Trust at work has been in the news a lot recently. Whether it’s Zoom fatigue caused by too many pointless meetings, employers using software to spy on employees in their own homes or forced returns to the office, it is clear that our new world of work still doesn’t sit comfortably with some employers.
So how should we be thinking about trust at work now, and does rethinking our whole approach to accountability hold some of the answers on how we move forward?
My guest this week is Carolyn Taylor, a global thought leader on corporate culture change. Carolyn has written a brilliant new book called , which offers some very practical advice on building a scalable system of accountability that will help everyone who leads a team.
In the interview, we discuss:
▪ Why culture really matters during the pandemic
▪ Types of trust: reliability, motivation and capability
▪ Empowerment and equality
▪ What is accountability
▪ Being counted on
▪ Mitigating risk
▪ Outcomes and learning experiences
▪ Inclusion and hybrid working
▪ Our relationship with technology
▪ Predictions on the future of work
Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:11]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 342 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Trust at work has been in the news a lot recently. Whether it’s zoom fatigue caused by too many pointless meetings, employers using software to spy on employees in their homes, or forced returns to the office, it’s clear that our new world of work still doesn’t sit comfortably with some employers. So how should we be thinking about trust at work now? And does rethinking our whole approach to accountability hold some of the answers on how move forward. My guest this week is Carolyn Taylor, a global thought leader on corporate culture change. Carolyn has written a brilliant new book called Accountability at Work that offers some very practical advice on building a scalable system of accountability that will help everyone who leads a team. Hi Carolyn and welcome to the podcast.
Carolyn Taylor [00:02:16]:
Hi Matt, Great to be here.
Matt Alder [00:02:17]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Carolyn Taylor [00:02:22]:
So I am Carolyn Taylor. I am an expert in how organizations change their culture to get better business results. I wrote a book on that some years ago. I advise large organizations all over the world on that topic. Normally they’ve had some kind of change in strategy or some kind of business challenge or reputational challenge, and they’re looking to put new features into their culture. And that’s my expertise. Recently I have specialized in what it takes to have an accountable culture, which we’ll talk about about more.
Matt Alder [00:02:56]:
I’m sure you’ve just published a book or you’ve got a book coming out called Accountability at Work, which I’m actually holding in my hand. Obviously I want to dive into sort of lots of the themes and topics around it, but by Way of introduction. Just give us a quick overview. I mean, what is the book about and why did you write it?
Carolyn Taylor [00:03:10]:
So I wrote it because I was finding lots of people in organizations who were frustrated that others weren’t delivering for them. So whether that meant, you know, they weren’t delivering on their annual goals, or whether it meant that they weren’t delivering the report they promised by Friday, or just people really struggling, often with their peers, that they weren’t getting from people what they hoped for. And similarly, I was finding a lot of people in organizations who were feeling like they were being forced into making commitments that they didn’t feel they could deliver, that they were getting caught up with a whole lot of prioritization issues. They didn’t know how to deal with them. And so there was just a general sense I had that accountability had become a really negative feeling where people were feeling pressured, people were feeling where they were getting one. I wanted to go back to the beginning and rethink it all. And that’s what I did, and rethought it all around the core idea, which I kind of love with the word accountability, that in the middle of that word, the word count, and I played with the idea of, you know, I can count on you, you can count on me. So that idea that in the end, accountability is feeling that I can be counted on to deliver something, and what does it take to do that? And that’s what the book’s about.
Matt Alder [00:04:27]:
It’s such an interesting and very practical read, and we’ll dive into some of the sort of the key elements and the key themes in a second. But I suppose we should take a step back and look at the context of everything that’s been going on in the world and over the last 12 months and how that’s affected work, basically. I mean, how do you think that the pandemic has changed, I suppose, what we used to call office life forever?
