Akram Boutros and Claire
Joseph mention that “the root cause of most
failed personal and business relationships is the inability to build, maintain
and recover trust. A cohesive team working in an environment of reciprocal
trust is paramount to success during times of extreme change. When people trust
their leaders, they willingly get on board with a strategy, thereby harnessing
tremendous speed and agility to help navigate times of great change,” (p.38).
They go on to remind us that trust is a product of choice:
one chooses to entrust another with something important. Trust is visceral and
is reinforced by shared experiences over time, kept promises and understanding
of the motives underlying sacrifices. We must not confuse trust with
credibility. Credibility is an intellectual attribute that is based on past
performance.
Yet in the business arena is ‘trust’ a subject that is
spoken about openly or is it simply assumed that people do or don’t trust each
other – having a macro impact of the culture of the organisation. I mean, has
any one ever asked you in your organisation; ‘do you trust me?’ and if they
did, what would your answer be.
Robert Solomon and Fernando Flores, in their seminal book Building Trust in Business, Politics, Relationships
and Life, advance the concept that “distrust is not so much the
opposite, as it is the other side of trust. They go on to differentiate basic,
simple, blind, and conditional trust from “authentic trust.” Where authentic
trust contemplates distrust and moves beyond it, sometimes in a steady march
and at other times through leaps of faith.
Patrick Lencioni, in Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A
Leadership Fable states that in his opinion trust is the basis of the remaining
four attributes of effective teams (engagement, commitment, accountability and
focus). Trust leads to engagement, which he defines as “the productive
ideological conflict that has as its only purpose the attainment of the best
possible solutions in the shortest possible time.”
What’s genuine about authentic trust is that it has a
built-in reservoir that tolerates mistakes and setbacks without diminution of
trust. Consequently, authentic trust will bounce back of its own accord, making
it a precious insurance policy against loss of trust.
Yet how often is this true in your organisation; where there
are these ‘built-in reservoirs that tolerate mistakes and setbacks without
diminution of trust’; as this is one of the key factors that distinguishes the
good from the bad organisations.
Boutros and Joseph highlight how recovering trust requires
three separate actions that when combined act as a restorative intercession that
can heal the relationship. They are:
1. Sincere
apologies
2. Permitting
the affected person to influence you
3. Fulfilling
the promise
In his book, The
8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, Dr. Stephen Covey writes, “the
power of choice means that we are not merely a product of our past or our
genes; we are not a product of how other people treat us. They unquestionably
influence us, but they do not determine us. We are self-determining through our
choices. If we have given away our present to the past, do we need to give away
our future also?”
So as Boutros and Joseph mention that “one must be mindful
that, as with a house, trust must be carefully built, lovingly maintained and
steadfastly renovated as needed.” So trust needs to incorporate three major
elements - it must be:
1. Built on a
strong foundation
2.
Deliberately planned
3.
Structurally reinforced
Though we must ask ourselves in today’s society, whether
trust is a dying ‘art form’, where maybe the majority of people prefer to
actively ‘distrust’ rather than trust and in this scenario we should consider
the impact this has on our own potential for real success and the potential
success of the organisation.
But even in the 21st century we should remember that
“trust is the most basic and essential element of both personal and business
success. It requires courage, determination and sacrifice. It is optimistic,
full of promise, fair and supportive. It helps us negotiate troubled waters and
beseeches us to build lasting relationships. It helps us to value each other as
individual humans, not as components of a large machine,” (Boutros and Joseph,
2007, p.41).
As Solomon and Flores concluded, “to survive and thrive, we
must count on each other and find leaders to follow. Like it or not, we are all
in the process of creating a new way of life, and no one knows just what it
will be. That is the domain of leadership, authentic trust, and history
making,” (Boutros and Joseph, 2007, p.41).
References
Boutros, A, and
Joseph, C.B. (2007). Building, Maintaining and Recovering Trust: A Core Leadership Competency. The Physician
Executive, Jan:Feb, p.38 -41.
Covey, Stephen R. The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to
Greatness. New York : Free Press, 2004.
Lencioni, Patrick M. The
Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, 2002.
Solomon, R.C. and Flores ,
F. Building Trust in Business,
Politics, Relationships, and Life. New York :
Oxford University Press, 2001.