TRUST – is it earned or assumed in a new leadership team?

Here are a few thoughts that might come in handy if you work with people!

At a recent Executive Team offsite a debate ensued between two members of a new team about trust.

One was adamant that trust had to be earned, while the other assumed (and demanded) that trust was immediately granted on joining the team.

A bit of facilitation soon revealed that neither person’s position was quite as black and white as their initial pronouncements suggested, however it also showed that few people have a shared language or model for describing what they mean by trust and yet it remains so fundamental to effective teamwork and collaboration.

Fifteen years ago Larry Reynolds wrote a handy reference book titled The Trust Effect (Nicholas Brearley, 1997) in which he suggested four elements of trust: Competence, Openness, Reliability and Equity.

At Think One Team we combined that with Integrity to create an easy-to-remember acronym, I-CORE which has proven to be remarkably useful in assessing people’s level of trust – and it also offers a very handy tool when coaching and guiding people to address trust gaps.

Take a moment and try it on someone who you’d like to build a stronger relationship with:

·         Integrity – do they meet your definition of a person of integrity?

·         Competence – how do you rate their capability on what matters?

·         Openness – are they suitably open minded and willing to share their thoughts and feelings?

·         Reliability – do they get things done how and when you expect?

·         Equity – do they treat you with respect?

OK. Do you trust the person?  Chances are that the answer is ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ when you break it down to the five elements.

And if they just joined your team, what does that mean? Do you trust them implicitly?  And would you expect them to trust you? 

Many people seem to have strong answers to the question of trust and yet it is a classic adaptive challenge, which means that we learn how to trust each other: and having a shared language certainly helps to speed up that process!!