Trust….what does the word mean to you and how does it influence your business and personal life?
All relationships, whether interacting with a partner, co-worker, vendor, or family member rely on trust and will grow because of it, or falter due to a lack of it. As leaders, it’s important to earn and to give trust. Many people work hard to make sure they can be trusted, reliable and someone others can count on. For some, trust is given freely and blindly, until it’s broken. If that happens, they suddenly do an about-face and stop trusting. For others, they start from a place of distrust and work their way to trust over time.
In his book, The Speed of Trust Steven Covey says that trust is a function of two things: character and competence.
Character is one’s integrity, intent, and motives. Competence is one’s skills, knowledge, track record, and results.
Both are needed to create and maintain trusted relationships. Covey attributes 4 core principles to building trust – both with ourselves (self-trust) as well as with others. The first two principles have to do with character and the latter two with competence.
Integrity
Do we say and do what we said we were going to do? Do we stick to our core values? Do we have integrity with ourselves? Are our morals and ethics aligned with our core?
Intent
What are our motives? Do we work towards a win-win outcome with ourselves, with our employees and vendors, with our family and friends?
Capability
Do we know how to do what we said we were going to do? Do we have the qualities needed to inspire confidence? Are our skills, attitude, and knowledge aligned so we can grow and establish trust as leaders in our company, family, and community?
Results
This is all about getting things done – our performance and track record. If we don’t deliver on our promises, or never do what we say we are going to do, we lose trust.
The next time a situation arises where you get a distrusting feeling about someone or a situation, ask yourself whether it’s a matter of their character or competence?
If it’s a matter of competence, you can ask for data, for certifications, ROI, KPI, you can run assessments. From an on-going leadership and training perspective, it’s important to ask if someone has been given the proper training and onboarding to do their job well. Also, it’s good to make certain our expectations are clear, so they can do what is asked and expected.
If it’s a matter of character, you can check references, and conduct background checks. Julio Olalla of the Newfield Network speaks about the importance of not assuming all breaches of trust are betrayals—be able to distinguish between sincerity, competence, and reliability.
The first step in building trusted relationships is to lead by example, be authentic, vulnerable, and learn to trust. At Artisan Creative, building trusted relationships is one of our central core values. We look forward to connecting with you to build a new relationship.
We hope you’ve enjoyed the 519th issue of the a.blog.