Facilitating responsible solutions
| Fall 2001 | Vol. 11 No. 4 |
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Copyright 2001 AXIS Performance Advisors. If you use this in any way, please cite the source.
By Marsha Willard
The following is an adapted from our new book, The Trust Imperative, co-authored with Stephen Hacker of The Performance Center and published by the American Society for Quality. See the book description at the end of this newsletter. It should be available Nov. 2001
When people talk about trust (or more commonly, the lack of it), they usually couch it in terms of what others do to damage trust. Often overlooked is the attitude each of us brings to relationships that sets the tone right at the beginning for the level of trust that is created. But necessarily, in order to initiate or build trust in a relationship, at least one player must be willing to take the first step. That means we can either wait for the other person to step forward and do the right thing, or we can take the initiative ourselves.
There are three areas in which each of us must test our willingness to move a relationship forward: our willingness, first of all, to invest the time and energy it will take to build or repair trust in each relationship; our willingness to examine the assumptions we hold which may be blocking trust, and most importantly, our willingness to take the risk on which all trust is based. We consider these three factors to be the hinges on the door to trust. Whether you open the door to trust a particular individual or group is a personal choice no right answer exists. Obtaining a high level of consciousness concerning the degree to which you choose to open the door of trust is the challenge.
Building trust requires effort and focus. By clarifying with whom and to what degree you intend to build trust you can increase the speed and likelihood for strong and purposeful relationships. Is it important to build trust with a particular person? While it may seem intuitive, it is surprising how often people enter into a relationship with only a casual intent to build trust. We assume that trust will just happen; that we need only sit back and wait. This approach depends on amassing knowledge of or experience with another person. As we get to "know" someone, our trust gradually grows. While this is a time-honored strategy, it has the distinct disadvantage of taking a lot of time. Waiting and watching is slow, unpredictable and dependent on serendipity to provide us the right experiences. Given the pace of most workplaces, this option is increasingly untenable.
As our interdependence with people increases, however, the optimal level for trust increases proportionally. When two our more people's fates are linked, when doing a job requires more than just your own effort, there is a need to develop a trusting relationship in order to efficiently and effectively achieve your common goal. We start to become more aware of the benefits of trust. There is a demonstrated return for investing in this relationship; work will go easier and results are more likely to be better. We decide, sometimes unconsciously, that it is worth our investment of time, resources and/or energy to build this relationship.
Managers wishing to achieve the gains from a high-performance, empowered workforce obviously have a very high need for trust. Empowering employees who you do not trust sets you up for disappointment. Conversely, pretending there is trust behind empowerment makes a mockery of employee involvement and undermines management's credibility and integrity. Employees will quickly conclude that empowerment is just another manipulative ploy by management to get more work done for the same pay.
Making the trust calculation more explicit helps us to assess the level of effort needed as well as determine the level of effort that is prudent or economical. What level of trust does this relationship call for? What will be the benefit of building trust here? How much effort or expense will it require? What explicitly do I need to do to move forward with trust? It is important to be purposeful in building trust. Conscious effort is what will accelerate the trust process.
Our assumptions about how the world operates form the foundation of our individual beliefs and values. And our beliefs and values are what allow us to make choices and prioritize our lives. They also strongly influence our "predisposition" to trust. In any given situation our experiences, our culture, and our biases help us determine whether to move forward with trust or withdraw in distrust; whether we approach a situation with a Pollyanna naiveté, a "show me" attitude or something in between.
Consider how you might react were you to find yourself in either of these two situations.
Scenario 1 You are walking down an unfamiliar street shortly after dark. You are alone on the sidewalk except for three approaching figures who are not immediately discernible. You are a little nervous as you are not sure how safe this location might be. The three figures turn out to be a young mother dressed in a business suit with her two young children. One of the children is carrying a baseball bat.
Scenario 2 You are walking down an unfamiliar street shortly after dark. You are alone on the sidewalk except for three approaching figures who are not immediately discernible. You are a little nervous as you are not sure how safe this location might be. The three figures turn out to be three young adult men dressed in low hanging baggy pants, leather jackets and knit caps pulled low over their heads. One of the young men is carrying a baseball bat.
