Managing trust

Top executives from several international companies sat down for dinner in Warsaw last week to discuss management in a cross-cultural environment, and found that adept team-building can go a long way towards engendering a culture of trust in a company.

The participants agreed that trust can greatly improve efficiency. When employers trust employees it becomes less necessary to monitor them. "A high level of trust speeds up operations, reduces costs and people's energy increases," said the event's moderator, Anitta Koskio, CEO of Expat House.

Of course, building a culture of trust is easier said than done. "A management-by-trust strategy is is the highest risk [strategy] of the various options available to management," said Witold Radwański, president of private equity firm Krokus. "Building trust is a long-term strategy. The faster you introduce trust, the bigger the risk," he added.

In order to reduce that risk, it's necessary to build a team of people share the same values, the executives agreed. "When you trust, someone is taking responsibility - and that's where team values come into play," said Harry Schur, CEO of RWE Stoen.

But Hans Köppen, managing director of Investkredit Bank's office in Poland, suggested that trust might not always be necessary. "If we look at a team as if it's a pirate ship, we can see that there is little trust or loyalty needed. Everybody is in it for their own profit, and as long as that profit keeps coming, everybody is working towards the same goal."

But the participants came to the conclusion that such a system can only last so long. When times get tough, trust may be the only way to keep a business running well. Evan Klintner, managing director of the Polish branch of packaging firm Tetra Pak, said the responsibility for that lies with the manager.

"If the boss cannot create common values, then you have no chance," he said.