Trust is vital for employee engagement, but it’s difficult to know where to start if you have an issue within your organisation. If this challenge feels familiar it’s well worth checking out the “Trust Equation” (Maister, Green and Galford, The Trusted Advisor, 2000). The Trust Equation is a really useful tool understand trust and how to build it.
In summary, trust can be measured across four areas:
- Credibility – is all about what we say, our skills and credentials.
- Reliability – is all about the actions we take and our predictability.
- Intimacy – is tied to how comfortable people are confiding in us, and our empathy.
- Self-orientation – is about ego, how much is it all about you or can you focus on others?
The Trust Equation is a useful way to assess how trusted you, or your colleague are – the authors refer to this as your Trust Quotient. Understanding your own strengths and development areas helps you to know where you need to focus your efforts to build trust with others.
The research shows that having balance across all four areas is more likely to create trust. For example if you’re really credible, but not intimate, trust tends to drop. The research also shows that people tend to rely more heavily on their expertise and reliability, shying away from intimacy and orientation, but see previous point – this doesn’t help to create trust.
But, you can learn how to be more trusted – trust can be taught.
To get you started check out our self-evaluation tool below:
1. Credibility:
Self Assessment:
Questions to ask:
- What skills do I have that demonstrate my credibility?
- What credentials do I have that demonstrate my credibility?
- What are the gaps?
2. Reliability:
Self Assessment:
Questions to ask:
- Do my words and action match?
- Can people rely on me?
- What are the gaps?
3. Intimacy:
Self Assessment:
Questions to ask:
- What is my rapport like with my team?
- Am I comfortable being humble with my team and showing that I have areas to develop also?
- What are the gaps?
4. Self-orientation:
Self Assessment:
Questions to ask:
- Do I do more talking or listening?
- Am I genuinely interested in my team and how they are feeling?
- What are the gaps?
And finally, the research also shows that trust gets better with age!
If you’d like to find out more about how to tackle Trust in your organisation, why not get in touch for a no obligation conversation?