Carolyn Taylor [00:04:55]:
Well, I think it’s absolutely changed the concept of empowerment. So many leaders liked to be on top of their people. They could see what was going on. They could look at their shoulder, they could talk in the corridors. They could check how work was going. Of course, that now becomes impossible in a virtual environment because you don’t have that easy free time with each other. Everything has got to be scheduled into a zoom call, and we’re running from one zoom call and so on. So there’s been kind of a forced empowerment, which I think for some people has been great, for other managers has been very scary, because then the question is well, do I even know what my people are doing? And that’s where I think then accountability becomes interesting because you’ve then got to get clear about what are your. What. What are the big frames that you want? So that’s been one thing that we found. The other thing which I think has potentially changed forever is it has created a kind of an equality. So when all of us are sitting on a Zoom or a Teams call and we’re all, you know, a 1 inch by 2 inch little photo of ourselves, there’s something about, you know, the hierarchy goes the. The way that certain people used to dominate the conversation at a table or always sit at the head or be the boss or. So there’s been a kind of a equalizing, I think that’s happened on Zoom, which has meant that in some ways people have become freer with speaking up, more able, more feeling like we’re one team and we’re able to do this together. And that, I think, is going to be hard to completely kill, even if people do go back into the office.
Matt Alder [00:06:31]:
And what effect has that had on how companies are thinking about their culture? I mean, how have they been trying to maintain their culture in these remote times or adapt or indeed adapting it to in the light of everything that’s been happening?
Carolyn Taylor [00:06:46]:
Well, interestingly, we find that organizations who have decided that culture mattered immediately realized that they had to keep going with that theme even in lockdown. I mean, unless they were in an industry where they were just in total crisis. But how we responded to the lockdown was, in effect, a symbol of our culture. And so certainly all of our clients, if anything, they increased their desire to do work on culture. They didn’t say this, and they saw it as a way of at least continuing a conversation that wasn’t transactional, because the lockdown has made us all very. Most people very transactional. So keeping up the conversation about how do we want to behave? And we define culture as the patterns of behavior that get encouraged and discouraged and not tolerated or tolerated. And that sort of becomes, you know, the way that a community operates, the way we do things around here. So most organizations who are focused on culture are continuing to focus. I think they are realizing that empowerment is different. They’re realizing that what it means to be one team is different. They’re realizing that virtuality is not a limitation for being one team. So I think it’s accelerated the possibility that we can work together across boundaries. And I don’t think we’ll ever go back to doing that. The big question now is going to be which activities really need to be face to face. And I think we’re all getting clearer about what those are. There are certain types of brainstorming, certain types of trust building that is much harder to do on zoom, ensuring that you’ve got engagement for everyone, because you can’t always see the people who are not speaking get lost. You can’t see their faces, you can’t see their body language. But there’s so much else that we’ve discovered we can do. I’m sure you’re the same. Amazing. What we’ve been able to pull off.
Matt Alder [00:08:42]:
In the last year, it’s definitely been a. Been a challenge, but it’s kind of opened up whole new worlds of opportunity in other ways. Definitely one of the sort of the big talking points. The thing that seems to come up time and time again is, and this obviously plays directly into accountability, is trust. So at the start of the pandemic of the first lockdown, there was lots of talk about managers not being able to trust their employees and dragging them onto needless calls to illustrate that they were working. And, you know, very, very recently, we’ve seen a lot of attention being highlighted to technology that spies on people in their homes in terms of what they’re doing and what work means. What’s your view on all of that?
Carolyn Taylor [00:09:27]:
Well, my view on trust is it there are several different causes of mistrust and of trust. One is I trust your reliability, which goes absolutely to the heart of accountability. So I trust that if you say you’ll do something, you’ll do it. The second one is I trust your intent or your motivation. And for me, spying on people with software suggests that I don’t trust your intent and your motivation. So that I think that I don’t trust your intent. I don’t trust your motivation. That level of trust is hard to rebuild long distance because that’s the sort of work that is better done face to face. But the reliability one, I think can absolutely be tackled by becoming much better at understanding how you hold someone to account and becoming much better at what I commit to. What can you count on me for? And then the third one is, you know, do I trust someone’s capability? Do they have the skills? Well, I mean, that is. I mean, that’s a talent issue, really. Have you got the right person in the job? Do they know how to do that? So reliability, capability, motivation, three very different drivers of trust, and it depends which one is missing that would then cause the mistrust to happen. But relabos is a pretty good start because if you build a reputation for always being able, always being someone who does what they say they’re going to do, oh my goodness, that goes a long way. And any of us can do that. We can do it with our colleagues, we can do it with our boss, we can do it with our customers. That goes a long way to building trust.
