ABILITY TO TRUST-THE CORNERSTONE OF CONNECTION

Some executives give lip service to the importance of trust but fail to see a direct connection between their own behavior and the amount of trust people have in their organization. The impact of corporate executives' inability to build trust goes far beyond their immediate employees. The stock market slide of 2001-2002 was, to a large degree, due to the lack of investor confidence in accounting and financial reporting practices. Investors didn't trust the numbers being produced by CFOs, who they felt were misrepresenting the economic health of their companies.

But not trusting the numbers really means not trusting the people behind the numbers. This mistrust of business leaders translates directly to investor reluctance to invest, which then denies businesses access to the capital they need to grow, which then hurts their employees and the overall economy. It's a vicious cycle in which everyone loses.

Trust Building Is Not a Passive Activity

A direct correlation exists between how employees view their company and how customers and stockholders view it. Once leaders have lost the confidence of employees, that negative energy has a measurable impact on the messages employees—and especially frontline employees—deliver to customers, the community at large, and stockholders. Executives must take an active role in leading the discussion about trust in their organization. This dialogue is not something to be left to Human Resources or Public Relations. And it has to be more than platitudes on a wall.

Trust is a broad term that encompasses many emotions and has many definitions. Leaders first have to know what their employees mean when they talk about trust. Are they referring to the executives' ability to manage the business, or their ability to be candid about the state of the company? While related, these questions stem from two very different aspects of trust.

Task and Relationship Elements of Trust

Building trust has two components: task and relationship. The task component of trust is about believing that others will do what is expected of them. When we question whether someone can complete a project on time or has the skills to reach a goal, this concern reveals unease about the task component of trust. We have identified five competencies that help to build task-related trust:

• Staying committed to agreements

• Possessing the required skills

• Achieving consistent output

• Making contributions

• Collaborating on projects

The relationship component of trust is about believing that others want a safe and supportive relationship with you. When we don't believe someone will be candid with us or show compassion toward us, this apprehension reveals a weakness in the relationship component. The five elements of trust for the relationship component are

• Staying committed to the partnership

• Showing the ability to be candid

• Being willing to communicate

• Showing compassion

• Demonstrating personal credibility and integrity

Understanding these components of trust will help you create a foundation for discussing what trust means to your organization.

Establishing a First Line of Defense

Defining trust is always the first step. Once you've defined what trust means to your organization, you can go about establishing a first line of defense against mistrust. First, identify specific behaviors that either support or diminish trust in the company. For example, for the task component of trust you might determine that completing projects on time is a trust-building behavior. While this seems obvious, many people do not make the connection that delivering projects late destroys trust among people. In fact, in some businesses, project deadlines are falsely inflated to compensate for late deliverables. This practice is not only costly, but can also hurt your business's reputation.

For the relationship component of trust, you might find that candid communication is vital. For example, you might discover that you build trust every time you don't put spin on bad news. People typically see through spin anyway, which puts a double hit on your credibility.

Making Trust an Important Organizational Measurement

You can measure trust just like you measure product quality or customer service excellence. Remember the old saying: People do what they are measured to do. It's true! If you don't measure trust, you risk sending the message that trust is not important to you. Trust is simple to measure—just ask. An anonymous survey will reveal whether trust is being built or eroded in your organization. Communicate the survey results to your organization and track trust regularly. When you see the amount of trust backsliding, ask why. Also check yourself to make sure you really want to hear the truth. Such an occasion might be a good time to review your self-disclosure and feedback skills.

A trust indicator can let you know in advance if something is weakening trust in your business. The sooner you know, the quicker you can address it. This tracking of trust is a small investment in maintaining morale, keeping information lines open, and maintaining your good reputation in the marketplace. You'll see the benefits in employee productivity, customer satisfaction, and, yes, stock-holder confidence. How much is that worth to you?

The Fallout from Enron: It's a Matter of Trust

The collapse of Enron and other companies has been having ripple effects throughout corporations across the country. In companies large and small, employees have begun to harbor serious doubts about the integrity of their leaders and about whether their own financial future is protected. If these doubts are allowed to grow and fester, two things will happen:

• Communication will shut down. When employees feel betrayed, they stop talking to their managers. This clamming up can have a negative effect on an organization, because when employees stop giving their feedback, ideas stop flowing as well.

