The Trust Organisation
Posted on May 21, 2012 by Chris Dixon, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
The Art of Building Trust and How it Impacts Businesses
“Without authenticity you can never develop trust. Without trust, you will never develop people. Without people you will never develop a following. And without followers, you have no one to lead.”
With this mantra I ended my last article questioning whether authentic leadership is fad or salvation. The article contained an ingredient for success – success in your career, private life and relationships with people in general. I guess you already figured out what that ingredient was…. Trust.
The Concept of Trust
A little girl and her father were crossing a bridge. The father was kind of scared so he asked his little daughter: “Sweetheart, please hold my hand so that you don’t fall into the river.”
The little girl said: “No, Dad. You hold my hand.” “What’s the difference?” Asked the puzzled father. ”There’s a big difference,” replied the little girl. “If I hold your hand and something happens to me, chances are that I may let your hand go. But if you hold my hand, I know for sure that no matter what happens, you will never let my hand go.”
In any relationship, the essence of trust is not in its bind, but in its bond. You can train people to think quality, to think service – but then there’s the delivery: are the results coming from a place of truly believing in a commitment to quality or service and that they are giving their best, or are they simply going through the motions? We have all been served by those that have been trained in what to say, however, when we experience what they say as truly felt – then we trust the intent and it creates a bond where we want to do business.
The concept of trust as such is simple: build on individual confidence and eliminate fear as an operating principle.
Talking About Trust – Why so?
“Collaboration is important on the battlefield and trust is the cement of collaboration. And trust is the prerequisite for creativity. You will never be creative if you think that what you have to say will be discounted. So creativity cannot happen without trust, communication cannot happen without trust, and collaboration cannot happen without trust. It is the essential driver. And that is why you build authority now from the bottom up and not the top down.” (General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and America’s top military officer | adopted from “That used to be us” by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum)
Trust forms the foundation for effective communication, employee retention and motivation, and the contribution of that additional energy that people voluntarily invest in work. When trust exists in an organization goals and objectives are easier and more comfortable to achieve. Research by Duane C. Tway shows that trust is the basis for the environment you want to create in your workplace as it is the necessary prerequisite for:
• feeling able to rely upon a person,
• cooperating with and experiencing teamwork with a group,
• taking thoughtful risks, and
• experiencing believable communication.
The Four Elements of Trust
There are four key elements of trust that you need to pay attention to, to build or restore trust: Reliability, Acceptance, Connection and Believability.
• The first element of trust is reliability. People you interact with want to know if you will do what you say you will do! It is pretty hard to have confidence in a person who makes promises that they don’t keep.
• The second element is about accepting people for who they are – young or old, the most intelligent or the most hardworking, the not so intelligent, tall or short, male or female, etc. There is a difference between accepting a person and accepting their behaviour. Most people genuinely do the best they can in the situation in which they find themselves. Are you accepting people for who they are or judging them?
• The third element of trust is connection. People tend to want to collaborate best with people who are straight with them; trust is more than smooth patter. Connection is about demonstrating empathy for others. It means focusing on people and recognising their needs, balanced with the ability to share what is appropriate about the organization and yourself, creating a sense of connection with an ‘authentic’ person.
• The fourth and final element of trust is believability – acting congruently – that what you say is on track with what you do. Believability sounds the same as reliability, but there is a difference. Reliability means following up and seeing through the commitments you make. Believability means saying and doing what you believe in, being straightforward and honest. People wont trust you if they are not sure they are getting the truth from you.
Trust is the basis for an employee’s drive to contribute. The team that competently manages its members’ desire to contribute is already building trust. This involves an improved understanding of ourselves. We can ask ourselves how we measure up against the above four elements and learn how to communicate with intent in order to move towards a performance culture based on trust.
