Lynda Gratton is Professor of Management Practice at London Business School, where she leads over 50 global companies in the Future of Work Consortium. She has been praised by the Economist, hailed by the Times, and lauded by the Financial Times.  She certainly tones up our joint neighbourhood of Primrose Hill.

Drivers of the Dark Future

Gratton outlines five forces that will shape the future pattern of work:

• Technology (think 5 billion people, digitized knowledge, ubiquitous cloud).
• Globalisation (think continued bubbles and crashes, a regional underclass, the world becoming urban, frugal innovation).
• Longevity and demography (think Gen Y, increasing longevity, aging boomers growing old poor, global migration).
• Society (think growing distrust of institutions, the decline of happiness, rearranged families)
• Energy resources (think rising energy prices, environmental catastrophes displacing people, a culture of sustainability emerging).

There are good sides of all the above as well; but let’s stay on the dark side of  work for a bit. Think increasing fragmentation (a three minute world, dominated by overload and time compression), isolation (the genesis of loneliness) and exclusion (the new poor). (Remember A Clockwork Orange, anyone?)

Bring In the Light

But she also holds up the bright possibility of a crafted future – co-creation (where people across the world are ever more willing and able to link up and share ideas and energy), social engagement (the rise of empathy and balance) and micro-entrepreneurship (crafting creative lives).

If we are to reach the bright possibilities of this crafted future, we need to bring about three shifts:

1. From shallow generalist (knows a little about a lot) to serial master (has in-depth knowledge and competences in many domains).

To get here, three career paths will be of particular importance – grassroots advocacy, social entrepreneurship, and micro-entrepreneurship.

Future career trajectories will be defined by a series of bell-shaped curves in which energy and the accumulation of resources grow and then plateau, only to grow again. She urges us to ‘slide and morph’ transferring knowledge and skills from one specialism to another.

2. From isolated competitor to innovative connector.

‘One of the marvellous opportunities of the coming decades of work will be to build our social capital in a way that was never possible in the past. With 5 billion people connected to each other in an increasingly participative way, the possibilities are endless.’

Gratton sees three key future network-types:

• The posse; the small group of people we use as a sounding board, people we call on quickly for a tough call to make, a really challenging problem to be solve or a complex task to get underway.
• The big ideas crowd; the group of hundreds, often friends of friends, ready to make a connection, support our innovation.
• The regenerative community; ‘the real people whom we meet frequently, with whom we laugh, share a meal, tell stories and relax’, crucial to our emotional well-being, and our protection against the possible isolation and loneliness of the dark side.

How can we best build these networks? Mainly by our capacity to build reciprocity and trust, deep mutual understanding and ways to attract other people to us.

3. From voracious consumer to impassioned producer.

The trend toward seeing work as a place of productive experiences rather than simply an activity that has pay as its key driver of motivation.

Work for Whom?

Cui bono? Gratton invites three groups in particular to consider the implications of these three shifts:

1. Children. ‘What will you do with your long, productive lives?…Your life will not simply have education at the beginning, with work in the middle and retirement at the end. Instead, you can expect to experience a mosaic that has education and development woven through it….Much of your work will be spent working with people virtually, and so one of the challenges  you face is how to create deep friendships with a small group of people in a sustainable way.’

2. Business leaders. ‘Globalisation will add new markets and intensify competition; work hierarchies will morph into more organic forms; talented  employees will want adult-adult mutual relationships; people will place greater emphasis on meaningful developmental work in a mosaic that has sabbaticals; and throughout it all, sources of competitive advantage will derive from the capacity to build co-operative relationships across various eco-systems.’

3. Government leaders. ‘ Governments’ willingness to support high-quality educational and cultural institutions will play a key role in attracting people with high value skills who will increasingly choose to cluster near each other….While ever more prevalent transparency and sharing of information will only serve to exacerbate the current decrease in citizens’ trust in institutions….. Gen Z’s will want to work into their 70’s and 80’s, and it will be a priority for government s to find ways to support these aspirations.’

If Professor Gratton is right, it’s clear that empathy, reciprocity and trust will figure significantly in both personal and organisational successes of the future.  But tellingly, these are currently under-developed capabilities.

It is those traits—empathy, reciprocity, trust—which probably hold the key to which side of Professor Gratton’s predictions for the future of work will take hold—the Dark Side, or our better angels.

This post was written by Julian Powe
Julian Powe is a Trusted Advisor Associates LLC consultant based in London. An experienced change management consultant and former partner in a major firm, he focuses on Trusted Advisor relationship and Trust-based Selling programs with Trusted Advisor Associates.

At the other end of the age spectrum, a Chief Operating Officer said to me last week that senior leadership relationships in his organization were improving through an increased readiness to approach colleagues with the simple request, ‘I need some help. Please do me a favour.’ It had not been easy to start to do this, he pointed out, because it had implied a declaration of vulnerability but the results were making it most worthwhile.

