Ten ways how leadership can influence and promote interpersonal trust in knowledge management behavior and processes

Introduction

Knowledge sharing can be a demanding and uncertain process. At the individual level, it may evoke perceptions of conflict of interest or vulnerability (e.g. Argote et al., 2001). For example, Ardichvili et al. (2003) found that ‘fear of criticism’ and ‘fear of [inadvertently] misleading others’ can inhibit knowledge sharing.

Previous research has connected knowledge sharing to a variety of managerial and organizational factors and to transient, situation-specific attitudes and motives including specifically interpersonal trust, which is the evaluation of the trustworthiness of specific others (such as managers and peers; Dirks and Ferrin, 2001; Levin and Cross, 2004).

Defining Trust

Interpersonal trust can be defined as “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable.” In the context of knowledge creation and sharing in informal networks, research suggests two dimensions of trust that promote knowledge creation and sharing:

• Benevolence - ”You care about me and take an interest in my well-being and goals”)
• Competence - ”You have relevant expertise and can be depended  upon to know what you are talking about”)

Trust is caused by a combination of all kind of variables. One of these is the earlier discussed earlier when looking at the Big Five: agreeableness. While such a personality factor is hard to change, there are some ways that leadership can promote and influence the level of trust within the department or organization. They follow here below.

Influencing and promoting interpersonal trust

Trustworthy Behaviors

1. Act with discretion Keeping a secret means not exposing another person’s vulnerability; thus, divulging a confidence makes a person seem malevolent and/or unprofessional.

• Be clear about what information you are expected to keep confidential.
• Don’t reveal information you have said you would not . . . and hold others accountable for this.

Promotes: benevolence trust

2. Be consistent between word and deed When people do not say one thing and do another, they are perceived as both caring about others (i.e., they do not mislead) and as being competent enough to follow through.

• Be clear about what you have committed to do, so there is no misunderstanding.
• Set realistic expectations when committing to do something, and then deliver.

Promotes: benevolence and competence trust

3. Ensure frequent and rich communication Frequent, close interactions typically lead to positive feelings of caring about each other and better understandings of each other’s expertise.

• Make interactions meaningful and memorable.
• Consider having some face-to-face (or at least telephone) contact.
• Develop close relationships.

Promotes: benevolence and competence trust

4. Engage in collaborative communication People are more willing to trust someone who shows a willingness to listen and share; i.e., to get involved and talk things through. In contrast, people are wary of someone who seems closed and will only answer clear-cut questions or discuss complete solutions.

• Avoid being overly critical or judgmental of ideas still in their infancy.
• Don’t always demand complete solutions from people trying to solve a problem.
• Be willing to work with people to improve jointly on their partially formed ideas.

Promotes: benevolence and competence trust

5. Ensure that decisions are fair and transparent People take their cues from the larger environment. As a result, there is a “trickle down” effect for trust, where the way management treats people leads to a situation where employees treat one another similarly. Thus, fair and transparent decisions on personnel matters translate into a more trusting environment among everyone.

• Make sure that people know how and why personnel rules are applied and that the rules are applied equally.
• Make promotion and rewards criteria clear-cut, so people don’t waste time developing a hidden agenda (or trying to decode everyone else’s).

Promotes: benevolence trust

Organizational Factors

6. Establish and ensure shared vision and language People who have similar goals and who think alike find it easier to form a closer bond and to understand one another’s communications and expertise.

• Set common goals early on.
• Look for opportunities to create common terminology and ways of thinking.
• Be on the lookout for misunderstandings due to differences in jargon or thought processes.

Promotes: benevolence and competence trust

7. Hold people accountable for trust To make trustworthy behavior become “how we do things here,” managers need to measure and reward it. Even if the measures are subjective, evaluating people’s trustworthiness sends a strong signal to everyone that trust is critical.

• Explicitly include measures of trustworthiness in performance evaluations.
• Resist the urge to reward high performers who are not trustworthy.
• Keep publicizing key values such as trust-highlighting both rewarded good examples and punished violations-in multiple forums.

Promotes: benevolence and competence trust

Relational Factors

8. Create personal connections When two people share information about their personal lives, especially about similarities, then a stronger bond and greater trust develop. Non-work connections make a person seem more “real” and human, and thus more trustworthy.

• Create a “human connection” with someone based on non-work things you have in common.
• Maintain a quality connection when you do occasionally run into acquaintances, including discussing non-work topics.
• Don’t divulge personal information shared in confidence.

Promotes: benevolence trust

9. Give away something of value Giving trust and good faith to someone makes that person want to be trusting, loyal, and generous in return.

• When appropriate, take risks in sharing your expertise with people.
• Be willing to offer others your personal network of contacts when appropriate.

Promotes: benevolence trust

Individual Factors

10. Disclose your expertise and limitations Being candid about your limitations gives people confidence that they can trust what you say are your strengths. If you claim to know everything, then no one is sure when to believe you.

• Make clear both what you do and don’t know.
• Admit it when you don’t know something rather than posture to avoid embarrassment.
• Defer to people who know more than you do about a topic.

Promotes: competence trust

Conclusion

Without trust effective knowledge management is extremely difficult if not impossible. Leadership should be up to the task of nurturing trust in their departments or organizations in order to ensure effective communication between their staff. The ten points listed in this article provide a concrete framework of doing so.

This blogpost is partly an adaptation of the following article. We strongly advice you to read this whole article, since it goes more into depth than this post:

Abrams L., Cross R., Lesser E., and Levin D.Z. (2003) Nurturing interpersonal trust in knowledge-sharing networks Academy of Management Executive, 2003, Vol. 17, No. 4