“Change can only move as fast as trust is built.” This was a statement I heard a couple of months ago at a local community event and it has stuck with me. Here’s why: We’ve talked for years about change needing to be managed, but change management isn’t what’s needed in businesses today.

What’s needed is more trust, and that is created by strong leaders who have a true belief in how much employee engagement and satisfaction matters. The trust that is needed within businesses to evolve at the pace today’s customers and technological innovation demands cannot be built by leaders who seek only to maximize efficiency, move at the fastest speed possible, or take shortcuts to success.

I mentioned in last week’s podcast recap of the Service Council Symposium that people were a major throughline of almost every session I attended at the event. There’s a shift underway, one that I believe began with Covid. Covid brought about a couple of really fundamental realizations – one was that there are alternative ways of working than what we’d previously deemed as “the” way. Another was the utter importance of our humanity.

The shift Covid began is being continued, even exacerbated by new generations entering the workplace that have different expectations than those that came before. Sacha Thomspon, Founder and CEO of the Equity Equation, who recently joined me for a conversation around psychological safety says, “We're now in a place where we have five generations in the workforce. The two youngest generations are looking for psychological safety as a norm; they have high expectations of inclusion and are quickly overtaking the older generations in the workforce. If you want your organization to be sustainable and to thrive, you need to be able to meet the needs of these generations.”

Some leaders may think that younger generations coming into the workplace with “high expectations” of any sort shows entitlement, but this is a very risky point of view. Other leaders not only understand but are finding ways to embrace these shifting tides. This includes getting creative about how to change the employee value proposition to attract younger talent but also focusing on nurturing strong leadership skills so that an environment of psychological safety is valued and practiced.

Here are a few examples of recent, related conversations worth listening to:

• An Inside Look at ACCO’s Strategic Big Bets to Win the Talent War
• How Multivac Cut Technician Turnover in Half
• How Lean Methodology is Guiding Service Transformation at Diebold Nixdorf

Service Innovation Requires Engaged Employees; Engaged Employees Require Trust

As you listen to these stories, you’ll see that there are some common themes despite the leaders being from different industries and having different approaches. They are all open minded and are embracing the current landscape, rather than bemoaning what’s changed or pining for “simpler times.” They all deeply understand the importance of people in executing their company’s service vision and delivering customer experience, and they realize treating people well is crucial.

When we think about the role trust plays not only in employee engagement but in an organization’s overall resilience based on its ability to continually evolve, we need to start simple. Trust is built and protected by things like:

• Leaders who invest time in 1-1s (and companies that invest in leadership training and development)
• Having a voice and feeling your opinion is valued
• Honest, authentic communication
• Understanding how one’s role matters to the organization’s overall purpose
• Being treated as a human versus an asset
• Feeling respected and adequately rewarded and recognized for contributions

As you read these bullet points, you may think – yeah, of course! But these simple things often aren’t executed well, consistently, or at all. This happens for a variety of reasons, including “leaders” who have been promoted because they were strong individual contributors but who lack leadership skills. Company cultures that make it challenging for leaders to invest in their teams in the ways needed because they’re hyper-focused on short-term outcomes. Environments that aren’t inclusive where certain employees may be treated differently than others. And so on.

When leaders aren’t executing the above well, you can see why change management will never be enough – it brings a process focus that will only be effective if the far-more-important people focus is already in place and effective. To win in today’s landscape, and certainly in the years to come, companies must focus more on the importance of leadership and leaders must focus more on the importance of trust.