Who Do You Trust?

Trust is fundamental to life. If you cannot trust in anything, life becomes very unpleasant. You can’t have relationships without trust, let alone good ones. Intimacy depends on it. In the workplace too, trust is essential.

An organization without trust will eventually fail. If you work for a boss who doesn’t trust their people to do things right, everyone on the team is miserable. Constantly checking up on you all the time, correcting “mistakes” and “oversights” and constantly reminding you to do this or that. Colleagues who don’t trust one another will need to spend more time watching their backs than doing any useful work. Productivity for individuals and the total sum of the organization decreases.

Organizations are always trying to cut costs. Think of all the additional tasks that are caused directly by lack of trust. I’m amazed when people claim to be overworked and under constant pressure, yet fail to do the one thing most likely to ease their burdens: trust other people more. They don’t delegate, because they don’t trust people to do what they’ve been asked to do; so they have to have to have a hand in every task themselves. They demand to be copied on every email and included in every conversation. They’re constantly tense and usually mean. It’s not the pressure of actual work that’s driving people towards stress-related illness, it’s their lack of trust.