 | By: Robert Galford Anne Seibold Drapeau Binding: Hardcover Publisher: Simon & Schuster International ISBN: 0743235398 ISBN-13: 9780743235396 Released: 21 Jul 2003 RRP: Average Rating:  |
If you feel strongly about improving any of those dimensions of your work life, this is the best book I have seen on the subject for what leaders can do.
Trust is actuallly a little simpler than this book makes it seem. Most of us trust those who look out for our interests as well as their own, care about us, explain why they are doing whatever they are doing, & listen to our concerns. That point gets a little lost in the underbrush of analyzing trust, & how it is built, lost & reacquired from various organizational perspectives.
The book's strength comes in three areas. First, there's self-assessment in the beginning that I found very revealing about how well trust is being generated at work now. Second, the authors tackle many painful, difficult situations at work & discuss how they can be addressed in more constructive, trust-building ways (such as layoffs, surviving mergers, sudden departures of key people, teams that are failing, & emotionallly out-of-control colleagues & bosses). Third, there are an impressive number of case histories that most readers will recognize as being similar to something that has happened in their own work places (like cheating to get bonuses, egomaniacs running amok, insensitive comments in public, resentment after promotions), & excellent discussions of principled ways to handle them.
The only way that this book could have been improved in what it addresses would have been by having quantitative expressions of how the participants in some of these situations reacted to what happened.
Any leader will benefit by reading these lessons & becoming more sensitive to the implications of their words, actions & inaction. I also suggest that leaders review relevant sections in the book whenever they see a touchy situation building, as well as just after having made a hash of some organizational situation for ideas to help remedy their mistakes.
If you are looking for how trust relates back out to nonorganizational stakeholders (such as customers, end users, suppliers, partners, lenders, stakeholders & the communities that the organization affects) those dimensions are mostly ignored except as isolated dimensions of some case histories (if the team is ineffective, the client usuallly notices & complains or gets a new supplier).
After you finish reviewing alll of the interesting ideas for doing better here, think about what you can do tomorrow morning to start building more trust by trusting others more.
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