New Work - Redesigning collaboration: Why unconditional trust doesn't work

Trust should be an essential part of collaboration in the spirit of New Work. But honestly, how is that supposed to work?

New work and absolute trust

In the context of New Work, it is being propagated that the basis for successful collaboration is absolute trust. But let's be honest, you have also experienced theft in companies, haven't you?

I remember the office supplies cupboard in the construction company where I worked in administration when I was in my early twenties. The scissors and hole punches literally got legs overnight. I was responsible for office supplies management. All colleagues were free to use the cupboard.

I was only able to contain the excessive loss of material when I stored everything in a lockable cupboard. This meant that all colleagues who needed something had to collect the items from me personally and I was proud to have the situation under control.

Transparency in the open-plan office

Years later, when I was working as a consultant for a large technology company and facilitating workshops on psychological risk assessment, I was surprised by the design of the open-plan offices. In the huge offices with up to 200 workstations, the sideboards were not allowed to exceed a maximum height of 120 cm. Everything had to be clearly visible from one end of the room to the other. Visual barriers between the desks, which would have reduced the noise level in these offices, were not permitted.

In the past, there had been too many bad experiences with people sitting in nooks and crannies of offices reading newspapers and chatting instead of doing their work.

How far can trust go?

And I remember a person who committed time fraud by repeatedly falsifying data in her time recording, thereby provoking her dismissal without notice.

You are sure to know of cases in which trust has been used and exploited, or the rules under which cooperation works constructively have been interpreted very differently. So trust is a tricky issue.

How can it work if people act selfishly and care little about the interests of the company?

Control has its price

But is control the right answer?

For me, personally handing out office supplies meant being regularly torn away from my work. For my colleagues, it meant regularly returning to my desk if they didn't find me there straight away. The situation was not satisfactory for anyone.

And when I think of the open-plan offices in which programmers, who had to work with a high level of concentration, sat next to customer service staff who made a lot of phone calls - and all of this without soundproof walls in between, the need for control created completely new problems, which in turn meant that a lot of productive work was lost.

Ask the right questions

The answer to the question of trust probably lies on a different level. What happens when we start to ask ourselves why people use the company's property as if it were their own? Isn't it often the case that people think, I don't get the recognition I want here. So it doesn't hurt anyone if I use it here. I'm entitled to that as compensation.

What answers do we find when we ask ourselves why people hide behind walls and disappear from work? I personally remember times when managers were not very approachable. If there had been spaces to hide and duck away, I think I would have used them. Even if people are sitting or standing at their desks in full view of everyone, it does not mean that they - frustrated and worn down by emotionally draining working conditions - are really investing all their thoughts, commitment and energy in their work.

Maybe we sometimes have a wrong understanding of productivity. Maybe the little breaks and the chat with colleagues are exactly the sources of energy we need to carry on with more energy instead of heading straight for burnout.

Self-selected learning goals

Imagine that all employees in your company were given the task of working on a personal learning goal during working hours in a three-month learning cycle. All of this is accompanied by a learning coach who supports the learners in achieving their learning goal using the right methods and materials. How would you react if one of your colleagues set himself the learning goal of becoming better at fishing?

During working hours?

Paid by the company?

That's not possible! He's taking advantage of the company.

How about a different perspective on this situation: We know a company that made this possible for an employee. The IT company QualityMinds, which developed a new learning format with its agile learning coaching method.

Trust and development of potential

At QualityMinds, we thought about how we could reflect the company value of "trust" in our learning culture. This applies to all employees and does not differentiate between professional and private life. We were also surprised by the story. But it is a wonderful example of how we can develop the potential of individuals in a company in a holistic way. This is done with complete trust in the employees' ability to judge what is important to them at the time.

Completely unintentionally, this creates an extraordinary benefit that probably increases the fishing colleague's connection to his workplace. Incidentally and also unplanned, such a story is also wonderfully suited to employer branding - to convey the kind of appreciative way in which the company actually treats its employees. And above all, in addition to fishing, the colleague learned a lot in his agile learning sprint about which methods he can use to learn most effectively when he sets himself application learning goals.

Identification with all your heart

The question of trust is complex. It does not develop overnight. Control is certainly not the right answer when trust is abused. Rather, it is about finding answers to the question of how people can identify wholeheartedly with their company, their workplace, their employer and their task.

If you, as a manager, human resources developer or executive, are interested in how you can strengthen trust in your company, please feel free to contact me to exchange ideas. I am also happy to hear from you if you have your own striking examples that you would like to share.

Order now: 30 minutes New Work - Rosemarie Thiedmann