Building Trust

Covid was at its peak and so was the summer, when my daughter requested me to get coconut water from somewhere. I decided to give it a try, took my car and went outside of my society. Hardly few hundred meters from our society gate, I found a coconut seller and I stopped my car in front of his temporary shanty. I enquired about the price and told him to pack a couple of coconuts. At that time, the migrant labours were leaving back to their hometowns as cities were under Covid restrictions. Just to help this coconut seller, I asked him if he wants anything from my side. He said no thanks. Then I again asked him if he needs any monetary support, I was astonished to hear his answer. He said, “Sir I sell enough to have my meals”. Out of curiosity I again visited him after a couple of days. I asked him the same thing whether he needed any monetary help from side. His answer was the same that he sells enough which was sufficient for his meals. Even today after so many years, I sometimes visit him to say Hi. His “NO” to my offer of monetary help and his reason for that “NO”, developed my respect for him. I started thinking that he is a trustworthy person, in other words he built trust through his honesty.

Many of the times, it takes just a few minutes to build trust towards a person or towards a brand. Imagine someone helping us when we are in dire need or in a dreadful situation. We start trusting that person. ??

Since I trusted this person, can I offer him a job as a manager in my team or if not a manager, can I offer him a job of an analysts in our lab? The answer is No. A person has to be competent enough to trust him/her for a specific task. I cannot tell my driver to file my returns, even if I trust him and I cannot tell my accountant to drive my car.

Trust can be broadly discussed in two categories. One is self-trust and another is relationship trust. Relationship trust involves another person(s) who could be our relative(s), our neighbour(s), our colleague(s), our family or our society. Lack of trust is like lack of water for fish, fish will certainly die without water. Same way, if there is no trust, human race will not survive.

The trust levels in some of the countries have drastically reduced, than what it was a few decades back. For example, people trust in UK was 60% in 1972 versus current 29%. Same is the case with Mexico, wherein people trust in 1972 was 31% as against 19% now.?But there are many countries like Sweden where trust levels are same across years and that too towards higher side.

Literature says that one of the main reasons for the decrease in overall trust levels is social media. There is a growing intolerance towards specific group/community/region/religion. Another important reason for decline in overall trust levels is withholding of important and useful information by main stream media. Third significant factor is lack of education, in fact lack of knowledge.

Before we move to relationship trust, we should first understand self-trust. The trust starts from within. If we do not trust ourselves, it is hard to believe that we will trust others or others will develop trust towards us. Self-trust starts with commitments and resolutions, which we have had with ourselves. Generally we do not fulfil those commitments. How many times we make a resolution to work towards weight loss or to work towards enhancing our knowledge. And then how many times do we fulfil these commitments and resolutions. How often have we put efforts to tell the truth? Trust starts from within and then gets permeated to others.

Self-trust is followed by relationship trust. There are many ways by which we can built this trust. Stephen M. R. Covey in his book “The speed of trust” enlists 13 behaviours for high trust.

1.?????Talk straight

a.?????Be honest and tell the truth

b.?????Use simple language

c.?????Demonstrate integrity

2.?????Demonstrate respect

a.?????Genuine care for others

b.?????Respect all, especially for those who can’t do anything for you

c.?????Show kindness

d.?????Never show kindness/respect based on position or role

3.?????Create transparency

a.?????Be truthful

b.?????Declare your intent

c.?????Do not make things appear different than they are

4.?????Right wrong

a.?????Make things right when you are wrong

b.?????Apologize quickly

c.?????Demonstrate humility

d.?????Do not justify wrong behaviour

5.?????Show loyalty

a.?????Don’t backbite

b.?????Give credit to others

6.?????Deliver results

a.?????Make things happen

b.?????Do not make excuses for not delivering

7.?????Get better

a.?????Enhance your knowledge and increase your skills

8.?????Confront reality

a.?????Confront the reality and not the person

b.?????Don’t burry your head in sand

9.?????Clarify expectations

a.?????Disclose, reveal and explain expectations

10.??Practice accountability

a.?????Hold yourself accountable and take responsibility

11.??Listen first

a.?????Listen before you speak

b.?????Don’t presume you have all answers

12.??Keep commitments

a.?????Don’t break commitments or violate promises

13.??Extend trust

a.?????Extend trust to those who have earned your trust

b.?????Do not withhold trust because there is a risk involved

Even though trust is important between two individuals, but it is equally vital for the organizations to develop trust with its employees and between employees. It is the responsibility of leaders to foster a culture of trust at workplace. A leader has to lead by example, he has to be truthful and ensure transparency in the system. Communication is one of the significant tools to develop trust at workplaces. Typically, miscommunication or no communication becomes sole reason for lack of trust. Knowing each other personally helps in developing trust. Managers frequently meet people for project and timelines related discussions. But there should also be some planned meetings, wherein anything except project timelines are discussed. The discussion points could be related to improvement areas, could be related to beatification of place, or could be any other team building activity. Making scapegoats and putting blame on each other is another reason which impacts trust levels. Accountability and responsibility should percolate in the system from top to bottom. ?The reason which sometimes gets overlooked is creation of cliques. Sometimes a small group from a particular region or a particular religion start cliques. If unaddressed, this could lead to disaster. Management and leaders should ensure the processes are in place wherein trust issues are discussed and addressed appropriately.

