work and not to think when they are supposed to be keeping production moving.

However a worker on the plant floor has another much more significant role to play other than just “do the work”. They are also expected to be problem solvers and performance improvers.

What this means is that when there is a problem on the assembly line, rather than just keep on working for the sake of keeping the assembly line moving, a worker has the power to stop the line. They are then supposed to think of a solution, implement it and then get the line moving again. This greatly limits waste from units being rejected by quality control later and eliminates the need to keep extra material on site to use for the manufacturing of replacement products. This is usually to replace those units that did not pass quality control or were obviously seen to be defective long before they even arrived at quality control.

In other words, in lean manufacturing or flow manufacturing the issue of leaving all the thinking to management does not arise. Thinking is in fact considered to be too important a task to be left only to a handful of managers.

The results of this kind of thinking speak for itself. It’s applicable in all situations, not just manufacturing.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Yorke - All Rights Reserved

Chuck Yorke is an organizational development and performance improvement specialist, trainer, consultant and speaker. He is the author of “All You Gotta Do Is Ask,” a book which explains how to promote large numbers of ideas from employees. Chuck may be reached at chuck@peoplekaizen.com. http://www.peoplekaizen.com