When times get tough we seek relationships that are solid. We need to feel confident that we can trust the other party and feel they are genuinely there for us. Trust builds relationships by allowing us to feel connected and be open and authentic. This is true for our working relationships, as much as it is for our personal ones.
Without trust, fear and its limiting behaviours grow and we can feel isolated, suspicious and not able to perform at our best. When an unhealthy culture (cultural entropy) is at play, employees spend increasing amounts of their time doing unnecessary or unproductive work. This not only leads to frustration and discontent within the ranks, but it will ultimately hit the business’ bottom line.
Brands must gain the trust of their customers and shareholders too. In a compelling and thought-provoking TEDtalk, Airbnb’s co-founder Joe Gebbia suggests that Airbnb’s success comes down to a well-designed reputation system that allows guests and hosts to overcome the human deep-rooted ‘stranger danger’ mentality.
He starts his story telling with his struggle to get the Airbnb concept off the ground due to a lack of trust amongst customers and investors; and then moves on to explain how the Airbnb success phenomenon has been built on designing for trust.
So what does that actually mean? Airbnb found that if a host saw three recommendations and positive reviews about a potential visitor, then their bias and lack of trust was likely to remain. However, if a visitor managed to attract ten positive reviews, the host would put aside their social ‘stranger danger’ bias and difference and trust them. With this invaluable knowledge, Airbnb has continued to consciously design their referral system, amongst other things, to build trust and used this as valuable currency on which to build their phenomenally successful business.
This story is one of many in the share economy, which ultimately is a transaction with the promise of human connection. From my experience as a specialist in building strong cultures within business, I know that trust is just as important for internal audiences too.
To enable it to work, everyone must share a part of themselves and feel a sense of belonging and connection. When designing the Internal Communication strategy for the Co-op Bank, we landed on our team purpose ‘to connect people to our business, connect our leaders to our people and connect our people to each other’ which was ultimately to build trust and commitment. No wonder Mr Gebbia’s talk resonated and got me contemplating!
Airbnb’s Mr Gebbia ends his talk by suggesting that homes and even cities could be designed from a place of trust. Imagine if a company did this too? What if business was created from a culture of trust, with strong foundations for cohesiveness and collective action?
As values are so important when it comes to developing a high-performing culture, I was intrigued to look at Airbnb’s and found I really connected with them. They’re not only simple set of values but are inspiring, inter-connected and accessible, enabling its people to easily bring them to life. Bravo Airbnb!
Capitalise’s ‘Culture Capitaliser programme’ helps businesses in bringing about whole system change and helping them to deliver culture change. It’s made up of a two-phased approach with Phase One being focused on setting strong foundations for building trust and creating collective, cohesive action that matters.
The five-step approach includes colleagues completing a Culture Values Assessment (CVA) to help paint a picture of the current culture and the desired culture that they believe will help them peak perform and be at their best and happiest. This not only provides useful information to open up insightful conversations, but also acts as a benchmark to measure against.
The next step is to help senior leadership teams create/reset their purpose, vision and values, whilst also supporting them to bring cohesion and alignment as a team – both important factors in building an environment of trust. The final step is helping them build a connected and consistent narrative so they can land the culture change in the most compelling and engaging way with colleagues.
Phase Two of the whole system culture change approach looks at aligning, engaging and embedding the change throughout the business. All critical factors as without this there will be disconnect and confusion which will lead to dysfunction and frustration.
Gartner have recently carried out extensive research called ‘Three culture conversations every CEO must have with the Head of HR’ which calls out the need to alter policies and processes to align with the desired culture. What they say in this paper, I ‘align’ with completely. For example, if you want to create a culture of collaboration, but then enforce the curve performance management system, that creates an environment in which colleagues must compete, there’s a disconnect which will breed discontentment and a lack of trust.
I’ve written a number of blogs on how to build a strong company culture, one of my particular favourites is ‘A strong company character and culture are the foundations of accelerating business growth’ so do take a look if you have the time.
Capitalise is working with a number of companies that are consciously redesigning their culture based on trust, connection and addressing what their colleagues are asking for to deliver their best selves at work. If you’d like to find out more, do get in touch.