Using Stories To Build Relationships

Using Stories to Build Relationships

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Introduction

Trust is a significant aspect of a business. Managers and employees must have a proper relationship to have a better working relationship. Without trust, it could be difficult for a company or business to operate successfully. Businesses are run based on trust, and every manager and other key managers need to build trust with employees and other stakeholders. Leaders must, therefore, have a strategy to build and maintain trust to enhance the productivity and performance of a company. According to Owonikoko (2016), lack of trust negatively affect employees and therefore, result in poor growth of a business. Communication, honest, consistent and accountability are some of the best tools that leaders should use to build trust in business. Beslin, Reddin, and Reddin (2014) pointed out that a leader must win those who he or she communicates with and therefore, a leader should communicate open and clear to the stakeholders. Through effective communication, a leader can be able to build trust with the team including employees, management, customers, shareholders, and the community.

Communication means convey information to the stakeholders. A leader needs to mind the language and the platform of communication to stakeholders of the company. Communication experts at Mercer Inc pointed out that communication is fundamental to trust. It helps in creating an environment of trust around leaders. With effectively and honest communication employees and other stakeholders could start trust leaders. In most cases, leaders normally want trust forgetting that trust is built and therefore, the way a leader delivers a message to other people and especially to stakeholders would make people stake to trust the company and the leader. Miscommunication has made several companies fail, turning profiting company to loss-making firm. For instance, ExxonMobil failed to deliver an effective communication to stakeholders during the gulf split, and this caused the company a lot of losses in the market. ExxonMobil took a time before communicating to stakeholders and the public regarding the measures the company is taking to address the problem of oil spill and buy time, the public relations manager came to address the media; the public had already lost trust and could not believe the company CITATION Ter17 \l 1033 (Terry, Illes, & Mathews, 2017). Therefore, the culture of communication is a significant aspect in building trust, and businesses or companies with effective communication channels can build a strong trust with clients, employees and other stakeholders in the market.

Research indicates that honest is a tool that is essential in building trust between leaders and stakeholders. It is important always to tell the truth to the employees and other stakeholders as well. According to Grossman (2018), it is significant to tell employees the situation of the company, and when it is difficult, a leader should be able to call all employees the truth and ask them to work out towards achieving the solution. Without telling being honest to the employees, it would be difficult to build trust, and this could make employees lose confidence in the leadership of the organization. A leader should understand that employees need to know the truth all the time. A leader should, therefore, communicate facts at the same time being considerate of their feelings so that the message passed is accurate. Without being honest to employees, it would be difficult to be trusted by a team, and this could be one of the problems, which could make a business perform poorly. It is important to ensure that employees and leaders have a proper understanding of the important issues which affect the company and this could only be achieved by being honest to the team. Therefore, honest and communication are some of the important tools which are used to build trust in a company.

Benefits of the tools

Communication and honesty are significant tools in building a strong viable business based on trust. Communication helps in enhancing the relationship between a leader and stakeholders. Communication also creates understanding and can be used to solve problems within a company. With efficient communication, problems could be solved easily, and therefore, the relationship among employees would be strengthened. It is, therefore, used to reduce conflict and strengthen bonds among employees and between leaders and employees CITATION Huf19 \l 1033 (Huffpost, 2019). Communication is also aid in planning and provision of better leadership. It helps leaders to have proper planning, and therefore, an efficient decision-making process is established. It also helps a company to have effective communication with the outside or external environment. It also helps in the coordination of various aspects of business, and therefore, the company must have a proper communication plan for it succeed in the market CITATION Bes14 \l 1033 (Beslin, Reddin, & Reddin, 2014). Failure or lack of efficient communication strategy has caused companies to lose in the market forcing stock prices to decline. ExxonMobil is one of those companies which have faced worse cases of lack of communication, but there are other companies in the market that have faced the same situation.

Honest is also one of the fundamentals for building trust between leaders and employees. With honest employees, performance can improve and therefore, the general performance of a company would increase as well. As stated by Terry, Illes, and Mathews (2017), honest is a tool, which helps employees to build understanding amongst themselves, and with honest, the team or employees can work as a team to deliver specific cools. Honest also helps in building accountability in an organization. Honest also helps in building good public relations, and therefore, it is the best tool that is used to attract investors to a company. The honest is also used to facilitate delegation of authority at the workplace. The practice of honesty is essential in enhancing the business process, and therefore, a delegation of authority requires the practice of honesty among key players. Without being honest, it could be difficult to delegate authority because the authority can only be delegated to honest and trustworthy employees. Business leaders seek to delegate work or responsibilities to honest employees. Therefore, honest is fundamental in building trust and therefore, the performance of companies depends on the trust which exists in the company.

However, leaders can use storytelling to build trust. The storytelling could be regarding an example of what had happened in a company to inform employees what lack of communication or honest has caused other companies in the market before. A good example of storytelling could be the impact of an oil spill in the Gulf by ExxonMobil and the result which came after that because of a lack of efficient communication from the leadership of ExxonMobil. Therefore, a leader can tell a story about ExxonMobil as a lesson for the employees and also urge them to work on their communication techniques for the company not to fall on the same fate as ExxonMobil.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Beslin, R., Reddin, C., & Reddin, C. (2014). How Leaders Can Communicate To Build Trust.

Ivey Business Journal, 2-16.

Grossman, D. (2018). Trust in the Workplace: 6 Steps to Building Trust with Employees.

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Huffpost. (2019). Apple Bends To Russia, Recognizes Crimea Annexation On Maps App.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apple-russia-crimea-maps_n_5de1aa8be4b00149f72f30c9?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaHVmZnBvc3QuY29tLz9lcnJfY29kZT00MDQmZXJyX3VybD1odHRwJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3Lmh1ZmZpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbSUyRjIwMTElMkYwMiUyRjE3JTJGb2lsLXNwa, 2-18.

Owonikoko, E. A. (2016). Building and Maintaining Trust in Virtual Teams as a Competitive

Strategy. Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies, 2-45.

Terry, N., Illes, K., & Mathews, M. (2017). Leadership, Trust And Communication: Building

Trust In Companies Through Effective Leadership Communication. Westminster Business School, 2-35.