Measurement of trust in management in South Africa’s gold mines in the late 1980s produced unexpected results. Contrary to expectations, trust in management was not consistently low. Rather, the degree to which managers were seen as trustworthy varied immensely—not only from mine to mine, but even from one shaft to another on the same mine.

Initially, researchers were unable to find a relationship between trust and such factors as the physical conditions (in the hostel and underground) of the mine, the labor mix, pay rates, trade union activity, and a lack of an HR function. An explanation for the findings was at last found in response to a new question: “Have relations with management changed (improved/deteriorated) over the last two years?  If so, why?”

If management-employee relations had improved or worsened it could only because management had either addressed or not attended to employee concerns or problems.

True reason for trust

Adequate regard for employee grievances turned out to be the single criterion that was consistently applied by mine employees to assess their relationship with management. In other words, managers—individually and collectively—were accepted or rejected on the strength of their perceived interest in the well being of their employees.

Trust, the researchers concluded, was either granted or withheld on this basis only—and the leadership of a mine was seen to be legitimate or not worthy of support. So, whether management was trusted was ultimately a function of the intent of the immediate supervisors, at any level in the hierarchy, regarding the people who reported to them directly.

For the last 20 years our experience as an organizational development consultancy, working with diverse organizations across the world, has confirmed the findings from this initial research. In a retail bank, for example, we found trust levels in one branch to be dramatically different from a branch around the corner. Similarly, in a hospital we have seen variations in trust from ward to ward, purely as a function of the ward sister’s relationship with nursing staff.

We have concluded that in any group there will always be two populations: one that is anti-management and another that is pro-management. But the size of the positive group, and hence the degree to which there is overall trust in management, will be directly determined by the perceived intent of each group’s leaders.

Intent is about whose interests in the relationship are believed to be served. When managers are perceived as pursuing their own interests—to only be in the relationship to get something out of their people—trust in them will be low. Only when managers are there to serve their people, will staff be willing to give back because they trust that management has their best interests at heart.

However, what those in authority must give to their people—what earns them trust—is not money. Across the world, we have found that what management needs to give workers distils down to only two factors:

1. Managers must have a genuine concern for those in their charge. They have to care for their people as human beings—not as human resources that help their bottom line.

2. Managers must enable their people to realize the very best in themselves.

True price of power

The price for getting employees to deliver on command is not money, it is care and growth. And it makes the power exercised by those in authority legitimate. When the price of power is not paid, people become resistant—no matter how much they are paid.

And managers can only earn trust in one of two ways.

1. Managers must “pass” the intent test. This is not a once-off test, but rather one that individual managers take every day of their lives. Trust is gained or lost managers take the intent test. The effect of how they score on the intent test is, in other words, cumulative over time.

2. Managers earn trust through a process of allocation by the employees. With each incremental step of entrustment, there is greater trust in, and increased trustworthiness, in the relationship between manager and employee.

Managers take the intent test whenever they are faced with a choice between their needs or their values. Values have managers place their own self-interests or needs second. The value that is operative in any command situation determines whether managers are giving or taking in that situation.

To say that trust is the new workplace currency, therefore, is not correct. Trust has always been the workplace currency.