Strengthen Your Relationships At Work By Improving Trust

Today’s best managers know the importance of building trust with their coworkers. Two different types of trust are possible. Trust “from the head” refers to how you feel about someone else’s competence and reliability. Trust “from the heart” refers to how you view someone’s feelings and motives at work. This second type of trust involves expressing concern and care for another person’s welfare, and is more long-lasting than trust from the head. Today’s best managers look for trust gaps, and work to build better and more trusting relationships with employees they don’t yet fully trust.

Source: Chua, R.Y. J., Ingram, P., & Morris, M. W. 2008. From the head and the heard: Locating cognition- and affect-based trust in managers’ professional networks. Academy of Management Journal, 51: 436-452.

Employees Can Underestimate the Likelihood that Others Will Help, So Won’t Ask When Needed

Today’s best managers know that employees may be reluctant to ask others for help. This is because employees will estimate the likelihood that someone will help them before they ask that person for help. If the employees don’t believe that help will be given, then they never ask for help in the first place. Employees tend to underestimate how much others are willing to help them, sometimes by as much as 50%. Today’s best managers work to reverse this trend, and establish a trusting environment where everyone is comfortable asking for help when they need it, and providing help to others when they can.

Source: Flynn, F. J., & Lake, V. K. B. 2008. If you need help, just ask: Underestimating compliance with direct requests for help. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 128-143.

Employees Assess Fairness By Looking at Both the Decision Maker and the Overall Organization

Managers would like employees to believe that organizational processes and outcomes are fair. Today’s best managers know that employees assess the fairness of both people making decisions and the fairness of the organization as a whole. Employees can have higher perceptions of fairness when they trust a decision-maker compared to when they don’t trust that person. Employees may have higher levels of commitment to the organization and may be more likely to be a good citizen when they believe that the overall organization is fair. Improving employee fairness perceptions of the organization doesn’t happen quickly, and must be developed over time.

Source: Choi, J. 2008. Event justice perceptions and employees’ reactions: Perceptions of social entity justice as a moderator. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 513-528.