Trust can be lost in many ways, and it is often accidental.  Think of the last time you rushed through a job, meeting or project.  The results were less than excellent, and likely contributed to your coworkers, team members, clients or employees losing trust in you. 

 

Rebuilding Trust in the Workplaceby Dennis & Michelle Reina (Berret-Koehler, 2010) guides the reader through the many ways we compromise trust in the workplace, and how it has likely damaged our relationships and performance.  This simple, easy-to- read book provides important insights and gives readers a new way of considering the important role that trust plays in the workplace. 

 

The culture of your organization determines communication styles, how priorities are set, and how things get done. In the words of Ed Schein, cultural management expert, “Culture is much more than just the way we do things around here." 

 

The particular ways that people think and perform in a setting are a result of the mythology or history of an organization. If we don’t understand the organization’s culture, we can’t step in and be effective, since culture asserts its influence without our even realizing it.

 

Many successful (or previously successful) companies aren’t open to examining their culture, since what they have done in the past worked for them.  What these leaders fail to realize is that other organizations also have developed cultures that have led them to success. The leader who is successful, has particular habits, and only hires those who work the same way as himself is well served by looking at what other organizations are doing.

 

Take General Foods as an example.  It is a brand that was built on the technology of taste.  The General Foods leadership was told that food should be nutritious, so they tried to make their foods nutritious in order to add to their product appeal, but the culture was a “taste good” company versus a nutrition company. Ultimately, General Foods made a conscious decision to stick with their culture, eschewing a large market for what they did best.

 

In order for new leaders to get a read on the culture, they need to get a firm understanding of the cultural artifacts and values of an organization.

 

Cultural Artifacts are visible and observable. These are the behavioral rules of how things get done in an office; how the office space is laid out, and the work processes.

 

Values are expressed in work habits and rituals.  At first, one typically learns the “espoused values” of an organization.  For example, if a corporate boss is asked why he runs a weekly meeting, he may answer “Because we’re a teamwork company” when in reality, all job evaluations are based on individual achievement.   Now the new manager knows that he is in an organization that espouses two competing values.

 

The Manager's Pocket Guide to Corporate Culture Change provides the essential methods for mobilizing people behind these shared values. It teaches the skills to empower people within defined parameters, the type of support they require for success, and the best ways to recognize individual and team contributions.

 

It also reviews the basic tenets for developing people, creating a learning organization, and provides practical methods for aligning the culture behind the business strategy in order to manage the change.