Trust and Purpose - Paul Zak

Paul Zak states that teams fundamentally need two key components, trust and purpose.

A foundation of trust opens teams up to high levels of collaboration, creativity and performance. “Trust is a powerful lever to improve economic performance because it reduces the frictions that occur when individuals interact. If I trust you, and you are trustworthy, we are an effective team because we reliably complete our tasks – usually – and that is where things get complicated.”

This, in turn, should raise people’s levels of oxytocin, a key indicator for the brain to signal the motivation to cooperate. Based on research eight building blocks that leaders can influence to create a high trust, high-performance culture are:

• Ovation (recognize those who meet or exceed goals)
• eXpectation (design difficult but achievable challenges and hold colleagues accountable to reach them)
• Yield (enable employees to complete their work as they see fit)
• Transfer (facilitate self-management in which colleagues choose the work they want to do)
• Openness (share information broadly)
• Caring (intentionally build relationships with colleagues)
• Invest (promote personal and professional growth)
• Natural (behave authentically and ask for help)