The Trust Issue

The Paine of Measurement

 

 

Professor Brad Rawlins is my friend and one of the world's most knowledgeable people on measuring trust and transparency. A month or so ago he gave me Stephen M. R. Covey's book The Speed of Trust (see my review here). Little did he know how much of an impact he was about to have on my life and my business.

I've always been what Jane Austen might have called "a trusting soul," far more inclined to trust than mistrust. My friends wouldn't be as kind. They are constantly looking out for me, fearing that I am trusting people I shouldn't be. They're probably right about 40% of the time.

But, for that other 60% of the time, I'm inclined to agree with Covey: If you give trust, you get trustworthy behavior in return. If your behavior is trustworthy, people will reward you with their trust. It's a closed loop, and, in my experience, only occasionally violated. After 56 years on the planet, my ratio of delight to disappointment in my fellow man is pretty damn strong.

The rewards for trusting are just as true for organizational relationships as they are for personal relationships. Organizations that trust their employees and that demonstrate that trust are more likely to be rewarded with trust on the part of their employees. Which means that when their employer talks, they listen and they believe. They don't immediately go online and try to find out what "the real story" is.

Now consider all those organizations that are telling employees not to blog and not to participate in social networks. Organizations that are essentially "pulling an ostrich" and avoiding the revolution taking place in media and communications. By doing so they are telling their employees that they don't trust them. Which means they don't have faith in their employees. And it also implies that they don't have faith in their own ability to hire and train employees. Which may be the bigger problem.

The core of Covey's philosophy is that trust begins with "Self-Trust," i.e., the degree to which you are true to yourself and the promises that you make to yourself. And an organization that doesn't have faith in itself will need layers of systems and processes to check up on employees and to micromanage their behavior. As a consumer, when I am faced with such a company, I have to ask: If you don't have faith in your own systems and processes and operations, how can you ask me to have faith in them? -- KDP