Case Study : Building Trust With The PALS

In this book, trust is defined as “one’s willingness to be vulnerable to another based on the confidence that the other is benevolent, honest, open, reliable, and competent.” (page xiii) The author recognizes that trust is complex and dynamic. She views trust as the “lubricant” that greases the machinery of the organization. Trust is particularly important where parties are interdependent, or the “interests of one party cannot be achieve without reliance upon another.” In schools “teachers and principals are

Trust is the output of your behaviours and actions of you as a leader and it either builds or erodes over time. Ineffective leaders often don’t get this element of their personal accountability. Importantly, if you don’t build trust and mutual professional respect you cannot be an effective horizontal matrix leader. You must also assume good intent of your team and business partners rather than suspicion and derision so when something does happen (and it will) you are showing empathy in your own relationships by seeking to understand instead of becoming emotional and seeking to assign blame. This is something each of us need to make one of our personal management habits.

I personally, have to first accept that I too am not perfect; my past and current methods of communication and listening skills have not worked, and I need to be more open in order to welcome change. One important step that can be made involves common courtesy; do not speak when someone else is speaking! This is something that was taught during early stages of development, yet it is often ignored during adulthood because of a false sense of entitlement that ones’ opinions are more important, and that is not true. As Petersen (2007) has stated throughout his book, there is often a sense of urgency or a need to solve problems or interject solution even when it is not required or asked. The idea that another person may only be seeking a listening ear is bypassed completely. Moving forward, I think it is essential that I create my own TLC (talker-listener card) that I can take with me and use as a stepping stone to changing my flawed listening and communication skills. Because I am a visual learner, this will work perfectly in helping me stay focus on my role in the conversation. Whenever I feel the need to interject my opinions, I can look down at the card and acknowledge if it is my turn to speak and even if it is remember what my duties are; if the problem was not mines to begin with then my job is not to solve it but rather be an effective listener in order to help the other person develop their own

Trust- should be slowly built up across team members, through developing confidence in each other’s competence and reliability. Trusting individuals are willing to share their knowledge and skills without fear of being diminished or exploited.

Claire McCartney, research adviser at the CIPD and author of the report, comments: “There seems to be a real lack of awareness amongst senior managers, who rate the trust levels much stronger than more junior employees. It seems they either have a tendency to view things through rose tinted glasses, or are out of touch with how employees nearer the coalface are feeling. If senior leaders are in denial or burying their heads in the sand, there is a danger that a ‘them and us’ mentality will emerge and change will be very difficult to achieve.”

The author discusses an example of a bank balance to illustrate this point. A higher bank balance an individual has in a relationship stipulates the fact that trust has been built in the past; therefore they are able to criticize their partner because prior trust has been accrued. Trust can be built in many ways. Someone trustworthy is supportive and communicative, meaning they will be there for an individual in their time of need and are willing to tell an individual the truth (Schwind, 2013). The author points out the trust Wes Kinsley and his wife have due to prior experiences when trust was built by being supportive and communicative. When trying to rekindle and fix their relationship, Wes’ wife is able to criticize him for coming home late often and not caring for their kids. According to the Harvard Business Review, if people trust each other and their leaders, they will be able to work through their disagreements (Galford, 2003). Trust is necessary for marriages to survive, because without trust, disagreements will not be settled. Primarily, because of the trust obtained in Wes Kinsley’s marriage, they are able to work through struggles. Trust can also be extended into the workforce. Kinsley asks his fellow employees to trust him when he brings the new “Whale Done!” methods back to his workplace. Most of his colleagues agree with this new method and find success very quickly, which shows the

In order for interpersonal trustworthiness to exist in organizations, a leader-follower relationship must first exist between the parties involved (Caldwell et al., 2010, p. 500). Once that leader-follower relationship is established, leaders have to earn trust. Leaders earn trust by their respective actions, morals and virtues. Trust is can also be based on past history. If something was done in the past which questions a leader’s values, morals or judgment, it would be unlikely that the leader would be trusted in the future. One of the most important parts of being an effective leader is building and maintaining trust. Trust can further be defined as a “multi-dimensional construct comprising different dimensions of the trustee’s attributes that the trustor evaluates” (Ingenhoff and Sommer, 2010, p. 341).

Some of the lack of trust stems from the behavior of the team in the past and their lack of

As stated by Kouzes and Posner (2012), "If you’re a manager in an organization, to your direct reports you are the most important leader in your organization. You are more likely than any other leader to influence their desire to stay or leave, the trajectory of their careers, their ethical behavior, their ability to perform at their best, their drive to wow customers, their satisfaction with their jobs, and their motivation to share the organization’s vision and values" (p. 332). Therefore, the first one to trust will be the leader. Leaders should ensure their member know their leader believe in them. Leaders believe in their

Having trust makes one fell safe and free of fear enough so that they can focus on other things.

Building trust takes time and effort up front. It takes deep commitment and follow-through. It pays off.

The difficulty around trust stems from the times when it is broken. When I was young, I was naïve and lacked the ability to recognize fake words and actions. Consequently, I believed every act of kindness towards me was genuine, just as most children do. Growing up, I was the student atop of my classes, the one others looked to for answers to tests and homework. At first, I was too young to see that they were essentially stealing what I had worked so diligently to learn. Though I knew it was wrong of me to allow them, I feared the recourse of turning them in to the teacher would only end badly for me. Eventually, I started

There should be trust amongst each other in order to be able to work together successfully.

The more they know about the company, the greater their feeling of partnership with the company is. Trusting will let them to remember to have the company’s best interest at heart.

Therefore trust is not build within manager and can encourage fear as well as anger (Anon, 2014).