• Creativity will cease. When people don't feel trust, they stop taking risks. Without risk taking, creativity doesn't happen. The impact on an organization can be crippling. That's because in an information and connection economy, the ability to use information creatively is the key to organizational success— and to satisfying customers.

A Two-Way Conversation

You can head off such problems—or repair these problems if they already exist—by talking about trust with your employees. Unfortunately, most organizations don't discuss trust issues, or if they do, it's usually about what the employees should do to ensure the company's trust. What companies frequently fail to understand is that trust is a two-way conversation. Yes, you must have trust in your employees, but it's also true that your employees must have trust in you.

Examining Your Ability to Trust

People tend to approach trust from one of three perspectives. Some people give trust freely until someone else breaks it, in which case they will no longer trust that person. Others withhold trust from the start until the other person earns it over time by demonstrating "trustworthiness" by her or his actions. Still others take a short-term view of trust; on every interaction they "wait and see" what the other person is going to do. None of these three perspectives on trust is inherently right or wrong; each is simply a different approach to building trust. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, however, if your preferred approach is to withhold trust until it's earned by another person, it's crucial that you communicate your perspective on trust to any prospective partner. Otherwise, your partner may think that you will never trust her or him, and this misperception will surely trigger relationship problems that may be difficult to overcome. How do you know how you approach trust?

Exercise 2 is designed to help you and your team better understand the team's various perspectives on the ability to trust. After you and your team members have completed the first part of the exercise, take time to facilitate a discussion of trust among the team. Who gives trust freely? Who withholds trust? Who prefers to wait and see? Does one style govern the team? Next, we suggest that you lead a discussion of how vital trust is to the team's success both in accomplishing its assigned tasks and in building partnerships among the team members. What's the likely impact on customers if mistrust dominates the team? How might mistrust affect the ability of the team to get projects done at spec, safely, on time, and on budget? Once the members of the team feel that they better understand how trust affects what they do every day, ask team members how the team as a whole is doing in building trust with other teams inside the organization. With which other departments is your team having the most difficulty building and maintaining trust? Step by step, you and your team must widen the circle of trust. To what degree do your vendor and suppliers trust your team? Do your customers trust the products and services you deliver to them? In whichever relationship you and your team determine that the team has work to do to build trust, put together an action plan for doing so. "What can I do?" you ask. We thought you'd never ask.

EXERCISE 2: Team Trust Exercise

Directions:

1. Distribute the following statements to your team and schedule a meeting to share your responses. The desired outcome of this exercise is a shared understanding of what trust looks like to each of you.

   • My ability to trust is (circle one)    High     Medium      Low

   • My beliefs about giving trust are ___________________

   • My beliefs about people are ______________________

   • I trust people when _________________________

   • What my partner has to know about my ability to trust is __________________________________________________________________________

2. Have each member take a turn sharing his or her response to the first statement. If you'd like, have someone write members' answers on a flip-chart.

3. After everyone has responded to the first statement, debrief the group by asking, "When it comes to trust, what does this mean for our team?" Have a brief discussion and get team consensus. You may want to write the agreements on the flip-chart for future reference.

4. Repeat this process until you have responded to all five statements. This exercise will prepare you for any situation that involves trust with this team in the future.

What You Can Do to Build Trust

Here, in brief, are four smart partnering steps that can help you to establish trust within your organization:

• Acknowledge that trust is important to your company. You—and other company leaders—must be comfortable talking about the issue. You must be able to say to your employees, "It's just as important for you to trust us as it is for us to trust you."

• Gather feedback about trust from your employees. Ask your employees to tell you what a trusting work environment looks like to them. Then ask them for ideas on how to build trust in their workplace.

• Let your employees know what you're doing with their feedback. Tell them what specific trust-building actions you have decided to take. You can communicate this information in a variety of ways—through an employee newsletter or e-mail, for example, or a companywide broadcast. The important thing is that you close the communication loop and report back to your employees.

• Make trust a measurable component of success. You need to know whether the steps you take are actually building trust within your organization. Measuring trust is not as difficult as you might think. You can do it with periodic questionnaires, for example. The key is to keep the conversation going. Address your employees' trust concerns honestly and openly, and listen to their ideas. Remember: You are in a partnership with your employees. Your goal is for them to have as much trust in you as you have in them.