As leaders strive to build the agile, trust-based cultures that fuel the quality conversations – strategic, creative, curious, experimental – needed to generate breakthrough ideas and breakthrough execution, I notice them using more and more the language and approaches of ‘help.’ Are you noticing this too?

Thinking About Helping

If so, we might turn to Ed Schein’s 2009 book Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help. Schein suggests ‘what we think of as effective teamwork, collaboration and co-operation can all be understood best as consistent effective mutual helping.’ He defines teamwork as ‘a state of multiple reciprocal helping relationships including all members of the group that have to work together. Building a team therefore is not just creating one client/helper relationship but simultaneously building one among all the members.’

Schein points out the many challenges involved in giving and receiving help. As receivers of help, we can often feel diminished or ‘one down’ when offered help. As givers of help, we must consciously pause and turn away from what seems to be most pressing at the time in what are often very busy, hectic lives.

Principles of Helping

Three principles and tips stand out from Schein’s advice to leaders:

1. Task interdependence is the foundation of strong mutual helping relationships. Maia of the Easter egg hunt understood perfectly that she and her little friend had better chances working together than did others searching on their own. Similarly, a VP of Sales and a VP of Operations in an IT Services company have formed a very strong ‘helping’ relationship around the challenging task of entering a new market. Schein argues that, without these mutually important tasks, it is very difficult to form strong ‘helping’ relationships. He zeroes in on the importance of solicited, specific, descriptive and goal-related feedback–enabling colleagues to become more helpful.
2. The strongest helping relationships occur when both giver and receiver are ready, and the relationship is equitable. He urges the giver of help to check whether the person she wants to help is ready and able to receive it; and the receiver to give regular feedback on what is and is not helpful—in particular, being clear when help is no longer required.
3. Effective helping starts with pure inquiry, a strong effort to understand and empathise with the needs of the person requiring help. No matter how clear the request for help, he urges us to pause and reflect, truly to listen, and to challenge our own assumptions. This is particularly important at the beginning of a helping relationship because it enhances the status of the one being helped, and maximises the information available to the helper.

The Trust Equation and Helping

The Trust Equation supplements Schein’s notions as a strong frame for effective helping relationships. To be truly helpful to you, I focus on your needs, not mine (low Self-orientation); you are safe raising any issue you wish with me, and I will engage with you at both emotional and rational levels (high Intimacy); when you ask for advice, I will be clear and truthful (high Credibility); and you can rely on me to be available to you when needed (high Reliability).

I recently saw one CEO commit to his organization to:

1. Encourage open feedback across my leadership team about the pursuit of the team’s collective and individual goals. Above all, cultivate a readiness in the team to say ‘I am not sure’, ‘I need some thoughts on this one’, ‘This is not quite going as we would wish it to.’
2. Adopt an even more inquiring approach with my colleagues, really listening in order to understand their needs for help, and challenging my own assumptions about what I think they need.
3. Check in regularly on what help is needed and how this is changing.
4. Invite help myself, showing my own vulnerability as a result. Acknowledge my own deficit of understanding and knowledge in numerous matters.

He will help his organization and his organization will help him. Just like the Maia egg-hunting partnership.

This post was written by Julian Powe
Julian Powe is a Trusted Advisor Associates LLC consultant based in London. An experienced change management consultant and former partner in a major firm, he focuses on Trusted Advisor relationship and Trust-based Selling programs with Trusted Advisor Associates.

“To start with, it actually helped that they were British. We listen to the accent and think that they are just more intelligent than us! But their reputation has badly suffered. They have lost a great deal of public trust. After all, this is not the first time that BP has had serious safety and environmental problems in North America.”

As a Brit who loves America, I recognize the piece about Americans going all mushy (you would say ‘gaga,’ yes?) about the old British accent!  But this is not to diminish the seriousness of the situation in the Gulf of Mexico and the horrific consequences for the environment, the livelihood of many thousands of people, and the future of the oil industry. The thick clouds of the Gulf disaster will need to carry a very strong silver lining in terms of improved environmental consciousness to mitigate such negative consequences. And no doubt the British accent is now beginning to grate.

The Labor Secretary struck a chord in linking the notions of trust and reputation. I’ve seen both arising in recent discussions with organisations, and it raises a Big Question:

Are trust and reputation the same things? Does one drive the other? And if not, just what is the relationship between the two?

Trust and Reputation

We know that reputations are hard won. They are valuable assets for organisations and individuals. Good will is a major component of corporate balance sheets. And reputations are built for certain characteristics: Helen Mirren for brilliant acting (and a classy British accent!);Tesco for execution; 3M for innovation; Obama for rhetoric, and so forth.

