Crying out for Trust

Trust has become a bit of recurring theme for me in the recent weeks. I think many people see trust as one of the 'nicer' things to have in business; it doesn't come into the arena of results and profits for most leaders.

One story springs to mind, I was having a conversation with a client (Bob) regarding a project I was working on with him and his team. My sense was there was a lack of trust between different members and I was trying to explain my reasoning. I was surprised with the reaction I received; "I don't really care if they trust me or not". At first I was taken back and lost for words; how on earth could we progress as a team if people didn't care about trusting each other? I asked Bob to say a bit more about what he meant by this statement. "I know I am trustworthy, I know I haven't done anything to make them mis-trust me, I can not influence how they see me and whether they trust me or not, we have to start delivering on our results".

I can understand where Bob is coming from, times are tough and he needs to make some tough decisions, and he can't hang around waiting for people to come round to his way of thinking… but I question the notion that he can deliver the results without working on the issues of trust.

Not only will people be more likely to make tough decisions; to find different ways of creating results for a business; to risk changing the way they had been doing things; when they both feel trusted and trust the leader,  there is also an argument that trust has an economic benefit. Steven Covey, in his book 'speed of trust', makes the argument that when there is an environment of trust, organisation results will be achieved quicker at less cost.

I think you have to care about trust to demonstrate it; you have to work at building trusting relationships with colleagues, customers, managers; you have to demonstrate trusting behaviours consistently; and you have to care enough about what the other person thinks to adapt your behaviour to build a trusting relationship…

I think trust is missing in our corporate world; I think it takes a courageous leader to proactively encourage an environment of trust.

And I think we're all crying out for it…