Sometimes a leader has to go beyond his organizational processes and take individual initiatives for improving trust levels. A leader should recognise that building trust is a hard work. To foster the culture among his/her team, a leader himself has to be honest, supportive, unbiased and consistent. A leader has to model the behaviour he seeks and has to build a process of accountability within the team.

Trust building can be divided into four types. Blind trust, when we start trusting anyone without knowing his/her intentions. Sometimes it is essential, but one should take a calculated risk. No trust, wherein the individual does not trust anyone, which is hazardous. Distrust, this usually happens after a bitter experience. Then finally there is smart trust. This trust gets developed with some experience and lasts longer.

Can trust be restored? Yes, but needs more efforts. If someone has lost trust in us, identify it, plug-in the gap and put all possible efforts to restore it. If we have lost trust of someone, unless that person puts efforts, restoring will be a challenge.

Distrust doesn’t happen overnight. It develops progressively through phases. The first stage is doubt, wherein one feels something is not right. Doubt if unresolved, leads to suspicion. The person believes in distrust without a proof. This is trailed by anxiety, wherein there is uneasiness and anger, following which there is a stage of fear which involves emotions. Person puts walls between self and other persons and becomes more reserved with loneliness. Here comes a stage when the person in distrust starts looking for alternates, which could be some hobbies or change in job. This could also lead to problematic behaviour including drug/alcohol addiction.

The consequences of lack of trust at work place could lead to sick and dysfunctional workplace. There is a survey done which confirms that majority of the people leave organizations because of lack of trust and corruption at workplaces, which means loss of talent. People start indulging in politics thus resulting in loss of productivity. Performance of people gets impacted and we hardly see innovations at those workplaces wherein there is lack of trust. People are reluctant to put forward new ideas or to get indulged in providing innovative solutions to problems. Miscommunications and lack of trust are some of the known reasons for business loses. Behavioural problems gets heightened among employees and supervision is increased by management to overcome these issues.

Even though trust takes time to develop but in certain cases it is a fast process. A trust could be developed by just one incident. Trust is based on intent and competence. Even if trust is lost, it can be restored with efforts. Trust can be established with multiple people in one go.

I remember after joining, in my previous organization, I had just spend few days, when my manager called me for continuing the development of a project which was on priority. The project had to be temporary stopped because of unavailability of the scientist (Akash, name changed) who was actually involved in the development. Every person was issued a logbook, wherein he/she was to write each day’s activity with all experimental details. Akash was an experienced person with a thorough knowledge of subject. But the issue here was, that he had lied to his manager on few occasions and his manager had lost trust in him. The manager handed over Akash’s logbook to me and asked me to prepare some solutions. He told me to follow exactly what had been written in the logbook but he also mentioned that he had doubts about the experimental details documented by the so called, untrustworthy person Akash. I followed the logbook and prepared the solutions exactly as mentioned in the logbook. When our manager started the experiment, there were no results, no graphs/signal. He then told me to prepare the solutions again, I did it, but again there were no results. Manager called one of the senior persons in the lab and told him to prepare solutions as mentioned in the logbook. This time again, the manager repeated the same sentence that he doubted the accuracy of details documented in the logbook. My senior prepared the solution twice with no results. After a lot of discussions, we concluded that the scientist had not written the solution preparation procedures correctly and he was not a trustworthy person. At late night, before leaving the office, we suddenly realized that the tubing through which the solution was being pumped into the instrument, was not connected to the instrument, rather it was going into the drain. Next day we used the previous day’s solution and the experiment was successfully concluded.

The scientist had in fact accurately documented the details, but somehow, he had not built trust. Because of this distrust, we wasted our time and other resources. Many times, knowingly or unknowingly, we do very small things which gets ourselves towards that distrust level. Remember when we get a call from our colleague or friend, who is waiting for us at some place. We usually say, “I am on the way”, while we are still at breakfast table, or “I will be there in 5 minutes” while we know the fact that it will take much more time than 5 minutes. These are small lies, but precursors for distrust. In the similar way, just before or during important meetings with top management, we give wrong updates. We want to just save ourselves for that moment, but we forget that these small- small things create distrust work cultures. We know that actions speak louder than words and manager/leader is being watched by his/her team members. This culture gets percolated down the line and finally every employee suffers.

Before I conclude, I must say that building trust is not impossible but prior to that, developing self-trust is important.

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By

Dr. Arshad H Khuroo

Head Bioavailability and Bioequivalence