Matt Alder [00:11:01]:
Now that obviously dovetails us beautifully into the book accountability at Work. Tell us a little bit more about the key elements, how you’ve. And how you’ve broken them down.
Carolyn Taylor [00:11:12]:
So the core idea of the book is that when, that most of the time when people commit to doing something, they do it very casually and or feeling that it was imposed on them, that there’s not a really rich conversation that happens about, you know, what is it you really want from me and am I really able to deliver that. So the book is divided into two roles, the ask a role and the giver role. And the first point that I make is that you can only be accountable in relation to somebody who is holding you to account. So accountability is actually a relationship between two people, one of whom wants something and the other is delivering that something like the asker and the giver. And so, and we all play both those roles all the time. It’s not just that the boss is always the asker because, you know, if I’m the boss, I’m also giving stuff to somebody else. So we both have to learn how to do both those roles. And what I found in all the research on this topic, working inside organizations all over the world, is that there’s nowhere near enough time spent on what I’d call what happens before that commitment is made. Because what I think one leading to is the point where the giver is able to say, you can count on me, I promise you. And if you think how many times recently, and any of the listeners can think about this, how many times in the last two weeks did you really look at someone either down the zoom call or face to face and say, you can count on me. And when someone does that to you, you just relax because they, they’re engaged. There’s a sort of wholeheartedness that comes into that. And that is the ultimate goal, if you like, of that accountable relationship is that because the ask is always going to be asking for more. I mean, they want things to be faster, cheaper, you know, more volume, whatever. Of course, we all do. I mean, whether we’re negotiating with the builder who’s going to do something on our house, or whether we’re negotiating with our people or whatever. We’re always wanting more. The giver, of course, is always trying to balance that against what they’re already got on their plate and the prioritization and will they be able to do this? So it’s natural that it’s going to be a tension between those two. But the quality of that relationship, that quality of that conversation, if you like the commitment conversation, is what seems to transform the likelihood that it will eventually be delivered. So if you can get to that point where in the end we go, I can promise you that we’ve had the conversation. I’ve expressed my concerns, you’ve expressed what you wanted. We’ve been able to reach a point where I can see what I can deliver and you are willing to accept that. And then there’s that moment which the book calls the Promise, where we do, you know, the hypothetical handshake, not that we’re any of us handshaking anymore at the moment, but. And we go, okay, are you on for this? Yes, you can count on me. And that’s a very powerful moment that we all are hoping to get to in order to then deliver.
Matt Alder [00:14:26]:
Absolutely. And I’m sure that everyone can empathize and think of a time when, you know, they’ve been in that situation, they’ve made that promise, but for whatever reason, they’ve not been able to deliver on it, or things have. Things have changed and, you know, expectations have changed and things have happened that mean that’s not where they’ve. They’ve got to. What are the things that people aren’t doing before they make that promise that are causing those kind of failures?
