That employees trust those in charge of an enterprise is vitally important for three reasons.

Firstly, the more employees trust management, the more prepared they are to go above and beyond in pursuit of the organisation’s objectives. There is a cause-and-effect relationship, in other words, between trust in management and employee willingness.

Secondly, a precondition for sustainable organisational change is high trust in the relationship between leaders and the people they lead. When trust is high even radical change is doable. When trust is low – or worse, when there is distrust between the two parties – change is inordinately difficult if not impossible to effect.

Thirdly, trust in management increases trust between colleagues in general in the workplace. It fosters collaborative rather than competitive relationships. Because people are convinced that others have their best interests at heart, they put less energy into protecting their own interests. Instead of ‘politics’ and ‘silos’ they focus on furthering the bigger interests of the team. They not only deliver on their own responsibilities but deliberately set up others to succeed. In short, employees will go the extra mile, embrace change and put self-interest aside to the degree that they trust those who exercise authority over them.

Managers today, by and large, get a bad press. Not as bad as politicians perhaps but pretty unfavourable nonetheless. The adage that people don’t leave companies, they leave bosses, is held to be largely true and is backed up by long lists on the internet of managers’ faults and failings. In short the majority of managers are seen to be doing the manager job poorly – if not worse than that. As a consequence, while managers may have positional authority they lack the trust, willingness and loyalty of their people.

It cannot be denied that there are some demons in management – some narcissists, sexual predators, bullies and thieves. But they are in the minority. Most people in managerial positions are good people trying their best to do a difficult job as well as they can.

The reason why so many managers are perceived to be getting it wrong however is simply that they have genuinely misunderstood their job descriptions. They think that what they are here to do is achieve a result, a vision or an outcome through people. By definition managers don’t do the work themselves, they get the work done by others. Moreover what they are measured and rewarded for are the results they get out of their people.

To get the results achieved through others, managers use either compulsive or persuasive means – a ‘hard’ approach, a ‘soft’ approach or a combination of the two. Euphemistically we refer to these as ‘sticks’ and ‘carrots’.

Coercion and persuasion do work. There are many examples of dramatic improvements in productivity through the use of penalties and incentives.

Both strategies however get movement, not willingness. Employees will only ‘give’ if either the ‘stick’ or ‘carrot’ is present. In their absence they are inert.

In the fullness of time, both the ‘stick’ and the ‘carrot’ have inevitable consequences.

All forms of compulsion motivate through fear. People understandably feel that they are being forced, coerced, even bullied into doing things. They comply, but only in order to avoid the negative consequences for them of not doing so.

Coercive means engender resistance. They breed an attitude of ‘I will do exactly what you say and I hope it fails’. Eventually there is only apathy, there is no commitment to doing more than the minimum.

‘Carrots’, on the other hand, appeal to the greed in human beings. People make the desired response but only in order to get what they want. Contrary to popular belief, the ‘carrot’ often leads to a worse reaction than the ‘stick’. Those being persuaded or enticed are not fooled. They sense that they are being manipulated and they manipulate back or retaliate. This leads to hostility and conflict, rather than harmony, in the relationship between the two parties.

The solution to the problem is absolutely not to further hone managers’ skills in the deployment of ‘sticks’ and ‘carrots’ in order to somehow avert resistance and conflict in their relationship with their people. Rather it is for managers to understand one thing and to understand it fundamentally. This one thing is that they don’t need to do anything to motivate their people, be it ‘stick’ or ‘carrot’. What they need to do is become the kind of person that their people are motivated by.