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Thanks,Chris
Overheard:
"Much of the editorial is supported by no references at all and simply represents the author's own views."
-- Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, PhD, of the University of Wollongong in Australia, slamming an article pushingfalsehoods about the pandemicin a peer-reviewed neurosurgery journal.
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Being seen as trustworthy is the key to building meaningful relationships and finding your influence as a leader. Nobody will show up for you or give weight to your opinions if they don't trust you.
In healthcare, the pandemic has been a stress test for the healthcare system. Organizations faced all kinds of challenges in terms of getting personal protective equipment for doctors and managing the major financial stresses associated with the pandemic, among a host of overwhelming difficulties. How healthcare leadership navigated those challenges was something that physicians have paid a lot of attention to.
At the moment, studies are pointing to an all-time low in physician trust in their healthcare leadership.
In this article, I want to offer what I think may be one of the most straightforward and valuable models for understanding trustworthiness in the world of work and how it can be applied to the moment we're in to build trust as we move ahead in not only in healthcare but in every work sector.
The Trust Equation
The Trust Equation was developed by David Maister, Robert Galford, and Charles Green in their book, The Trusted Advisor. For anyone who wants to build trust in any context, The Trusted Advisor is one of the most valuable books you can read.
The Trust Equation is all about the "calculus of trust." That is to say, the interplay of four key variables that make up trustworthiness in our world at work.
It's a simple equation, and it's not one to be taken too literally, but I think the principle of how the equation works accurately sums up how we perceive trustworthiness. So let's take a look at the trust equation.
The trust equation says that trustworthiness equals the sum of Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy, all divided by your Self Orientation.
So what does that mean?
Firstly, it means that the more credible you are, the more reliable people see you as being, and the more intimate your relationship with a person, the more they will perceive you as trustworthy. But it also says that if they perceive that you are only acting out of self-interest, your trustworthiness diminishes in their eyes.
So let's take a look at these four components: Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy, and Self-orientation.
Credibility
Credibility literally means how believable you are. It's all about your authority... yourintellectualauthority which is based on your experience, expertise, and knowledge. Credibility is a critical part of trustworthiness and yourleadership presenceas a whole.
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Reliability
Next, we have Reliability… I can only trust you if I can rely on you to do what you say you'll do. That makes sense, right? Reliability is about keeping our promises, and this is so important. Also, know that theperceptionof your Reliability is a crucial factor, which is not just about the extent to which you will do what you say you will do. If you are working hard at delivering on your commitments, but others don'tknowthat you are working hard, they see the days pass without knowing and appreciating what you are doing. They may doubt your Reliability, even though you are acting entirely reliably!
So Reliability is not just doing what you say you'll do but also keeping peopleinformedabout what you are doing. It isn't just about how reliable you are in anobjectivesense. It's also about how peopleperceiveyour Reliability.
Intimacy
The third variable is Intimacy. Intimacy is about the strength of yourrelationshipswith others on your team and in your sphere of influence. At a basic level, it's about whether others feel they can trust you with privileged information. For example, Intimacy might be about the likelihood that someone feels they can trust you with some key bit of information that you need to do your job effectively.
But as intimacy increases, others will start to trust you with their ideas and perspectives... how they perceive a given challenge or situation, and their aspirations, hopes, and goals. As Intimacy increases further, they may share information about who they are on a more personal level and how they perceive the world. The more you get to know someone, the more they believe that they can share with you in confidence. The more your relationship builds, the more trustworthy you appear to them.
As we get to the last variable in the Trust Equation... the final variable is critical. All of this Credibility, Reliability, and Intimacy will be undermined and even completely undone if someone believes you are acting only in your self-interest... more focused on "What's in it forMe," rather than "What is in it forUs."
Self-orientation
If people think you hoard your knowledge to create the best outcomes for yourself, they won't trust you.
If they believe that sharing information with you will lead to you storing that information away so that you can use it later in the service of yourself, they won't trust you.
One crucial part of Intimacy is actually aboutnot sharinginformation. So anyone who is perceived as someone who spills secrets will undermine trustworthiness.
Nobody expects you'll always be purely selfless in all of your motives, but it's amazing how quickly a sense that you are in it only for yourself and what you can gain will undermine your trustworthiness.
What Does It Mean?
Looking at the Trust Equation, notice that Self-orientation is adivisionrather than a simplesubtraction? As soon as Self-orientation gets bigger, every aspect of trust is undermined.
The most valuable way to use the Trust Equation is to think about your leadership behaviors in the context of the four variables. Think about how people will perceive you. Building trustworthiness is all about becoming more credible, being seen as totally reliable, and building intimate and authentic relationships with the people around you. It's also about being motivated by the wider good and containing your self-interest.
If you can build trustworthiness, it will enhance your leadership influence. People will give your words more weight. They'll listen to you, and they'll act on your recommendations.
The Bottom Line
The calculus of trust is an essential element of your leadership. Without trust, you are leading no one.
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