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2.6x More Productive

Employees who trust their leaders are 2.6 times more productive on tasks, bringing more value to the team!

41% Lower Absenteeism

Employees who trust their leaders are more likely to show up, be engaged, and stay engaged.  

50% Less Likely to shop for another job

Employees who trust their leadership are more likely to stay where they are and grow in their roles, rather than shop around for other positions or companies. 

Safety Motivation: 

Does your Team trust You?

Why You Need To Build Trust

We have all been there at one point or another in our careers.  A leader comes into a new position, starts making changes, and the layoffs start.  I’ve seen this happen to other teams, and to my own team.  The results are painful to watch.  The remaining team members just keep their heads down, doing what they are told.  Feedback isn’t taken, feedback isn’t wanted, and no one wants to give the new boss a reason to let them go before they are ready.  Resumes are flying, and soon the team starts to lose members all over the place. 

In the case of really good, quality organizations, leaders that cause this type of disruption for the sake of disruption are let go (I’ve seen this happen twice).  For those organizations that are not quality, they let their best people go, hire new people, and start a cycle of high turnover.  It’s not pretty, and it could all be avoided if leadership took the time to build trust.  

Trust Makes Good Teams

Trusting employees are 260% more motivated to work, have 41% lower rates of absenteeism, and are 50% less likely to look for another job (Reichheld & Dunlop, 2023).  Teams that are able to trust their leadership build better relationships, and are free to create a social structure that is strong, inclusive, and supportive of each other.  Trust satisfies the Safety need in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and is itself a foundational need only superseded by the need for survival.  Without it, all other motivational methods are rendered useless.

Distrust Is More Rampant Than You Think

The numbers are grim: roughly 1 in 4 workers don’t trust their employer. At the same time, most employers overestimate their workforce’s trust level by almost 40% (Reichheld & Dunlop, 2023).  That’s right; in most organizations a full quarter of your workforce doesn’t trust you as leadership.  What’s more, you likely overestimate the amount of trust you have because, as an untrusting body, your employees are not going to tell you they don’t trust you for fear of retribution.  

Build Your Trust Now

It’s often been said, you build trust in drops, lose trust in buckets.  If you have a team that doesn’t trust you or your leadership, you have a long row to hoe.  You can either say a lot of words and hope they will believe you (spoiler alert:  they won’t), or you can get to work.  Here’s how you build trust. 

  • Be Empathetic: Know your team and listen to understand.  Your team is going to say things, even if they don’t trust you.  They will tell you there are problems, even if you don’t want to hear them.  Actively listen and try to understand the problem.  Don’t dismiss concerns, listen.  Don’t try to fix anything, listen.  Don’t try to second-guess their problem and come with a solution, LISTEN.  Once you fully understand the concern, circle back around with the team and discuss solutions AND GET THEIR INPUT.  
  • Be Compassionate:  Actively advocate for your team and alleviate their challenges.  Trust that people are basically good, and when given the chance will do all they can to be the best at what they do.  Work to remove obstacles, work round them, or build solutions with the team to make things better.
  • Be Honest:  Transparency and honesty are respected, even if the team doesn’t hear what they want to hear.  There will be bad times.  There may be some folks that will need to leave because of performance issues or attitude issues.  There may be lay-offs that are necessary because projects vary, come to an end, or economics mean demand has gone down.  Show that you understand their concerns, be straight-up honest about why people are being let go (when legally possible), and explain how a decision was trickled down to them.  
  • Be Honorable:  If you say you are going do to something, do it.  If you tell people that there will be no lay-offs, keep your word.  If you promise training and career development options, don’t exclude anyone.  The minute you break your word, you are no longer trustworthy.  

“A full quarter of your employees doesn’t trust you as leadership.”

  • Be Empathetic: Know your team and listen to understand
  • Be Compassionate:  Actively advocate for your team and alleviate their challenges
  • Be Honest:  Transparency and honesty are respected
  • Be Honorable:  If you say you are going do to something, do it

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Everyone is talking about AI, though they generally mean Generative AI.  While GenAI will likely have a huge impact on Learning and Development, I’d like to explore the impacts of Analytical, or Behavioral, AI.  Behavioral AI is the sleeping giant of Narrow AI applications, and will likely have a larger impact on our lives and business than Generative AI.  But how will it impact training? 

You have a lot of content that requires a lot of practice and application before you build on it. Your content is well structured, and you need the best way to deliver it. That’s the strength of the Flipped Classroom! Best served in the cohort model, consider flipping your classroom if you need to teach for more than 24 delivery hours (3 business days) in a row.

You know you have a problem: users aren’t using the training you purchased, and Management wants to cut it. What can you do? How can you bridge the gap and show the value of training to Managers, while also encouraging your employees to use the courses available? Here are 5 ways:
1. Do your job task analyses
2. Centralize your learning in one place
3. Build job-based learning paths for every role
4. Include a budget for industry certifications
5. Have the Management Champion learning

You are a training professional, and your company has finally invested in a large learning library with curated content that covers just about every possible skill under the sun. You are thrilled because your co-workers in all departments can up-skill themselves and grow. And yet, it doesn’t get used, and management start asking why they even invested in the first place. Below we talk about why there’s a disconnect between management and employees regarding training.

The Training Disconnect: Why Isn't Your Learning Library Getting Used?
The Training Disconnect: Why Isn’t Your Learning Library Getting Used?

