Getting things done in organisations essentially comes down to the interplay of three emotions, Trust, Respect and Fear, and how your team interacts under each of them.

While the ideal position to have is one where trust is absolute and everywhere in all relationships, supported by mutual respect for the capacity and capabilities of all involved, with fear completely absent. Reality is a little different however, fear seems to always find a place somewhere in a business relationship, respect is often lacking and trust can, on occasion, be a rare and precious commodity.

Trust In Business Relationships

Of the three cultures, trust is by far the best for an effective, attractive and pleasant working environment and relationship, yet, sadly, trust can be hard to find in many organisations. Many organisations are simply not configured to become trusting places to work and modern business practices are rarely structured around trust.

Many employment contracts are written to protect the employer from potential litigation in the unlikely event that an employee does something the company may not approve of, they are also set up to enable the employer to commoditise the employee, dehumanising them and destroying any potential for the building of trust. Similarly, even many personnel review practices are structured to maintain a power relationship between manager and managed, not to enable the employee to be genuinely open with their employer, nor for the manager to be completely open with their staff.

Competition between personnel is often also used to build district between them. Reward schemes that favour employees who work individually and who don’t share information or ideas with their colleagues are completely counter any attempt to build trust, yet these schemes are still hugely popular in many businesses. Similarly, reward schemes that prioritise the profitability of one office over another are actively destroying attempts by many businesses and projects to build effective virtual team structures.

Indeed, many contracts are set up to be adversarial from the outset. That adversarial mindset also drives the language used in business, where terms are used for other businesses in the same space such as the competition and the enemy, and where vast amounts of time is given to strategic planning and tactical measures to defeat these other businesses, all language of combat rather than collaboration. If the same level of energy could be spent on building trust between businesses, whether at a customer/supplier or a peer to peer level, many businesses could become more productive and the entire value chain would potentially be less wasteful.

Respect In Business Relationships

If trust is often hard to find and hard to build, the next option is to engender a culture of respect between individuals, offices and businesses. While this can on occasion be hard, it is often easier than complete trust.

Yet, frequently, a client will engage a company to perform work for them but write the contract in a way that clearly states that trust is not freely available. Sometimes this is appropriate, but more often, starting with a lack of respect is planning to fail.

When an organisation employs personnel to perform a task or, to fill a defined role, that organisation will go to great lengths to find a person with all of the skills they need. Why, then, do so many employers not respect that person’s abilities once employed, frequently treating them like they know nothing about their area of speciality. These specialists deserve the respect that comes with their level of experience. Ignoring the experience of employees leads to a breakdown of respect in the employee/employer relationship, leading once again to disconnected and frustrated personnel.

Similarly, if one business genuinely believes that the other is the right one to deliver a service or some specific goods,