An interesting HBR piece by Paul Zak:
Based on his more than decade long research, Paul argues that creating an organization in which employees remain highly engaged in the long-term goes can be enabled by creating a high-trust culture. His research shows that higher levels of trust lead to noticeable improvements in performance.
In his research, Paul identified 8 managerial behaviors that foster trust:
- Recognize excellence
- Induce “challenge stress” (achievable stretch goals)
- Give people discretion in how they do their job
- Enable job crafting
- Share information broadly
- Intentionally build relationships
- Facilitate whole-person growth
- Show vulnerability
Finally, Paul leaves use with a memorable rule-of-thumb insight to keep in mind:
Joy = Trust * Purpose
Even though the level of academic rigor here does not fully meet my bar, there is real disciplined scientific research that’s backing Paul’s thesis in this piece; which sadly is more that can be said for the vast majority of HBR pieces that attempt to make claims with a similar level of certainty.
