Trust, what is it good for? Absolutely everything. Part 2

Part 2 of a 2 part series.

“If you don’t have trust inside your company, then you can’t transfer it to your customers.” – Roger Staubach, Real Estate Entrepreneur and Hall of Fame Quarterback

In part 1 of this series on trust (http://croftandcompany.com/trust-good-absolutely-everything/), we explored why trust matters in organizations and the business impact that trust has on the bottom line. There is no question that organizations operating with high trust levels work more effectively and produce better results.

For some reason, many senior leaders are operating under the false impression that you can have either engaged and trusting employees OR you can have business results. This belief is a fallacy. Not only can you have both, but the research shows that you MUST have both to have high-performing teams that achieve breakthrough results.

Trust is a foundation of effective teams. Teams are made up of people and people want to take care of the things which are valuable and important to them. Those cares are based on assessments.

An assessment is simply an opinion. It can’t be right or wrong, true or false, good or bad. It is a personal opinion.

As a leader, how do you effectively evaluate and build trust. It starts with recognizing that trust is an assessment of the future held by those you are leading. Do the people you are leading believe that they have a valuable future with you?

You can create, and in some cases rebuild, trust using these 4 sources of trust assessments:

1. Sincerity – Do I assess your internal and external conversations are synchronized?
2. Capability – Do I assess you to have the skill to do what you promise?
3. Capacity – Do I assess you to have resources to do what you promise, including time?
4. Reliability – Do I assess you to have the dependability to follow-through on past commitments? How reliable have you been at fulfilling similar promises made in the past?

Leaders can build trust by creating opportunities for people to assess them and their vision to be trustworthy in each of these 4 areas. Focus on the one where the assessment for a valuable future is weakest.

Build trust where you can: it matters.

#leadershipflow, @davidhasnebalg