In my previous role, our company had invested in a large, curated online training library for use by our employees. It was amazing, massive, and a little difficult to use if you didn’t know what you needed. Still, it was an amazing investment in the growth of individuals: but no one knew it was there. I would like to say this was an exception to the rule, but at nearly every job I’ve ever had, this has been the standard. Companies will invest in training libraries and make them available to their employees, and yet they are rarely utilized. This has two impacts:

  1. Management feels that training is a waste of money
  2. Employees feel like they are on their own when it comes to advancing their career

Both are right, in a way, which is concerning, and yet it has management and employees at odds. Managers will point out that training isn’t being used when it’s available, and employees point out that they didn’t know it was there and couldn’t navigate the massive library.

Let’s talk about the Management position first, to understand their concerns. When they see an investment not being used, they see a waste of resources that could go to hiring another Sales executive or Engineer. Why are we paying for something that is standing idle? It’s not in the best interest of the business to have that program on the books when we can use those resources elsewhere to better grow the business. And, from a certain point of view, they are right. Any resource not used within a company is a wasted resource.

This prompts the first question from management: Why did we invest in this learning library in the first place? And any HR rep or L&D team member can quickly reply: to invest in up-skilling of our employee base and build a resilient organization. That should be obvious. But no one seems to ask the next question, or rather, don’t like the answer: Then why aren’t employees using it?

This goes to the Employee point of view. Employees want to grow in their careers, earn better pay, become more knowledgeable, and respected within their circles of influence. This comes from experience and learning. Training can help with this, and often a diverse, liberal training library can help fill gaps that otherwise are tough to pick up on the job. This is where those large, curated libraries of training topics are so valuable: they have such a diverse collection that employees can find just about any skill to learn and develop. It’s also their curse: there’s SO MUCH THERE that it’s tough to get started. Even if you have a general idea, often there are 5-10 difference courses on the same topic, which is right? Employees need guidance when navigating these large libraries to use them effectively.

So, why are the libraries not being used? Employees don’t know they are there, and/or they don’t know where to start. They need content to be organized in a logical manner that makes sense for their role.

We have all been there at some point in our lives; trying to do something that seems so pointless. It may be filling out a timecard with multiple activities, or answering phones only to redirect them to someone else. The tasks seem pointless in themselves, and regardless of the value the task has to someone else, it makes it less of a priority to get done. We often ask ourselves, what is the purpose?

A purpose is a powerful motivator. Nations have gone to war because of a sense of purpose, civilizations have been created and extinguished through purpose. A purpose will guide decisions, justify actions, and inform strategy. It has brought products to market, businesses rise and fall by it, and new technologies discovered every day come and go based on finding a purpose. It’s safe to say that humanity needs to find a purpose to have an impact. In the workplace, there are layers of purpose to be found, though I’d like to focus on three: enterprise purpose, team purpose, and personal purpose.

Enterprise Purpose

Enterprise purpose, at least by my definition, is the reason and driving force for the company’s existence. It can be as simple as, “Safeguard your Savings” for a bank, or “Streamline your Work” for process automation. Growing up in the ’80s the media often portrayed the purpose of many a faceless corporate giant as “making more money,” and often “making more money for executives.” Needless to say, it was easy to vilify these entities in various workplace comedies with the little guy having to fight against the big corporate money machine.

Around the 2000s there was a shift, starting with tech companies (at least then the global marketplace) and quickly spreading to other organizations: defining a positive, socially impactful purpose. Google began with “Don’t be evil” as their purpose, and though vague it resonated with employees. Other corporate entities began to see the benefits of sharing their purpose as well: both customers and employees could get behind them. It drove adoption, profits, hiring, and retention. I will honestly say that if I am ever reached out to by another company, I always ask about the company’s purpose. I need to know where they are and what drives them.

Team Purpose

The team purpose is very similar to corporate or enterprise purpose but at the team level. It’s all well and good to have a corporate purpose of “End Cyber Bullying,” but where does your accounting team fit into that purpose? Break it down further, how does your internal billing team relate to that purpose? By defining a purpose, decisions are informed by clear guidelines. Teams know what they are doing, and how it impacts the company and customers, and are empowered to make decisions based on that purpose.

Personal Purpose

It’s difficult to talk about personal purpose without talking about a moral compass. To me, they seem the same. A personal purpose is what you, and you alone, value and desire. It will impact the career you strive for, the length of time you are at a company, and the effort you put in while at a company. If you value titles over opportunity, that will impact job growth moving forward. If your values match well with a company, you are likely to remain longer than if your values are in direct contrast.

For instance, my purpose is to provide future security to my two boys with autism, while inclusively building career opportunities through training and development. I value the importance of family, and I value the importance of allowing everyone to be successful.

When the Stars Align (or Not)

In a perfect world, all three levels of purpose will align. When that happens you see happy customers and employees, successful teams and companies. Everyone is driven by the same goals because they know what they want, what the team wants, and what the company wants. It’s truly magical when that happens.

And when it doesn’t, that’s when you have issues. Employees without purpose or who lack the understanding of their purpose become frustrated. It’s much like being tested on unknown criteria and not knowing the expected results. If you feel that you do not have a purpose for your team or organization, sit down with your manager and work out that purpose. If your manager isn’t sure either, then it’s a good time for both of you to work out clear-cut expectations and how you can meet those expectations. Then you both will be more satisfied with the work and results!