Organizational
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"The ABC's of Engagement" Excerpt from Chapter 25: Act with Virtue Most of us try hard to follow the advice from our youth to play nice and get along with others. But many leaders might wonder whether there really is business value in investing time and resources to build a nice organization where good values are woven into the fabric of work life. The point of view of this chapter is that positive business outcomes occur when an organization lives by its values; when employees are proud of the inherent and visible goodness of their organization. We have been focusing on organization level virtues. Of course, virtuous actions happen at the individual level. And the stories that gain the most traction in the verbal history of an organization are those actions that go beyond the expected routines and are seen as unexpectedly virtuous. For example, many people will pass along a positive story about a manager who went out of his or her way to help an employee undergoing a personal trauma, especially when the two parties had not been on best of terms prior to the virtuous act. Or, they may pass along their positive impressions about a colleague who invests personal time in helping those less fortunate in the community, especially when these contributions occur while work demands are high. Excerpt from Chapter 26: Be Trustworthy and Build Trust “Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.” - Warren Bennis “Trust each other again and again. When the trust level gets high enough, people transcend apparent limits, discovering new and awesome abilities for which they were previously unaware.” - David Armistead These quotes from business leaders ring true and are supported by research on the links between trust in an organization and organizational performance. In a study reported in the American Society of Quality (The Trust Imperative by Hacker, Willard and Couturier) a high correlation was found between trust and profitability. “In divisions that outperformed others, 84 percent of survey respondents said they had high levels of trust, as compared to lower-performing divisions in which only 27 percent believed trust was high.” In an article entitled Trust and Efficiency, Chami and Fullenkamp observed “when employees who work together trust each other, they exert more effort in their jobs and expend less effort monitoring each other. This leads to increased productivity, lower costs, and greater satisfaction for workers as well as shareholders…. It is in every corporations’ interest to consider developing a culture of trust as a way of improving performance.” (From Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection.)
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