At a time when many organisations need to cut costs and increase revenues, it is quite common for cost savings to overlook issues such as trust.
If there is little trust, there will be additional costs that are initially invisible:
1. Too many meetings
Because everything needs to be checked, negotiated, to make sure things are done the way I want them done. Meeting time is working time, which as we all know is quantifiable in numbers.
2. Slow decisions
The trap of duplication and bureaucracy, which is lost paid working time.
3. Micromanagement
To control and create a fictitious ‘sense of security’, again lost paid working time.
4. Conflicts and dramas
Taking ownership and responsibility for other people’s emotions, including managing their motivation. Taking control of other people’s emotions, including managing their motivation. This again leads to meeting hecticness and high costs of public relations.
When real deep trust grows, costs will fall by themselves. Space for freedom, initiative and sincere cooperation is created. Staff costs may also be reduced because fewer hours are needed for meetings. Initially, of course, the time freed up could be found for revenue-generating time for creativity, for which emptiness is needed.
Trust is not just believing in others. It is also confidence in myself – that I can handle whatever happens, including my emotions. And the same confidence in others: that they too can handle themselves.
So – if you want to save costs, start to address the deeper issue of trust in your team, i.e. do things that increase trust, but above all: don’t do things that decrease trust.
This last, perhaps, seems to be the most important step in building trust in an action-oriented world. Leave some things undone.
