The chief executive view on trust in the workplace

Working in a design and advertising agency means dealing with unrealistic deadlines, demanding clients and cutting-edge media projects.

‘We work in the kind of industry where you really have to thrive on that kind of pressure, and where you have to be able to trust everyone along the line to be able to deliver,’ says Ben Hart, chief executive of the Glass Partnership. ‘That applies to the techies in particular, because they’re the people delivering the infrastructure on which everything else sits.’

Hart has worked with his chief technology officer (CTO), Paul Aquilina, for seven years. For the most part, Hart does not get involved in routine IT operations, leaving that in the hands of his CTO. This requires a lot of trust, but Hart says he trusts Aquilina completely. Past performance has been based on trust, but also on awareness of Aquilina’s personality. ‘I know he has a real passion for this, and interest in seeing it work well,’ says Hart.

Another thing that encourages Hart to trust his IT department is that he knows from experience that Aquilina has extremely high standards. ‘I know that nothing will be delivered to me until it has passed Paul’s standards,’ says Hart. ‘All of his team are fully aware of where the lines are drawn, and what kind of quality he demands.’

Trusting your IT executive is not easy when servers crash or client web sites are not simple, but Hart says he would trust Aquilina in that situation.

‘I’ve worked in TV companies before where things go wrong and people are running round panicking, the phones are going, but people are too scared to answer them,’ he says.

‘Paul is completely the opposite of that. When things go wrong, he’s the voice of calm. He never panics, he just goes about his day and fixes things.’

Hart says that Aquilina also understands when to share information and when to keep his counsel. ‘Paul knows that I don’t want or have time for complicated, long explanations. It’s about telling me what I need to know, when I need to know it.’

But it is not solely up to Aquilina to build trust in the relationship. ‘Absolutely, I have a role to play,’ says Hart. ‘I have to build a culture that filters through the organisation so people know they can come to me and talk about things, that my door is open.’