Said by a confused employee to a colleague:
“My boss told me he’s lost all trust in my ability to get the job done. What do I do to get him to trust me again?”
Trust is a complicated, complex, and fragile bond.
One that requires time and effort to grow, and unfortunately only a nanosecond to tear apart.
It’s a little “sciencey” but the definition of trust offered up in a 1995 article by Mayer, Davis and Schoorman is a good one:
“willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the action of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party.”
Credibility—the quality of being believable and trustworthy and fulfilling the expectation to deliver—is a huge part of the foundation on which trust is built. And, if you’re like this fellow and have heard something similar from your boss, re-establishing your credibility is where you need to begin in rebuilding your boss’s trust in you.
To make it so, you’ve got to deliver in five areas—competence, character, consistency, communication, and congruence.
5 facets of trust
Competence
You know what you know and what you can deliver, but what’s really vital is how others perceive your abilities. Dr. Laurence J. Peter, creator of The Peter Principle, says, “Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.”
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- Under-promise and over-deliver.
- Freely share—without ego—information, resources and insights.
- Offer relevant suggestions to improve outcomes.
Character
H. Jackson Brown Jr., author of Life’s Little Instruction Book, offers a great definition, “Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.”
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- Be fair – present both sides of an issue, topic, etc.
- Consistently walk the talk.
- Offer assistance and follow through.
- Manage inclusion and avoid stereotypes.
Consistency
People must be able to count on you.
As the late Jim Rohn said, “Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.”
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- Regularly produce quality work.
- Be responsive.
- Don’t get consistency confused with either being boring or perfect
Communication
Talk, share and then talk and share some more.
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- Share personal success stories (keep chest thumping to a minimum!).
- Give your boss a heads-up if you suspect that something is going south; surprises are a bad thing.
- Stakeholder with others in the organization who need to know or whose influence could be helpful.
Congruence
There must be alignment between what you think, say and do. Lacking that, there can’t be authenticity or integrity. “A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we want to fully develop the effects they can produce,” notes writer François de La Rochefoucauld.
Ready to start making it so?
What say you?
* “An integration model of organizational trust.” Academy of Management Review, 20 (3), 709–734
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
