Trust between top management and employees should be built via mindset, attitude and behavior levels!
It is critical to building a trustful relationship between management and employees. A good leader relies on the skills and intelligence of the staff they lead so that they can focus on the bigger picture, develop strong, insightful strategy and build the competitive advantage for their businesses. Anything else could be considered micromanagement and/or limit staff empowerment and growth. This trust will build a strongly committed workforce that is required for a successful Company. The elements that need to be present in order to build trust include: a) Vision b) Credibility c) Reliability, d) Intimacy (emotions) and e) Self-orientation
It’s crucial to mind gaps in both top-down and bottom-up communications: Some top executives micromanage their employees, while many employees also mistrust their managers, even think their top management “stupid.” The statement is depicting complete communication gap or otherwise, the organization cannot sustain its success level. With such defects at a higher level, the organization cannot survive except in some exceptional circumstances. If the sentiment expressed by the illustration is pervasive across the organization, it is likely traceable to a lack of quality communication of vision, mission, strategy, goals and the metrics and measures for performance with the employees The scenario is not so much the lack of trust, but the distrust of management. If employees feel this way about management, it's never without reason. It is good reasoning to start with in-depth communication. An organization should not underestimate the power of building a stronger sense of each employee's role in an organization and why it matters.
Different skill sets are needed in the different level of organizations: Broad statements such as "my management is stupid," are not always true and reveal a single-sided view of an issue. this is a relatively common and rarely stated sentiment of employees which generally originates from either an inflated opinion of themselves or a lack a complete perspective of the responsibilities and tasks required of senior leadership. Upper management can definitely be ineffective, but to completely devalue a role that is not intended to run reports, but to make decisions and operate at a more strategic level, is to misunderstand what makes mid to large-sized businesses work. Someone has to be accountable for the bottom line and overall direction and delivering on that requires a whole different skill set when compared to other staff. A skillset that is not best-used running reports and will not always make sense to an outsider. Now, digital technology trends such as collaboration platforms and tools make it possible to handle much of the vertical communications in both directions by eliminating management redundancy. And it shortened the number of hops, as per the Peter Principle, before people rose beyond their level of competence.
The common problem is that most companies are still relying on business reports: Reports are in most cases a summary of "what" had happened, but never the "why" it happened, or "who could have" happened. Most reports are purely on financials and do not combine it with external factors. Most reports are so high level that most problems are being hidden. True best of breed organization should have an analytic team that can help look for trends and insights behind the high-level results. They should come up with actionable insights and recommended actions for management to look at and then make the informed decisions. Another problem is that these initiatives often overlook the pushdown of report content to those same people tasked to collect the new data that the boss demands. A wise top management needs to have a good reputation to leverage the right information to make the right decision at the right time.
Top management needs to consider both incremental improvement and leapfrogging transformation: Although top management spends the significant time in making strategy, higher management must also need to take into consideration that little changes play a better role in an organization than big bang, drastic changes that trigger alarm bells inside the brain, consequently executing resistance in workforce. The negative feedback about management perhaps also points out the reaction to a big 'change.' Management teams need to have both empathy and capability to manage change in the thoughtful way to gain trust and reputation via employees’ engagement and commitment. If possible, top managers can share their thought processes, make change processes more transparent, and win the heart and mind accordingly.
Trust is the two-way street, it should be built via mindset, attitude and behavior levels, when top management trust and share their thought process and insight behind important business decisions, they have a humble attitude to listen to their people via empathy, and they also have exemplary behaviors to walk the talk, they leap leadership maturity and improve management effectiveness.
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