Carolyn Taylor [00:14:52]:
Yeah, well, I mean that. And that is the absolute richest question you could ask because it is what you are not doing beforehand that then causes a lot of problems afterwards. So from the Giver’s point of view, from the person who’s giving the promise, the. One of the critical elements is the ability to anticipate risk. So the ability. And the book goes into a lot of detail about how you do that. The ability to consider what could go wrong. And I’ll define risk as anything that could go wrong. And to start to plan for that and mitigate against that and think about how could you overcome, how could you find another way to still deliver? And so on. And it’s amazing. I’ve had the most fascinating time with different teams that I’ve worked with, inside organizations, where you ask that question. You say, okay, you’ve made this commitment for whatever your annual goal or whatever but what could go wrong? How confident are you that you’re actually going to deliver it? And often people say, well, actually only 50, 60, 70% confident. And then you go, okay, well, why? And the reason, you know, outcome, all the risks. Now, of course, then your whole focus needs to be on how do we overcome those risks, how do we mitigate those risks, so that when that conversation happens up front, you’re much more than prepared for if those things do come up, you’re then able to respond to them because you’ve said, when. I give you my word, I’m giving you my word on realizing that I have thought about those risks and I’m going to plan for them. And I feel I’m in a position where I’m going to be able to overcome that. Now, that doesn’t mean that things don’t still come up and we can talk about those in a minute. But that’s one of the key elements, is the ability to anticipate risk. And what the book does is it goes through each of the elements it goes through. What is the giver’s role before the promise, what is the giver’s role after the promise, and what is the asker’s role before the promise and the asker’s role after the promise? And a thing that I’ve realized is that what will tend to happen is the asker blames the giver for not delivering, and the giver tends to blame the asker for being unreasonable in what they asked for in the first place. But in fact, both parties have got a responsibility for getting the delivery right. Because if both parties play their role really well, and the book shows some of how you play that role really well, then the outcome is almost guaranteed. I would say it really does become a promise.
Matt Alder [00:17:32]:
You dedicate a chapter in the book to the outcome and what happens, what happens afterwards. And the outcome is very much as a learning experience. And again, this is probably something that people don’t necessarily do with work moving so quickly and so much going on. Talk us through that kind of area a little bit.
Carolyn Taylor [00:17:50]:
Yeah, I mean, I think again, the outcome has, you know, two pieces, the giver and the asker. I mean, let’s assume that the promise was met. I think it’s extremely important to celebrate that. And to I. I find even to. To remind people, remember, I promised you this. I mean, I’ll often send an email and I’ll say, remember, I promised we’d get, I’d get this to you by Friday. Here it is. And you write that On a Friday. Right. So it’s just a reminder, hey, I’m a reliable person. So you’re kind of building your reputation for doing what you said you’re going to do, which is such a powerful strength. So if it goes well, that’s a part of it and just, you know, reminding each other. So building the culture where you are, encouraging people to keep their word and you’re recognizing it when they keep their word, even for small things like that. Well done. You know, it’s great that you said it was Friday and here it is. And so you’re building up that reputation now if it doesn’t go well, of course, the first thing I would say is best to alert before Friday. Right. So the earlier you give warning that something is not on track. And if you’re the person who’s holding the other to account, if you’re the asker, you know, the little follow ups. Does it look like this is going to happen on time? Where do you think we’re at with this? Because that sense of looking and measuring and checking about whether something is on time, I mean, with some people you don’t need to do it, with some people you do. But it’s worth doing that follow up. But if that’s, if that’s been done early, then there’s a conversation, of course about, well, let’s renegotiate, let’s see how we can still find a way of achieving it. But if you get to the end point where it hasn’t been delivered, I think then the big opportunity is what do we learn? And that ability to learn. Because what will tend to happen is that the person who made the promise, the giver I call them, will often go into justifications or reasonable reasons. You know, oh, you know, the market moved against us, the competitors changed their pricing, somebody else came in and demanded that I did something else. I got overwhelmed with meetings, you know, all things where you kind of go, well, I’m helpless and I’m a victim and there’s nothing that I can do about that. Obviously what you’re looking for from a learning point of view is phrases like, given that, what can you learn? What might you be able to do next time? What have you learned from this experience about what you promised, about how much you thought through, what the risks might be, how you manage that on the way through? So always trying to, at the very least salvage some learning out of it. People tend to immediately jump to, you know, the negative consequences. But there can be many positive learnings that come out of a well managed, accountable relationship.
