Trust is essential to achieving quality and continuous improvement.
To profoundly change an organization and achieve transformational results, individuals must to learn to trust others and allow that trust to become the operational framework for teams they form. In The Trust Imperative, Stephen writes:
Given the acceleration of change and increased complexity, how is the work world faring? Organizations are under much stress to rapidly deliver quality, creativity and responsiveness. Increasingly, work places rely on cooperation, teamwork, empowerment, coordination, knowledge sharing, cross-functional groups and business-to-business partnerships. More and more, organizational success is being contributed to by high-performance work teams and through strong interpersonal relationships.
Trust is understood to be vital to these functioning social structures. Trust promotes an engaging working environment and psychological well being, allowing individuals to focus on their performance. Research has shown trust to be a key component in producing a high-performance culture in which collaboration and helping behaviors are critical.
But the reality is that many organizations assume this is an organic process that “just happens.” On the contrary, Stephen believes that “Trust is too important to leave to chance;” that it can be deliberately nurtured between individuals and teams to become an institutional norm.