Trustworthiness, Trust, and Safety
Trustworthiness, Trust, and Safety
Trust is an essential factor for organizational success. Developing and maintaining trust becomes particularly important for the creation of meaningful leader /follower relationships. Where trust is absent, relationships erode, team success becomes problematic, and organizational success may be in jeopardy. The Trustworthiness, Trust, and Safety leadership development module provides you the skills and insights necessary to increase the level of trust in your organization. This program primarily focuses on interpersonal trust – trust between individuals. The skills you learn in the program apply to work groups, teams, and the organization. Building a trusting work environment enables the organization to flourish and reach its highest potential.
Trustworthiness forms a central element in the development of trust across the organization. In particular, the leader must be viewed as trustworthy by others across the company. If others feel the leader is untrustworthy, it's unlikely others will follow. Trustworthiness refers to the leader’s ability to perform and lead effectively, value others, and behave with truthfulness and honesty. This module will provide exercises to help you develop the skills to be viewed as trustworthy. The Logos Leadership Develop program is designed to help participants master the skills to become servant leaders. During this module, we will begin to understand the attributes and behaviors to be an exceptional servant leader and align those behaviors the the attributes of trustworthiness. As you begin to develop a sense of trustworthiness with your followers, that will allow them to think for themselves and excel in their roles.
Trust is defined as “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party” (Mayer et al., 1995). Trusting others creates risk for the trustor, that the trustee will fail to honor their obligations, become deceitful, and demonstrate a lack of integrity. As you can see, where trust and trustworthiness are absent, the opportunity for infighting and poor performance increases. This module will help participants fully understand the concept of trust and begin in ways that increase the level of trust between the leader, followers, and the organization.
Two drivers enable the development of trust between individuals and among teams. During this module, you will begin to understand the two drivers and how to use them to your advantage. As each driver has a unique set of outcomes, you will begin to understand how to leverage each specific enabler to accomplish the specific goals you are trying to accomplish. Both drivers are necessary for the development of trust. You will learn how each works and how to make them work effectively. If you enact both enablers successfully, your ability to develop trusting relationships across the organization will expand exponentially. Additionally,, trust results in many positive outcomes for the organizations. This module will help you to understand these outcomes and the steps you need to take to bring them to life.
Trust forms the foundation of this model. A concept that closely mirrors the concept of trust in practice is the concept of psychological safety. Psychological safety refers to the belief that the individual or team is free to bring up ideas, share thoughts, bring up concerns, and make mistakes without fear of being put down, ridiculed, or humiliated for doing so. To do these things requires a level of trust in your leaders and teammates. Without trust as a foundation, psychological safety may prove problematic. This module will provide you a deeper understanding of the concept and provide insights and skills necessary to bring psychological safety to life. With psychological safety, all members of the organization are comfortable with presenting ideas, challenging the status quo, and making mistakes without fear. The behaviors increase idea generation and enhance the ability of the organization to make better decisions faster.
Building trust can be challenging. When trust is lost, it’s essential to rebuild trust as soon as possible. As time passes and trust erodes further, it becomes difficult to reestablish. This module will help understand the sources that destroy trust and provide you with a path to recovering lost trust. This module uses case studies to help you understand where trust fails and come up with strategies to improve your specific issues. By building trustworthiness in leaders, using the enablers to develop high levels of trust, creating psychological safety, and repairing trust where it begins to fail, your organization can realize the sizeable benefits of organizational trust.
References : Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust. The Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709–734.