Trust: the unseen glue that holds our world together (and how to build it).
“We can’t trust you.”
Yes, those words came out of my mouth in a conversation my wife and I recently had with my almost-teenage daughter. And yes, they were probably a bit harsh and overly-dramatic because, in her defense, the transgressions that led to this conversation were not out of the realm of normal teenage growing pains. Every parent of a teenager with a smartphone has had to have a similar conversation (hopefully those parents tackled their conversations a bit more tactfully than I did). But I really wanted my daughter to understand why concepts like trust, being honest and trustworthiness were so important.
So as anyone with a human-development background would do, in preparing for this conversation I started to look for examples, stories or object lessons that would help illustrate my point. The more I thought about it, the more I realized almost everything we do in life hinges on us trusting someone or something else. Here is a very short list of examples that I came up with off the top of my head in a matter of seconds:
We have to trust that those small, colored pieces of paper with #’s on it actually means something, or that #’s in our bank account have real value to both us and others
We have to trust that when we place an order online and the package shows up, the item inside is actually the item we ordered
We have to trust that by going to work our employer will pay us for our time/effort
We have to trust that the teachers at school know their subject
We have to trust the food in the package we are going to eat is actually safe
We have to trust that others will, for the most part, follow traffic laws
Though the above list could go on and on, this quick mental exercise really drove the point home to me that trust really is the unseen glue that holds our world together. Without trust in each other, our world quickly falls apart. Recent weeks in the USA have demonstrated time and time again the need for trust in each other, our systems as well as the disastrous effects of loss of trust. While much can, has, and should be done to explore the reasons for this loss of trust, the reverberating consequences, and how we can move forward, for my purposes today I want to focus on trust in a leadership and team context.
Just as I went through a mental exercise of how having trust in others, and others living up to that trust, results in positive outcomes for society, we could do the same thing as leaders and members of teams. If we pause for just a moment and think about all the ways in which our ability (or lack thereof) to trust our team, and their trust in us, affects our work. Now think about how our clients and customers being able to trust us affect our results. Lastly, how would our results improve if we could trust our team more? If they could trust us more? Or if our clients could trust us more? It doesn’t take long to again realize trust is a necessary component for success. And lack of trust is a major ingredient for failure. So how does one truly build trust?
Last year I was introduced to the work of Dr. Frances Frei, Professor of Technology and Operations Management at Harvard Business School. She shares a simple 3-component model of trust that has helped me think about how I build trust with my team, my clients and my family: authenticity, logic, empathy.
These three components need to work in harmony. When just one component suffers, trust is eroded. So if we are experiencing the need to build trust with anyone in our lives, this model can help us identify which component we need to increase. Do we need to be more authentic and human with our teams? Do we need to demonstrate or communicate more effectively to others that we really do know what we’re doing? Do we need to show more empathy to our customers and help them feel that we are in this for them and not just for ourselves? Or maybe it’s a combination of all of the above. By identifying these trust gaps then taking the steps to work on those specific components, we’ll see greater unity and productivity on our teams. Additionally, and more importantly, we’ll see more rich and fulfilling relationships in every aspect of our lives.
