Hidden Mojo

Do you trust your employees?

If you’re an employee do you feel trusted?

Are you allowed to set your own schedule? Or are you required to arrive and free to go at specific times set by your employer?

Are you free to complete your work the way you think is best as long as you deliver results? Or are you required to follow procedures and orders even if they don’t make sense?

Are you encouraged to provide input and confident that your voice will have an impact? Or are requests for feedback rare and empty?

Many companies don’t trust their employees and it shows through command and control structures and rules and regulations designed to prevent employees from screwing up or wasting company time and resources.

Now think about how it feels when someone doesn’t trust you and treats you like a child. Are you motivated to help someone who doesn’t trust you?

When you treat someone like a child, you’re telling them that you don’t value their judgment. If you don’t value someone’s judgment, they’re expendable and replaceable. If your employer doesn’t value your judgment, why would you try to share your insights? If you’re employer treats you as an interchangeable cog, why would you optimize for anything other than your own self-interest?

Companies that don’t trust their employees expect and plan for the worst from their people and in return receive the worst through a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A lack of trust is one of the many ways the dominant organizational structures are broken. We’ll poke at the other problems and explore the alternatives to better understand how to unlock the hidden potential of business.