Could your workplace be more trusting? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of organizational psychologist Liane Davey. They talk through what to do when your new boss doesn’t trust you yet, you want to earn the trust of your subordinates, or company leaders have made employees afraid to speak up.

From Alison and Dan’s reading list:

HBR: Want Your Employees to Trust You? Show You Trust Them by Holly Henderson Brower, Scott Wayne Lester, and M. Audrey Korsgaard — “In short, trust begets trust. When people are trusted, they tend to trust in return. But people must feel trusted to reciprocate trust. Managers have to do more than trust employees; they need to show it. Based on our research work and time spent in companies studying trust, we’ve identified some of the most important ways managers erode trust and how they can signal it more clearly to their teams.”

HBR: Cultivating Everyday Courage by Jim Detert — “Competently courageous people also work to earn the trust of those who see them as their champions. They invest in those relationships, too—engaging with people individually, taking the time to empathize with them, and helping them develop professionally.”

HBR: The 3 Elements of Trust by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman — “As a leader, you want the people in your organization to trust you. And with good reason. In our coaching with leaders, we often see that trust is a leading indicator of whether others evaluate them positively or negatively. But creating that trust or, perhaps more importantly, reestablishing it when you’ve lost it isn’t always that straightforward.”

HBR: The Simplest Way to Build Trust by David DeSteno — “Try it in your next negotiation. Find and emphasize something – anything – that will cause your partner to see a link between the two of you, which will form a sense of affiliation. And from that sense of affiliation — whether or not it’s objectively meaningful – comes a greater likelihood of trustworthy behavior.”

Out of hope? Maybe stop for a sandwich and a song.

Notes from America with Kai Wright

Sandwiches as a Metaphor for Creativity and Ambiguous Emotions

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