Trust Can Be Fortified: Eight Pillars for a Strong Foundation
Michael J. Piellusch MA, MS, DBA
Technical Writer/Editor @ U.S. Department of Homeland Security | Contract Technical Writer/Editor
Today on this eighth day of January, we will focus on the eight pillars of trust as identified by David Horsager’s (2009) book entitled The Trust Edge: How Top Leaders Gain Faster Results and a Stronger Bottom Line.??Horsager organizes his book into five parts: building a case for trust, describing the eight pillars, describing how to extend or rebuild trust, considering trust in the global village, and how to sharpen your trust with a courageous edge. This mini essay focuses primarily on Horsager’s eight pillars of trust: Clarity, Compassion, Character, Competency, Commitment, Connection, Contribution, and Consistency.
Clarity
Leaders are often described as people who can deal with ambiguity; however, a good or great leader will cut through apparent ambiguity and provide a clear mission, vision, and direction for his or her followers.?The mission and vision usually come from a higher level; however, many individual contributors will be focused on tasks and transactions and often rely upon their leader to receive direction and clarity.?One of the ways a leader provides clarity is to maintain a strong relationship with human resource management (HRM) elements so the individual contributor has the clarity he or she needs to function well. Dabak and Mulla (2022) describe the COVID-19 pandemic as an HR crisis with paradoxical practices to deal with (for example, developing new personnel expertise while maintaining existing competencies.?Specifically, the paradoxes relate to clarity, co-creation, and change-readiness.??Many “boots on the ground” or tele-workers are quite content to leave the HR challenges and paradoxes to HRM and management.
Compassion
Most of us have heard the adage that people in general do not “care” how much you know until they know how much you care.?Afton (2023) poses and then answers a very compelling question.?Basically, how does a manager deal with the anxiety and deep sadness associated with laying employees off, communicating bad news such as store closures or declining bonus pools??The answer is inherent in the title of her article: “Elevate your career with wise compassion.”?Afton makes a distinction between compassion and a measured or wise compassion.?In her words, “Their natural understanding of another’s distress motivated them to act with human care while considering all stakeholders’ needs, thereby fostering success in the organization. We call that approach wise compassion (p. 67).”
Character
In Horsager’s (2009) characterization of character, he echoes the Army principle of choosing the “hard right” over the “easy wrong.”?Dr. J. Phillip London has written an entire book with the title of Character and his subtitle of The Ultimate Success Factor continues the Horsager theme that the pillars of trust are a collection of key success elements.?Giving an example of losing and then rebuilding trust based on inherent character, London chronicles the sad case of Tylenol murders due to package tampering.?Parent company Johnson and Johnson responded swiftly with new tamper proof packaging which is now commonplace for medical and many other products.?Based on a corporate decision to do the right thing, Johnson & Johnson did the right thing demonstrating the resilience of good character.
Competency
Horsager (2009) describes competency as a process of staying capable, relevant, and current in an identifiable skill base.?He makes the connection between being humble enough to be a life long learner and to develop a competency that exudes confidence and builds confidence of observers and followers in their leader.?Many interesting articles have been written about various categories of competencies.?Almeida and Gabriela Silva (2022) have conducted an interesting study focusing on the competencies needed to work at home during the pandemic.?Reflecting back on the early days of the pandemic, we can all remember the skepticism on the management side as well as on the individual contributor side on whether employees could be “trusted” to put in a full day of work outside of the office.?Many nonbelievers have become believers in teleworking and most participants expect a new normal to be a hybrid of at home and at office work. Almeida and Gabriela Silva focus primarily on the following categories of skills:?management competencies of change orientation, pro-activity, identifying goals, resilience, anxiety management, virtual team building, interpersonal communications, time management, and a new skill called “E-Leadership.”?Individual contributor skill sets were summarized as work-life balance and work flexibility.?Clearly trust had to be built on both sides of the workplace equation and most observers seem to agree that the results have been successful on all counts with a hybrid version of the workplace now implemented in most organizations.
Commitment
Horsager (2009) focuses on people believing in individuals who have weathered a storm and have survived.?Surviving 2.5 years of a pandemic and still maintaining an expected productivity level demonstrates commitment and builds trust.?Drummond (2014) in an article entitled “Escalation of commitment: When to stay the course?” explores the frequent dilemma of charging on with a particular goal or abandoning the quest at some decision point.?Drummond cites the interesting example of BP oil baron Nelson Bunker Hunt being directed to abandon an oil rig; thankfully, he stayed the course and uncovered one of the greatest oil discoveries. Horsager gives examples of General Patton, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, Jesus, and George Washington?exercising uncommon commitment to a cause.
