Why too much trust hurts innovation
Copyright by Stephan Klaschka 2010-2024
From my series on how to build a successful BRG.1
Most managers understand that trust is a key ingredient to effective collaboration and innovation yet few actively try to cultivate and nourish trust in their own organization to achieve the right mix of trust and constructive tension.
The trust gap between theory and practice
Over 80% of managers believe trust is important to have good work relationships that enable effective collaboration and superior results. So why do only 40 or so percent take action to build and maintain trust within their organization? There is a disconnect between the theory and the practice. Why is that?
My assumption is that ‘trust’ is perceived as an 'intangible' that managers like to stay away from because they find it hard to measure and manage. It further requires an individual to open which comes with vulnerability. Perhaps we also fall easily into the human trap of making over-confident assumptions when it comes to ourselves and our single-sided perception of the trust we believe to have established with people we work with….
What is trust?
Let’s take a closer look: what makes up trustful work relationships?
Trust is the degree to which people trust one another, so trust is an interpersonal phenomenon. It comes down to three factors that make up trust in the workplace:
Benevolence = co-workers have your best interest at heart
Ability = co-workers have the knowledge and ability to get the job done
Integrity = co-workers will do what they promise.
Trust is the ‘glue’
Trust is the social 'glue' that holds together teams and organizations. It is critical for the success of virtual teams, i.e. the increasing trend of co-workers working separated from one another and spread across different countries and time zones. With a lack of trust, productivity dwindles as does the willingness to share information. Instead, our energy gets wasted every day on avoiding perceived threats from others.
Innovation needs trust
High trust correlates with more successful innovation – why?
When colleagues trust another they open up and share information. Besides the obvious benefit of cross-fertilization that leads to more ideas and creative approaches, by giving away your views and knowledge you become vulnerable as an individual and even more so in a competitive professional environment. This openness comes with a risk of failure that people are only willing to take if failure is acceptable among colleagues and does not come with repercussions.
Sharing ideas alone is not enough though. Asking thoughtful questions, constructive criticism, and mutual support lead to better solutions while curbing hostility and competitiveness. Opening up happens when a task-related conflict will not easily deteriorate into a personal conflict. Innovation within an organization relies on trust among colleagues as a key ingredient that cannot be substituted.
Innovation needs trust
So, how much trust is needed? And can there be too much trust? The MIT’s Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan Management Review, Summer 2010, Vol. 51, No. 4) offers some answers: An increasing level of trust leads to more effective innovation, as we expect, but the researchers also observed that there is a limit after which the correlation negates and where innovation declines with too much trust. What happened here?
Too much mutual trust deteriorates the innovative effectiveness of partners. Where trust sparked creativity and led to better solutions earlier constructive criticism and challenging each other’s ideas now suffers. Finding the ‘sweet spot’ is the tough part where a high level of trust consistently fuels innovation and leads to the best results.
The take-home message for managers
Should managers reduce investing in trust? Certainly not!
A high level of trust remains the most crucial requirement to build a solid relationship between people that becomes the basis for effective collaboration and innovation. Most organizations seem to suffer from a lack of trust more than anything. It makes collaboration a drag and leads to poor results and mediocre solutions.
Actively building trustful relationships is an important part of a manager’s role and even more so in virtual teams, when the team members work separated by barriers of location, time, culture, language, and others. Trust must be built and nurtured actively especially when face-to-face communication is not possible and becomes replaced by using less-rich digital media (video conferencing, phone, email, etc.).
When trust is getting very high, however, we need to exercise vigilance and a reality check. You do not want to lose constructive arguments and challenging dialogue between team members that turn creative ideas into innovative solutions.
Stay tuned for my next post on: Do managers miss the sweet-spot of remote working?
From my series on how to build a successful BRG (=Business Resource Group) group, i.e. a business-focused ERG (=Employee Resource Group) first published on OrgChanger.com.