Two More Insights on Trust.

After attending the Springfield Area Human Resources Association annual conference yesterday, I was inspired to enhance my previous blog on trust with two valuable resources. This conference is a must for HR professionals as it offers networking opportunities and insights from various experts in the field. The sessions I participated in were informative and relevant, particularly those discussing trust.

Trust as an Account

Samantha Tyler, Director of Organizational Development at Ingram Enterprises, referred to building and losing trust as an account from which we make deposits and withdrawals. As I discussed in the previous blog bpost, when we do or say things that build trust, we make deposits into the trust account. We withdraw from the trust account by saying or doing things that negate trust. The goal is to always have a positive balance in the trust account. Also keep in mind that once you have a negative balance, you may never be able to recover.

The Trust Equation

Leadership coach and author John Thomas discussed the art of building trust by presenting The Trusted Advisor’s Trust Equation (source: The Trusted Advisor, by Maister, Green, and Galford, The Free Press, 2000). The Trust Equation uses four objective variables to measure trustworthiness: Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy, and Self-Orientation.

In the image above, you can see that increasing the value of the factors in the numerator increase the value of trust. Increasing the value of the denominator, self-orientation (focus on self rather than on others), decreases the value of trust. In short, the more you make things about you and not about the team or organization, the lower the trust score.

As trust is the foundation for organizational health, it was worth sharing these additional resources for you to be gauging the level of trust in your organization. With trust, teams can engage in passionate dialog around important issues and decisions that are key to organization success.