Connection
At this point, we might be thinking “Why do we need eight pillars?”?Wouldn’t three or five pillars be plenty.?The final three pillars of Connection, Contribution, and Consistency seem to stand firm in asserting their importance.?Connection is especially important as it focuses on the people, the friends, and business associates who transact business exchanges based largely on track record and trust.?Che-Wei Liu et al. (2022) in an article entitled “Reciprocity or self-interest?” indicate that leveraging digital social connections for healthy behavior demonstrates that reciprocity is a stronger motivator than self-interest.?This finding might appear counter intuitive to the pessimist; however, the optimist is most likely not surprised at the positive influence of reciprocity.
Contribution
Horsager’s (2009) seventh pillar is probably the least self-explanatory.?Similar to the R word of Reciprocity to describe Connection, the R word for Results best describes the concept of Contribution.?Horsager emphasizes that one of the best ways to build trust is to get results.?We are familiar with the concept of “track record” in this regard.?Employees with a track record of excellent results usually reap an abundance of personal and workplace rewards for delivering results.?Returning to the theme of HRM, human resources can certainly make an impactful contribution to the overall effectiveness and trustworthiness of an enterprise (Curado et al., 2022). Broom (1995) identifies several contribution elements that could be applied to individual or organizational performance: a mission statement, core values, assessment of internal and external factors, goals and objectives, and strategies and measures for the goals and objectives.
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Consistency
The eighth and final pillar is probably the most self-explanatory. In almost any endeavor, consistency of purpose and results is a hallmark attribute. Horsager (2009) focuses on the “little things” that could be overlooked, but can make a big difference between building and maintaining trust or taking short cuts at the expense of trust. Horsager gives an example we can most likely all relate to around the holidays.?If we are overweight, false logic might blame the weight gain on eating too much for Thanksgiving dinner.?Most likely, the state of being overweight is more due to recurring and consistent factors such as eating too much consistently and exercising too little.?Of course, more serious medical factors could be involved as well. Stepping back, a similar concept to consistency is convergence.?Kleppmann (2022) focuses on the convergence of the global village on the internet as a common and consistent tool that pulls disparate forces together and challenges our efforts to be consistent.
Concluding Thoughts
From London focusing on character to Professor Frances Frei identifying the three core components of trust as Authenticity, Logic, and Empathy (ALE), we have a roadmap for building, maintaining, and rebuilding trust. Strikingly, we can easily identify the challenge of following the roadmap and being successful.?The new mayor of New York, Eric Adams, makes a great point about resumes.?He points out that every resume should have a section on Failures as most of us will agree that we have built our careers in spite of failures and learning from failures is part of career and personal growth. Perhaps the most obvious failure point to make is that trust is transactional.?No one is going to have a 100% perfect record with trust.?Our trust barometers will indeed fluctuate and with Horsager’s pillars and Frie’s ALE model, we will hopefully be asymptotically approaching a perfect trust record.
References
Afton, M. (2023). Elevate your career with wise compassion. TD: Talent Development, 77(1), 65–67.
Almeida, J., & Gabriela Silva, M. (2022). Working from home during COVID-19 Lockdown: Changing Competencies and work-home life Boundaries. Proceedings of the European Conference on Management, Leadership & Governance, 9–15.
Che-Wei Liu, Guodong (Gordon) Gao, & Agarwal, R. (2022). Reciprocity or self-interest? Leveraging digital social connections for healthy behavior. MIS Quarterly, 46(1), 261–298. https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2022/16177
Curado, C., Mu?oz-Pascual, L., Oliveira, M., Lopes Henriques, P., & Mateus Jerónimo, H. (2022). Contribution of Human Resources Management for sustainability. RAE: Revista de Administra??o de Empresas, 62(5), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0034-759020220502x
Dabak, S., & Mulla, Z. R. (2022). Paradoxical HR practices to respond to tensions: The need for clarity, co-creation, and change-readiness. South Asian Journal of Management, 29(1), 30–57.
Drummond, H. (2014). Escalation of commitment: When to stay the course? Academy of Management Perspectives, 28(4), 430–446. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2013.0039
Kleppmann, M. (2022). Research for practice: Convergence. Communications of the ACM, 65(11), 104–106. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563901
Link to mini essay entitled Trust Can Be Verified:?Authentic, Logical, and Empathetic
Image of Nelson Bunker Hunt with Queen Elizabeth: