Do you lament the lack of engagement in your business? Is there a sense of mistrust in your culture? Got politics, silos and turf wars? Are your customers more interested in beating you down on price than sticking with you?
I’ve just completed a study of three major analyses of TRUST.
- Sources: A dozen population studies across many cultures and nations.
- History: Fifty years of this stuff. Data: Over 30,000 interviews. (Lots of data).
- Methodologies: Multivariate, factor, and cluster analyses. Tough sledding, but fascinating results.
Trust is essential, and increasingly rare. Trust is the assurance of the good will of others, mostly strangers, allowing risk taking without fear of betrayal. Trust is hugely important if you want to get the right stuff done right and fast. Without trust, progress is slowed to a crawl, as contracts, agreements, and quid pro quo‘s are negotiated, monitored, and arbitrated.
Things slow way down.
In our American culture the percentage of trusting people has declined from a clear majority to a clear minority since 1960. The data point to one primary factor that could be the root cause of organizational mistrust.
If you struggle to gain loyalty, commitment, and trust, take a look at the one factor that has degraded trust over the last 50 years here in the U.S., and that could be the root cause of mistrust in your organization–how does your salary compare to the average line-level employee’s?
The one factor that the data from nearly 50 years of research shows is the root cause of degraded trust is income inequality. Seems that the growing disparity between the very wealthy and the middle class in the U.S. corrodes optimism, the essential component of trust. Fewer Americans are optimistic about the future in part because they no longer believe our leaders or feel they’ll get a fair shake. They have lost a sense that “we’re all in this together.” They’ve come to believe that the deck is stacked against them and their hard work doesn’t matter anymore.
These corrosive effects are present in every company with excessive executive compensation. In 1970, the average CEO in the S&P 500 took home about $700,000 in total comp, about 25 times the average worker’s salary. In 2009, average CEO pay had grown to $9,700,000–over 500 times the average worker’s comp.
You could be doing everything else right. Your vision could be crystal clear and compelling. You could be personally trustworthy. You could even be on your hero’s journey and becoming BUILT TO LEAD. But if your total comp has followed the pace of the average of the CEOs in the S&P 500, the shouting your paycheck does may be drowning out what you’re saying on all these other matters.
Do your people think you understand the situation they’re going through?
Do they believe you when you say “We’re all in this together?”
Is your agenda YOUR agenda, alone? Or does it encompass the common good?
What is the multiple of your take home pay relative to that of the average worker in your company?
Why?
BUILT TO LEAD 