How to Earn Trust in Business | Future-Proof Your Company Culture

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, and welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's video, I'm going to answer a question from one of my readers, Wassam, who was asking me, I'm currently a system analyst, nothing related to human resources. I can feel the low trust levels in my organization between coworkers. And sometimes employees and management. What's the impact of low trust in an organization and what can we do to change it? So Wassam, first of all, I want to congratulate you for taking an interest in the business that you're working on. A lot of people, if they felt low trust levels, they just drop off and wouldn't want to try to improve it. They'd maybe go look for another job. So that company should be trying really hard to keep you there because you're trying to make the business better. So in terms of the impact of low trust, the two biggest things that I see is one, decreased productivity. So if your boss doesn't trust you is always going to be watching over your shoulder, making sure you're doing everything exactly right, exactly as they want it. And sometimes they're going to try to do things themselves because they don't trust you to be able to do it. So there's a big drop in productivity because you're too busy watching each other instead of just worrying about what you're supposed to focus on. The second impact that I think of low trust is when you have really low morale in the company. So if your boss doesn't trust you, right, if your person right in front of you doesn't trust what you're doing, you're not going to be really happy working there, right? If you don't trust the people people who are working under you, then you're also probably not going to be really happy working there. So you want to work at an organization where everybody does trust each other. So people are going to start looking for other jobs and morale is going to be really bad if there's low trust in an organization. What can you do about that? So two things. One, I don't know if you're managing people yet or not, but for the people who are above you, you have to earn their trust. So think about your boss. For them to trust you, you have to earn it. You can't just say, hey, trust me, I'll get it done. When people say trust me, You know, you don't really tend to want to trust them, so you have to earn it, right? Trust has to be earned. So whenever they give you a project, try to go above and beyond, do it faster than they expect, do it higher quality than they expect, think of other ways to make the project better than just what you've been assigned, and you'll be the one on your team that everybody trusts because you always do a really good job. So you have to earn that and think of ways that you can always go above and beyond to earn their trust. And this, if you have a business, It's the same thing to earn the trust of your customers. You can't say, "Hey, trust me." You have to prove to them that you're going to overdeliver on expectations. You deliver it faster, cheaper, better than you said you would, and you're going to earn a lifetime of trust from them. If you're managing people and you're worried about earning the trust of the people below you, show them trust first. If you can show that you trust them, they're going to want to trust you. So try not to be a big micromanager. Try not to breathe down their necks and really push them on timelines. Yes, you have to get their job done, but try not to be overbearing to the point where they feel like you don't trust them. If you show that you do trust them, then they're probably going to work even harder. You'll probably be surprised by how hard they work, and they're going to start trusting you as well, and it's going to help the entire company. So I hope that answers your question. If you guys liked the video, please give it a thumbs up below, and I'd also love to hear your thoughts and feedback if you want to leave a comment below the video. And stay tuned for the next episode.