How to Build Trust in an Organization

Leadership
Effective Leadership is Transparent
Do you care about your employees but are afraid to express it? Do you want to increase trust at your organization? AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky joined Adam Grant on the Work Life podcast to discuss importance of transparency in decision making in building trust within organizations, expressing collegial love, organization rhythm, and how to lead with care in tough times.

Insights:

• Procedural Justice: Transparency in decision-making paired with clearly articulated decisions can help employees understand and accept strategic and difficult choices. In contrast, not communicating the reasoning behind decisions results in nine times more distrust and questioning of leadership decisions. 

• Express Love: While acknowledging that a company is not a family, expressing emotional “love” in a professional manner can strengthen emotional bonds within the company community, resulting in a robust belief in interconnectedness among employees and results in a strong alumni network.

• Work Friends = Retention: Brian thinks the future of work will be much more flexible going forward, with periodic gatherings to support collaboration and motivate productivity. Periodic gathering foster friendships among colleagues, which has shown to increase retention.

• Organizational Rhythm: AirBnB synchronizes all major internal deadlines twice a year. This gives employees a sense of a working towards a common cause, and synchronizes of downtime to facilitate vacation.

Your Actions:

• When you make a decision at work, explain the details of why you are making it even if the staff might not have all the technical knowledge required.

• Don’t shy away from expressing emotional “love” in a professional manner. Start by expressing what your appreciate by your colleagues in your team meetings.

• Synchronize deadlines across multiple teams. Begin with small deadlines (e.g. all internal project deadlines are on Thursdays) and work up from there.

For more details, check out Work Life Podcast.

Productivity
Why Fidgeting is Now Encouraged
Acclaimed science writer Annie Murphy Paul discusses how to upgrade your mind by using more than just your head on Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris.

Insights:

• Celebrate the Body: We live in a professional society that celebrates the mind more than the body, which may be counter productive.

• Movement & Evolution: Thinking with movement is primal as it develops in conjunction with physical activity, such as foraging and hunting. Movement is also our first form of communication.

• Help Your Mind with Movement: Fidgeting or pacing, often viewed negatively in a brain-focused culture, is an essential way to regulate alertness and arousal. Micro movements help in finely modulating mental states and enhancing cognitive function, boost creativity and problem solving.

• Help with ADHD: Schools who have allowed students to embrace fidgeting, while originally concerned with generating more distractions, have reported noticeable improvements in children’s abilities to execute tasks, especially for individuals like kids with ADHD.

Your Actions:

• If you feel stuck in a problem, try pacing or tossing a small object (e.g. a ball) while thinking about how to solve it.

• Do not scrutinize others who fidget, acknowledging these movements aid in their thinking.

For more details, check out Ten Percent Happier.

Self-Care
An Emperor’s Guide to Self-Care
Ryan Holiday went on a stoicism bender last week and explained how we can learn mental self-care from the Emperor Markus Aurelius.

Insights:

• Focus on Actions, Not Results: Ambition should be tied to your own actions, focusing on what you control and do and not on external validation.

• Success = Best Effort: Success is about making your best effort to become the best version of yourself, irrespective of external approval or achievements.

• Saying No: Saying no to the inessential is actually saying yes to the essential, enabling one to do important tasks even better.

• Control What You Can: Goals should be based on what we can control, focusing on what we put into our work rather than external outcomes.

Your Actions:

• Identify principles that can be used to evaluate effort quality, helping to disconnect for any judgment of the actual result.

• Prioritize your actions by acknowledging that saying no will result in more activity on what is essential. Next week, try by saying no to something you are already committed to but know is low priority.

• When you achieve a result use the principles you have defined to judge the effort and not the result.

For more details, check out the Daily Stoic.

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