5 Steps to Transforming Organizational Change into Trusting Relationships Columbus, GA Tuesday, February 22, 2011 Lack of Trust in Organizations offers some of the leading indicators of low morale, motivation, productivity, and performance. Many businesses are becoming stagnated and less effective.

Dr. Jakes identifies 5 Steps to Transforming Organizational Change into Trusting Relationships.

1. Create a Shared Vision

2. Promote Participation in Change

3. Communicate the Change Strategically

4. Cross Train, Coach, and Mentor

5. Implementation and Measurement

Why is participation considered such an effective way for building trust and lessening resistance to change? According to Dr. Jakes, employee's buy into change initiatives when the objectives of the organization are developed with their feedback, thus creating the shared vision.

What roles does leadership play in developing trust? Executives need to communicate and align the mission, better to their Senior Management, Middle Level Managers, Supervisors, Team Leads, and Individual Contributors. This can be accomplished through meeting more frequently and providing weekly updates on the project objectives, goals, and milestones.

Each employee should be cross trained, coached, and mentored throughout the organization on performance improvement, quality and resource allocation. Lastly, link organizational change implementation to organizational performance. Once all changes are finalized complete a post mortem change metrics update to communicate all successes or failures to all stakeholders in the transformation.