In a Harvard Business Revue article, The Neuroscience of Trust, the author, Paul Zak, says that “it’s clear that creating an employee-centric culture can be good for business.” ∇
These are the eight behaviors that, according to the author, promote it,
| Recognize Excellence | The neuroscience shows that recognition has the largest effect on trust when it occurs immediately after a goal has been met, when it comes from peers, and when it’s tangible, unexpected, personal, and public. |
|---|---|
| Induce “Challenge Stress” | When team members need to work together to reach a goal, brain activity coordinates their behaviors efficiently. |
| Give People Discretion in How They Do Their Work | It allows them, whenever possible, to manage people and execute projects in their own way. Being trusted to figure things out is a big motivator. Also, autonomy promotes innovation… . |
| Enable Job Crafting | When companies trust employees to choose which projects they’ll work on, people focus their energies on what they care about most. |
| Share Information Broadly | Organizations that share their ‘flight plans‘ with employees reduce uncertainty about where they are headed and why. |
| Intentionally Build Relationships | … at work we often get the message that we should focus on completing tasks, not on making friends. Neuroscience experiments by my lab show that when people intentionally build social ties at work, their performance improves. |
| Facilitate Whole-Person Growth | High-trust workplaces help people develop personally as well as professionally. … acquiring new work skills isn’t enough… the backward-looking annual performance review is no longer necessary. |
Zak concludes that,
…those working in high-trust companies enjoyed their jobs 60% more, were 70% more aligned with their companies’ purpose, and felt 66% closer to their colleagues. … Compared with employees at low-trust organizations, the high-trust folks had 11% more empathy for their workmates, depersonalized them 41% less often, and experienced 40% less burnout from their work. They felt a greater sense of accomplishment, as well—41% more.
RADs Promote Trust
These behaviors are integral to the Radical model and its Foundation,
| people | Meaning & Belonging |
|---|---|
| commitments | Decentralization & Transparency |
| practices | Experimentation |
Behaviors
RADs support all of these behaviors,
| Recognize Contributions (and Give RADs) |
“Excellence” is way too vague, but RAD are tangible,
|
|---|---|
| Induce “Challenge Stress” | Not only RADs, but the whole Radical model is based on collaboration, not competition. As such co-owners “collaborate to reach a goal [and] brain activity coordinates their behaviors efficiently.” RADs make this collaboration even easier. |
| Give People Discretion in How They Do Their Work | The Radical model brings in co-management which is based on decentralized decision-making and leading with trust. |
| Enable Job Crafting | The Radical model is founded on the principle decentralized decision-making. “… people focus their energies on what they care about most.” |
| Share Information Broadly | The Radical model is founded on the principle transparency. |
| Intentionally Build Relationships | In the Radical model the company is a community of co-owners. Relationship comes natural. |
| Facilitate Whole-Person Growth | Being the sole owner of a business makes you grow to deal with all the surprises that come at you. They same is true for a community of co-owners, except the learning is more dense because the same way you are learning, so are they. Not only will you learn from circumstances, co-owners learn from each other. |
ENDNOTES
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Paul Zak. The Neuroscience of Trust. HBR. Jan-Feb 2017. <…the-neuroscience-of-trust>
