When trust is high, the dividend you receive is like a performance multiplier, elevating and improving every dimension of your organization and your life.
High trust is like the leaven in bread, which lifts everything around it. In a company, high trust materially improves communication, collaboration, execution, innovation, strategy, engagement, partnering, and relationships with all stakeholders. In your personal life, high trust significantly improves your excitement, energy, passion, creativity, and joy in your relationships with family, friends, and community. Obviously, the dividends are not just in increased speed and improved economics; they are also in greater enjoyment and better quality of life.
THE HIDDEN VARIABLE
One time I hired a guide to take me fly fishing in Montana. As I looked out over the river, he said, "Tell me what you see." Basically I told him I saw a beautiful river with the sun reflecting off the surface of the water. He asked, "Do you see any fish?" I replied that I did not. Then my guide handed me a pair of polarized sunglasses. "Put these on," he said.
Suddenly everything looked dramatically different. As I looked at the river, I discovered I could see through the water. And I could see fish -- a lot of fish! My excitement shot up. Suddenly I could sense enormous possibility that I hadn't seen before. In reality, those fish were there all along, but until I put on the glasses, they were hidden from my view.
In the same way, for most people, trust is hidden from view. They have no idea how present and pervasive the impact of trust is in every relationship, in every organization, in every interaction, in every moment of life. But once they put on "trust glasses" and see what's going on under the surface, it immediately impacts their ability to increase their effectiveness in every dimension of life. Whether it's high or low, trust is the "hidden variable" in the formula for organizational success.
One of the reasons why the hidden variable of trust is so significant and compelling in today's world is that we have entered into a global, knowledge worker economy. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman observes in The World Is Flat, this new "flat" economy revolves around partnering and relationships. And partnering and relationships thrive or die based on trust. As Friedman says:
Without trust, there is no open society, because there are not enough police to patrol every opening in an open society. Without trust, there can also be no flat world, because it is trust that allows us to take down walls, remove barriers, and eliminate friction at borders. Trust is essential for a flat world. . . .
This is why I again affirm: The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust with all stakeholders -- customers, business partners, investors, and coworker -- is the key leadership competency of the new global economy.
Excerpt #2 from The Speed of Trust, by Stephen M. R. Covey. Copyright (C) 2006 by CoveyLink, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a Divison of Simon and Schuster, Inc. To read the first excerpt from The Speed of Trust, click here. Read the next excerpt, "Credibility Through A Courtroom Lens," here.
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Comments: 3
As concerns trust, it certainly is a most necessary element in order to achieve truly excellent workforce performance. In the process of effecting four successful turnarounds, I found that ensuring employees had absolutely nothing to distrust was the key.
I did this in essence by turning the workplace over to them, actually by asking them what they needed to do a better job and then giving it to them. This allows them to develop a strong sense of ownership and leaves them with nothing to distrust. This inspires them to focus all their energies on the work while management focuses on providing support to them by addressing their complaints, suggestions and questions.
I find most managers know they need trust and innovation in the workplace. They just don't know how to achieve them even though it is actually quite easy.
Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"
Trust and the other chilvarous virtues (I keep my word, I honour, I keep humbleness etc;) are where the moral compass takes its courage from and in trust we buld true and lasting meaning in our life as it relates to others as it goes beyond slef-actualization and respect into honor.
Like Respect it is given and then earned, confirmed, or withdrawn: but our world could do with more trust and lest posturing, right?
blessing in this universe. Life without it would be a hell.