Trust and the Workplace

I was reading a quote today in a magazine by a consultant called John Baldoni which relates to one of my themes on knowledge management.

"Trust is earned; and it is earned the hard way." We all know that trust at a number of levels is a major key in respect of encouraging knowledge sharing.

I was just reading a post by Bob Sutton - the author of the 'No A**hole Rule.

He was quoting a recent survey by Professor Wayne Hochwarter regarding employees working with badly behaved managers and how employees got their revenge - or just weren't able to complete their work effectively. Of course I also wondered what the effect would be on knowledge sharing - though I think that other knowledge practitioners can guess. I would also think that trust between employees and employer was pretty poor also and probably leached into peoples perspectives of their team members.

"Employees with difficult bosses checked out in the following ways:

• 30 percent slowed down or purposely made errors, compared with 6 percent of those not reporting abuse.
• 27 percent purposely hid from the boss, compared with 4 percent of those not abused.
• 33 percent confessed to not putting in maximum effort, compared with 9 percent of those not abused.
• 29 percent took sick time off even when not ill, compared with 4 percent of those not abused.
• 25 percent took more or longer breaks, compared with 7 percent of those not abused."
  

Not a happy post to start the week with but I've had colleagues who've worked in organisations like that.

Anyway on with the reading on Enabling Knowledge Creation.......