What were your reactions to each of the scenarios and how did they compare? What did you find yourself thinking or feeling as you read the two? If your reactions differed, what were the underlying assumptions that led you to the differing conclusions? Did you perceive the baseball bat differently in the two scenarios? If so, why?
There are no right or wrong reactions. But whatever our reactions or responses, they will have influence on the relationships or results of the situation. Each of our responses are colored by assumptions formed by what we were taught (for example, what you may have read in the news about crime statistics), what we have experienced first hand (perhaps you have been a victim of crime yourself) and by associations we form between new situations and familiar ones (one of the young men may resemble your own son).
By choosing to examine those assumptions you uncover the beliefs that hold truth and those that do not; the beliefs that are working for you and those that are working against you in building trust with others. Noted management consultant and author Peter Block says, "Trust is an expression of our inner world, not a reaction to people and events." He believes that it is far more productive to turn around our complaints about lack of trust in someone else and examine how we feel or act when we are with that person. He maintains that it is likely our response to situations that bother us rather than anything anyone else does. Keeping our feelings and reactions to ourselves enables us to blame the other person for what we are feeling. Our trust is diminished in that person because we gave him the power to affect us. If your goal and intent is to build trust, it may be important to surface and examine the feelings and assumptions that will likely influence your actions. Being aware of the psychological factors at work inside of us can help us challenge non-productive perceptions.
The most important component in our trust calculation is risk. It's what we measure our investment against, and it's what colors our assumptions and predisposition to trust. While it may be the one thing that most holds us back from pursuing trust, it is by definition necessary to the process. Without risk, no trust is gained.
There are a number of types of risk that play into trust building. When we enter into a trust-building relationship we are putting one or more of them on the line. The risk might be to personal safety, property, existing relationships, or reputation. We put these things at risk in different ways; by exposing our selves (openly sharing proprietary or confidential information; disclosing details about our selves; admitting when we are wrong, sharing our thought processes or our ignorance, etc.), by authorizing others to act on our behalf, by pursuing an untested path/trying something new, or by operating on unspoken agreements. Clearly there are situations where it is imprudent to risk to trust because the cost is too high or because the person or institution in which we are considering bestowing trust has demonstrated untrustworthiness. Most of us exercise what we would call "trust with prudence" which enables us to seek trust even when the pay off is low by minimizing our risk or seeking guarantees to protect our assets.
While we are often acutely aware of what can be lost when we risk to trust, what is often excluded from the calculation is the cost of NOT building trust. Where the risk is too great, we often fall back on contractual arrangements with enforceable consequences. But this protection comes at a cost. The cost is in the controls, the monitoring, the guarantees, securities of deposit, and enforcement. There is also a significant cost in time where trust is low or conditional, the added time and work it takes to double check, to wait and see. We pretend that conditional trust buys us the time and experience we need to develop the knowledge-base for trust. We test each other under controlled conditions first while we check each other out. But this approach may not do what we think. It may only teach us how trustworthy we are under controlled conditions. We each may behave very differently once the controls are removed.
Labor contracts, for example, are designed to protect workers from exploitation. While they are effective at doing this, they also serve to prevent the creation of trust. Relationships may be fine between labor and management in an organization, but there is always the suspicion that it is because of the protection of the contract. No one trusts the relationship will hold in the absence of a contract. As an example, a paper mill in the area was trying to implement self-managing work teams. Everyone (labor and management alike) knew that the old contract system of promoting solely on the basis of seniority was not in alignment with the culture of ownership and empowerment they were trying to create. But as the union steward told us, "when the teams are given the authority to hire, fire and promote, then we absolutely will do it on the basis of merit. But until management relinquishes that authority, we will continue to do it by seniority." Clearly the union did not yet trust management because they had not yet seen how they would behave in the absence of the guarantees provided by the contract.