Matt Alder [00:20:51]:
I suppose one of the other, the other things that really affected people at work in the last 12 months has been this almost instant forced adoption of technology. And whether that’s learning technology or productivity technology or communication technology. And it feels like that we’re just at the first stage of that. I know that a lot of employers are sort of reviewing the technology that they, that they have in, in terms of how they can help their people do their work and work better. So I suspect that we’ll see lots more technology or better technology kind of introduced in the, in the coming months and years. Where does technology kind of fit into all of this? Does it cause problems? Can it help to create accountability? What’s your, what’s your take on it?
Carolyn Taylor [00:21:33]:
Well, I think what my take would be is that there are always reasons why it’s more difficult for you not to be accountable. And there are also reasons why you could become more accountable. So I think technology is like every other thing that gets thrown at us. We can either choose to say, how can I make this technology make me more accountable? Or we can choose to say, oh, my God, this technology is terrible. And, you know, I can’t even work out how to use it, and so no wonder I can’t nudge deliver for you. So my work is very much focused on what can I, as the individual do rather than the, you know, the meta piece about what technology should we put in. I think, Matt, you probably know more about that than I do, but what I’m interested in is how people respond to technology and whether or not they use it as an excuse or an opportunity to learn. When it comes to, am I someone who keeps my word? And if you’re building a culture of an accountable culture, always what you’re looking for is how can I make sure that my people are not using technology as an excuse for things going wrong, if that makes sense. So what is my plan B? How do I find a way to still do this if the technology goes wrong, for example, I think that would probably be where I would be focusing my attention in relation to what does technology mean? I mean, there’s no question that many of us have discovered we were able to do a million things that we didn’t know we could ever do on Zoom. And so therefore, it’s been an amazing opportunity to learn. But are we all spending the time making sure that we have learned that taking those few minutes to master these new technologies, rather than blaming them for what, what’s going wrong?
Matt Alder [00:23:29]:
We’re recording this right at the end of March in 2021, and we’re still very much in the pandemic, but there is certainly appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. And a lot of talking debate is now happening in terms of companies returning to their offices or remote work staying in place or there being some kind of hybrid situation. And you know, many people are saying it’s too early to really make decisions on that. But it does feel that we’re right at the start of a very interesting and sort of continuing debate about work. What would your predictions be for the next couple of years? Where, how do you think things are going to land? What are we going to be talking about? Where are we going to end up?
Carolyn Taylor [00:24:13]:
Well, the other dimension I’d put into this is the concept of inclusion, which of course, you know, diversity and inclusion, big topic at the moment. But what I think that as people start going back to work, there is going to be a real dynamic in relation to the inclusion of the people who you’re physically close to and the people who are remote. So what the complete lockdown did is it forced all of us to feel included or it enabled all of us to feel included in one community because we were all in the same boat. As we move into people at work, people not at work, that of course changes, or people act physically at work, and people working from home, I should say, or working remotely. So I think the whole dimension about how you create community, how you create a culture, how you create common standards that work both for people who are physically there and not physically there, and making sure that the people who are physically there don’t become a part of the inner circle in some way because we do tend to relate more easily. The people who we physically are close to will become one of the issues. I’m going to be very curious. We’ve started to work with some clients about how one plays that out. And then again in relation, in relation to what does it mean to be. To build a culture where people keep their word? How do we make that possible for people who are remote as much as we make that possible for people we can check up with every day?
Matt Alder [00:25:49]:
Final question. Where can people connect with you and where can they find the book?
Carolyn Taylor [00:25:54]:
Well, the book is on Amazon now in pre order. It’s called Accountability at Work and we’re using the. The symbol for at. So Accountability at Work by Carolyn Taylor. You can connect with me at the organization that I lead, which is called Walking your Talk. So you’re walkingyourtalk.com There’s a inquiry button in there. You can take a look in there and find out more about us. Connect with me on LinkedIn, of course, and love to hear your views on how you see all this. If you check me out as Carolyn Taylor Culture, you will find me in there.
Matt Alder [00:26:33]:
Carolyn, thank you very much for talking to me.
Carolyn Taylor [00:26:35]:
Thank you Matt. Great to be here.
Matt Alder [00:26:37]:
My thanks to Carolyn Taylor. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search through all the past episodes@recruiting future.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
