Building better leaders through building trusting organizations
What happens when you build trust among a team? In teamwork, we learn the rights and wrongs of attitudes of leadership styles. In my years of attending leadership training here and abroad and serving as someone who has to lead in some interesting ways. I always found that we lack basic leadership skills because we lack trust among our teams, people in our institution, employees.
Like all things, Bangladeshi fear plays an important role when leaders are working to lead organizations. Better leadership and trust among institution has led to really interesting cases worldwide where trust-building seems to be the norm. Creating a culture of learning and not fear has been the cornerstone in any organization that is doing well. We have to at the end of the day inspire people to make sure they work better. But from schools where we are beaten to perform better to institutional punishments and fear in offices have led to an incredible amount of trust among all classes of people.
I have had the chance to work with a very multinational team. And I see how inspiring our bosses are because simply because of the diversity and the education and trust in the society they have grown thanks to the privilege of going to good schools and universities.
These universities teach trust and cohesion and teamwork. Somehow I felt that it is something to adore about the education system in good universities.
Coming back to Bangladesh which has a history of poor educational infrastructure where people do not learn the value of team-work and are constantly afraid to fail because of punishment. We have completely destroyed organizational trust. We have created a system of punishments. We are just trying to avoid punishments and not doing any inspired work.
We are at a crossroad, graduating from LDC. This is the perfect time to implement these culture of positivity and trust in our organizations to make them more effective.
Most organizations are very toxic and would require a massive change in attitude. The remains of the British colony didn't really do us good. We have learned to be slaves of fear and because of overpopulation and scarcity we felt that competitiveness meant we needed to put someone behind us and those who are behind us are the losers and need to be treated as such. Be it our co-workers. This severe lack of institutional motivation inside an organization because of politics because of the patron-client relationship(that exists in all relations in Bangladesh; you may want to read that up too) has led to the issue of a toxic culture in our workplaces.
Maybe it is time for an example: I worked in a very toxic environment a few years ago where our bosses actually shared private messages in order to make sure their subordinates and superiors can be blackmailed if such a case arises. And I am sure many of you have your own stories to share about that at least people who have worked in Bangladesh. At least that is the norm I am aware of.
This severe lack of trust is very bad for organizations
There are amazing people in Bangladesh doing good work with leadership trying to change the culture and make dreamers, creators among people. But my only real concern is are we at the end of the day teaching everyone trust? In a way, leaders must invoke creativity and creativity cannot come from a place of mistrust. We must trust our peers and try to help each other.
Something I learned all those years ago at the University of Washington in SUSI(Study in US universities). Where we came together and learned from various backgrounds and countries through intense exercise and challenges and teamwork learned to trust each other. We also learned about diversity and about creating a culture of learning and openness. I could go on and on how huge an impact in attitude that has led to.
It is a bare minimum for organizations to foster their employees and highlight them whenever possible. Inspire them into action. We should create better leaders in our offices and organizations and teach leadership skills in schools and universities. If we cannot change the culture of organizations at our country we have mediocre results at best. With better leaders to inspire we can harness the full potential of our population. To put it mildly, there is nothing bad that can come out of it.
