Trust is a choice

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them”

This is the title I gave to a recent post in which I referenced three leadership examples, including a quote from James Timpson of the family-owned UK firm of the same name:

“The easiest way to create a culture of kindness in an organisation is to trust everyone to do what they think is right…every time a decision needs to be made.”

Today I thank Dom Monkhouse for sharing on LI an HBR article on PWC on flexible working, to which he adds his thoughts:

“A good article showing flexibility can work in a big firm. Trust shouldn’t need to be earned. It should be assumed everyone is trusted from the outset.”

The article in question from HBR is called: “What PwC Learned from Its Policy of Flexible Work for Everyone”, from which I clip this piece:

When it comes to flexibility, trust is not earned. It is not uncommon for managers to tell me that they believe in allowing employees to work flexibly, if and only when they’ve been with the firm a certain amount of time and earned that trust. This is when I remind people that we place our trust in employees from the moment they start working for us, so why wouldn’t that same theory apply when it comes to flexibility? If you trust an individual enough that you hired them to join your organization, you also should trust them to get the work done when and where they prefer, as long as they meet deadlines. I challenge all managers to take this approach.