Sometimes those reputations are for being trustworthy, but they are generally for a whole range of characteristics other than trust. We would argue that the role of trust is in the nurturing and sustaining of a strong reputation; this nurturance is essentially a trust-building process.

Observe when reputations suffer and are lost, a painful process caught by Shakespeare in the words of Othello:

“The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation; that away, men are gilded roam or potted clay.”

As reputations wane, so does trust. As Robert Reich stated above, a loss of public trust in BP comes with their tarnished reputation for safety and environmental protection. The UK has recently seen reduced trust in politicians as their reputation for probity has suffered in the recent expenses scandal. Candidates for the leadership of the UK Labour Party are now saying that the Iraq decision led to an unraveling of trust as the Labour Party’s reputation for principled decision-making suffered.

(We could even go back to the writings of Edmund Burke who, in the early 1770’s, argued that the growing abuse of power in the American colonies by King George and his ministers was leading to a collapse of trust!)

In other words: organisations and individuals earn and retain our trust in their reputations.  Without this trust, those reputations fall away. As child is father to the man, trust begets reputation; and the loss of trust drags the latter down with it as well.

A Principled Approach to Trust and Reputation

For me, it is to the Four Trust Principles that we should turn to guide the process for building and sustaining trust in a reputation:

1.    Focus first on the customer.

Last winter, I had problems in a cold snap with my car brakes. I booked the car into a local garage and set out on a snowy, icy morning, only to slither to a helpless halt on the first corner. Most other drivers ignored me. Some hooted, others shouted out unintelligible advice, while I sat there immobile.

A large van stopped.  A group of young men who spoke no English and an older guy who spoke some all jumped out, took a look, and dove under the car with hammers to free up my frozen brakes. In minutes, the car was fixed.

I looked on incredulous. “We used to see this every winter morning in Poland,” the man said. I asked where they were working and went to have a chat with them later in the day. I found they were builders. I inquired about them; all reports were of outstanding care and attention, so it was easy for me to put them on the tender list recently for some big building work at our house. They won the competition hands down, and we are delighted with the service they are giving us.

Every single encounter we have with them—beginning with the first, when they had no idea we might be possible customers–reinforces our trust and confidence in their reputation for outstanding domestic building work. They sold by doing, demonstrating both reliability and a focus on the customer as a principled part of their behavior.

2.     Transparency.

When working for a large consultancy a few years ago, we hit a critical moment in negotiating the potential terms for a significant deal for a global client. This would involve a very different pricing model for us. Very radically for us, we opened our books to the client (this took quite some persuasion of our leadership team!) and established a shared understanding that led to a mutually beneficial deal.

Our striking transparency strengthened our growing reputation for straight talking, client-centered consulting.

3.     Long term perspective.

A colleague of mine has been working for a global organisation for some time. A couple of years ago he was asked to do something that he could have done but not quite to the quality his client was used to. He also knew others who could do the job better than he. So he introduced them in his place. He has since carried out a number of other assignments for the same client.

By taking a long-term perspective, his client trusted even more his hard won reputation for doing, above all, what was in the right interests of the client. By taking what appeared to be a short-term risk, he actually reduced risk by focusing on the longer term.

4.    Collaboration.

One conclusion about the recent financial services crisis is that some of the banks became too focused on the interests of a narrow group of stakeholders in their pursuit of profit, losing sight of their previous client-based model of which collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders was a key ingredient. They thereby lost our trust in their espoused reputation for looking after the interests of all their customers, many of whom will suffer for a number of years from Governments’ fiscal adjustments.

This need for intense collaboration – with regulators, customers, suppliers, politicians, environmentalists, shareholders and local people – also defines the trust-building process that BP need to mount now to salvage their reputation. As Peter Firestein elegantly argues, it is aggressive, proactive engagement that is needed after a reputational slip.

“There is a short list of companies who have come out of disasters with stronger reputations than they had before. In all cases, they did so because they were able to identify with those who were angry with them. They actively participated in the aftermath to the disaster.”

Reputation and Trust: The Linkage

Reputation and trust are close relatives–but are not one and the same. Organisations and individuals have reputations for a whole range of characteristics other than trust.

The role of trust lies in the process by which organisations and individuals build and sustain confidence in those reputations. By focusing on the Four Trust Principles of putting the customer first, transparency, a long-term perspective and collaboration, reputation-building becomes a practicable endeavor.

With all good wishes for your reputation enhancing work!

This post was written by Julian Powe
Julian Powe is a Trusted Advisor Associates LLC consultant based in London. An experienced change management consultant and former partner in a major firm, he focuses on Trusted Advisor relationship and Trust-based Selling programs with Trusted Advisor Associates.