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Increase trust, reduce fear

“The most critical challenge for any organization is to enlarge the circle of trust.”

Command-and-control systems reflect a deep mistrust of employees’ commitment and competence. They also tend to overemphasize sanctions as a way of forcing compliance. That’s why so many organizations are filled with anxious employees who are hesitant to take the initiative or trust their own judgment. Organizational adaptability, innovation, and employee engagement can only thrive in a high-trust, low-fear culture. In such an environment, information is widely shared, contentious opinions are freely expressed, and risk taking is encouraged. Fear paralyzes, mistrust demoralizes—they must be wrung out of our management systems.

124 Stories
236 Hacks
22 Barriers

Increase trust, reduce fear

“The most critical challenge for any organization is to enlarge the circle of trust.”

Command-and-control systems reflect a deep mistrust of employees’ commitment and competence. They also tend to overemphasize sanctions as a way of forcing compliance. That’s why so many organizations are filled with anxious employees who are hesitant to take the initiative or trust their own judgment. Organizational adaptability, innovation, and employee engagement can only thrive in a high-trust, low-fear culture. In such an environment, information is widely shared, contentious opinions are freely expressed, and risk taking is encouraged. Fear paralyzes, mistrust demoralizes—they must be wrung out of our management systems.

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Too often leaders think trust should flow one way: toward them. Instead, leaders should demonstrate trust in their coworkers first.
Hack by Gary Cohen on October 15, 2010
There are many good people out there who are trying to do something about the woeful state of the strong wool industry.  Synthetics have spanked wool in the market place in price and promotion, y
Hack by Angela McFetridge on December 8, 2012
Even if companies officially ask their workforce to be a driver of innovation, they seldom act accordingly and rather punish "out-of-the-box" actions.
Hack by Ile Tovaglieri on January 9, 2011
Reversing or reducing perception and attribution errors in the healthcare imply overhauling the healthcare system structure and practice but addressing the person of the leader has similar effect to h
Hack by Owen Mandisodza on February 27, 2011
My vision is for a transformational organisation.  Transformational leadership creating transformed employees.  A holistic approach where people matter.  Old norms of control, power, ma
Hack by John Cooper on March 1, 2011
Working in an environment with many distributed offices and timezones and correspondingly silo'ed projects, many employees never meet talented, creative folks on other teams who can be co-conspirators
Hack by Vijay Karunamurthy on September 19, 2010
The future of work is slowly awakening.
Hack by Marla Hetzel on September 11, 2016
The major barrier to expansion of leadership capacity within organizations and beyond is common sense and meaning of words/terms 'leadership' and ‘leader’, obsolete but dominating paradigm that ‘leade
Hack by Oleg Derevianko on July 11, 2013
Many scholars discuss visibility from the perspective of an employee making themselves more visible to executives within an organisation with the ambition of climbing the corporate ladder.
Hack by Amanda White on July 2, 2011

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