To trust or not to trust

I've been continuing to think about the whole thing of trust since my post on Tuesday,

There seems to be a huge surplus of lack of trust around these days (Can you have a surplus of a lack of something? – anyway, I hope you know what I mean).

We don't trust politicians – they don't trust us. We don't trust the police – they don't trust us. We don't trust big business – they don't trust us. We don't trust social workers – they don't trust us. We don't trust xxxx (insert almost anything you like) – they don't trust us.

And we're faced with the biggest challenges in the history of our species.
And what do we do? We waste time, energy and resources arguing, because we don't trust each other.
We are fiddling while the planet burns.

In Tuesday's post I mentioned The Speed of Trust, a very cool book by Stephen M R Covey (son of Stephen R Covey of 7 Habits fame). In it Covey explains how trust adds to the speed of interactions and reduces cost, giving lots of real world, hard nosed business examples.

The crazy thing is, it's not rocket science. We all know it. We know it theoretically. We know it in practice. If you trust someone, interaction with them works better.

Covey sets out his proposals for the 13 behaviours of High Trust People:

Character Behaviours

1.    
Talk
Straight

2.    
Demonstrate
Concern

3.    
Create
Transparency

4.    
Right
Wrongs

5.    
Show
Loyalty

Competence Behaviours

6.     Deliver Results

7.     Get Better

8.     Confront Results

9.     Clarify Expectations

10.   Practice Accountability

 

Character & Competence
Behaviours

11.  
Listen
First

12.  
Keep
Commitments

13.  
Extend
Trust

 

Like I said, it's not rocket science, but it does explain why I don't trust politicians.

You might like to try scoring yourself on a scale from 0 – 10 for each behaviour, where 0 is never do it and 10 always do it.

(Can I trust you to score yourself honestly? Actually it doesn't really matter if I can't because the only person you'll be screwing is yourself)

Then pick the lowest score and invent some practices you can use every day for the next 10 days to increase you score by at least 3.

After that move onto the next lowest, and so on.

Have fun and come back and let me know how you do.