If high trust drives costs down and profits up, why not build more trust in your workplace?

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High trust makes for an easier, less taxing and more profitable business life.

Low trust just feels oh-so stressful, don’t you think?

For example, imagine how daunting, nerve-wracking, and downright difficult it is to start and conclude a billion-pound business acquisition.

Typically, it takes months of wrangling, legal arguments and due diligence, costing £millions.

So how did Warren Buffet complete the £1 billion purchase of McLane Distribution, with its 14,500 workers, from Wal-Mart, based on a two-hour meeting?

High trust between Warren Buffet and Wal-Mart executives made a quick deal possible.

Start with the 4 helping hands here or read on for the full Bitesize Business Breakthrough.

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The high cost of low trust...

Low trust increases costs in all walks of life – business, family, sports teams, you name it.

Some costs are financial, some costs are emotional and psychological.

Some costs can be measured, some cannot.

But we all intuitively know that wherever there is low trust there are high costs.

Low trust creates hidden agendas, political minefields, interpersonal conflict, interdepartmental rivalries, win-lose thinking, defensive and protective communication – low trust makes everything much less enjoyable too.

And why slow things down?

Low trust slows everything down – every decision, every communication and every relationship.

Because of high-security checks on bags and people, it takes a couple of hours to get through an airport and onto your plane. We are grateful for this low trust approach as it reassures us, even though it clearly slows us all down, and adds to the cost of flying.

The friction, resistance and hostility associated with a low trust environment acts like sand in the cogs of a machine.

In your business low trust is a tax, while high trust is a dividend!

Warren Buffet and Wal-Mart both experienced the speed of trust in the McLane distribution deal – they experienced a trust dividend because speed improved and costs reduced.

From Stephen Coveys book 'The Speed of Trust'

High trust is a multiplier

High trust makes you better at everything you undertake as a leader.

Build trust, and you multiply your ability to grow revenue, profits and capital value. Chances are that your work and your business will be more enjoyable as well. Crucially, employee engagement increases exponentially.

Check out the 7 levels of trust in the downloadable tools to work out which trust multiplier (tax or dividend) you’re experiencing right now.

Work gets done with and through people.

Because both high trust and low trust impacts on everyone involved in your business (life), the ability to create trust is the critical leadership competency needed today. 

A low trust path impacts negatively on your customers, employees, suppliers - everyone.

Customers buy less or stop buying; employees are less engaged or actively undermine what you’re trying to achieve; suppliers will give preferential treatment to your competitors rather than to you.

A high trust path impacts positively on everyone. Customers buy more and buy more often; employees are committed to your business vision and goals; suppliers bend over backwards to help you.

You choose, everyday, which path you take – low trust or high trust – based on your behaviours.

So how do you build trust?

Shortly you’ll see the 13 behaviours that build, maintain and restore trust, from Stephen M.R. Covey’s landmark research and book on trust – The Speed of Trust.

Before we do, though, here’s a trust equation from another world-renowned commentator on trust, Charles H. Green.

Green suggests that we be more credible, more reliable and more intimate whilst reducing any focus on ourselves and our results.

This equation provides a language and a framework around which we can unpack the concept and feeling of trust.

Both the language and framework help us understand how to build trust:

Check out the downloadable tools to see a short video that brilliantly breaks down these 5 components of trust.

Two sources of distrust:

Covey poses the question, do you doubt someone’s trustworthiness because they lack COMPETENCE or because they lack CHARACTER?

Trustworthiness can be learned...

On the face of it, it seems that competence can be learned and that character is in-built. However, Covey brilliantly points to 13 behaviours that can help you, me, everybody, build, maintain and even restore trust.

13 behaviours which build, maintain and restore trust...

What if you could make these insights into trust highly relevant and actionable to you, your team and your business?

You can.

First let’s make it about you, by identifying a relationship – either professional or personal – in which you want to build or restore trust.

Next, score yourself on the 13 behaviours of trust (below). You'll also find a simple, clear one-pager to help you with this in the downloadable tools.

This will enable you to see in which behaviours you’re already strong, and where you’re weaker, and as a result see what you need to work on to build greater trust.

“...by learning how to establish, grow, extend and restore trust, you can positively and  significantly alter the trajectory of this and every future moment of your life.”

– Stephen M.R. Covey

A challenge: it all starts with you...

Here’s the tough bit – it doesn’t start with your colleagues, it starts with you!

First and foremost, it’s about YOU building trust – your credibility, reliability, intimacy and your orientation towards others – before starting to apply the trust equations, language and frameworks to others.

As a trustworthy leader, you set the standard for the level of trust in your business.
If you aren’t a credible (trustworthy) leader, your people will not wholeheartedly embrace the plans, strategies and projects which will help your business survive and thrive.

Credible leaders walk the walk – they do exactly what they said they’d do.