Another aspect of risk has to do with the approach we take to it. Do we risk to build trust or do we "risk to disappoint?" Am I really building trust if my risk is to set you up to fail? We've seen this play out many times in organizations. Consider the organization that suffers from low trust between labor and management. Management takes the risk of implementing self-managing teams, trusting team members to make responsible decisions on behalf of the organization. Skeptical of their motives, employees accept the risk of the added accountability but often do so with a risk to disappoint attitude. At the first management slip, they triumphantly proclaim the effort is the sham they had suspected all along. Risking to disappoint provides the platform for righteousness and in the end sends trust building efforts several steps backward.
The conversation is only slightly different when the issue is regaining trust where it has been damaged. We often speculate about the reasons behind the question, "Why should I trust again when I have been burned?" It seems to us that there are four different motivations for the question:
Whatever the motivation you have five different options at your disposal:
1. You can risk again. Only you can decide if this is prudent or wise. Our stance is, however, that trust is not built unless some risk is involved.
2. You can mitigate the risk. You can take another chance, but diminish the possible negative consequences to you. You might trust an employee or team to make purchases, but limit the amount they can spend at one time.
3. You can impose consequences on the other person. This is contractual trust wherein the parties make agreements that link consequences to untrustworthy behavior. If I find out that my team has been using their spending authority for their own self-interests, I can revoke the authority they were given and perhaps impose a penalty or disciplinary action. This approach is often necessary, but it does not build trust.
4. You can back off the relationship. You may decide, after all, that the risk and effort are not worth it. You don't ever have to empower your employees, if you so choose. Clearly, though, no trust is gained as we have eliminated the opportunity for building it all together.
5. You can risk to disappoint. I might take a risk knowing that you will fail so that I can righteously break off the relationship. Our litigious society has made this too acceptable an option. We have seen managers set employees up in this way to get the ammunition they need to legally fire them. This is the antithesis to trust building. This approach builds distrust. Not only with the individual but also with other employees who witness or hear about your bad faith efforts. And every time you retell the story of your disappointment, you develop additional distrust in others.
Willingness to trust is an often overlooked component of trust and yet, ironically, it is often the best place to start the trust building process. Acknowledging the willingness we bring to a relationship is an important first step to progress. It also empowers us with the attitude and clarity we need to move forward with trust. Management consultant, Peter Block says,
I can create a high trust environment anytime I want. All I have to realize is that I am creating the environment in which I live. We are afraid of being naive and a fool if we continue to trust in the face of betrayal. Well, what is so great about being strategic and clever? And what is so wrong about being a fool? Maybe the willingness to be a fool is the exact means of creating the high trust world that we each long for.
New Book Shows Organizations How to Improve Performance by Developing Trust
November, 2001 - ASQ Quality Press announces a new book The Trust Imperative: Performance Improvement Through Productive Relationships, by Steven Hacker and Marsha Willard.
Today's businesses environment is highly demanding and increasingly competitive, requiring organizations to be flexible, responsive, and continually innovative. In order for this to happen, there must be a high degree of trust throughout the organization. Leaders need to trust that their workers will carry out their directives, and employees need a high level of trust in the vision and direction that leaders create for the organization. Without this trust an organization will struggle to reach its goals and attain the success desired. This is the focus of The Trust Imperative: Performance Improvement Through Productive Relationships, by Steven Hacker and Marsha Willard, which explains how to develop trust throughout an organization, while improving performance and increasing productivity.
Many organizations have major problems as they try to gain the trust
of their own personnel, as well as the trust of their customers and suppliers.
In many cases, an organization's attempts to gain trust lack credibility
and create more problems than they solve. The Trust Imperative helps
break through these obstacles, by offering a straightforward method for
assessing trust across an organization. The book offers simple conceptual
models, assessments, and trust tools which will help individuals diagnose,
measure, and improve the level of trust within the organization. The authors
then provide succinct tips and techniques to support the continuous development
of trust within any organization. The book also includes actual assessment
forms and trust building tools and activities are included.
The Trust Imperative: Performance Improvement Through Productive Relationships, 168 pages, hardcover, published by ASQ Quality Press, 600 North Plankinton Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53201. The list price is $30.00; ASQ member price is $24.00. Order Item H1130. ISBN 0-87389-527-4. To order or receive more information, call toll free 800-248-1946 or 414-272-8575, or visit ASQ's web site at http://qualitypress.asq.org.
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