Trust – The Glue and the Soul of any Enterprise
by Jaime Jusidman

Trust is a simple word that can change the course of a person’s life, a marriage, a family, a friendship, a team, a company, a nation and the world as we know it.

What is it? What does it mean when we use the word trust? What does it mean to be trustworthy? A simple but compelling definition of trust is: the placing of confidence in someone or in their good qualities; especially fairness, truth, honor and integrity.

Obviously, nobody is entitled to be trusted. Trust is a gift that is given by another and usually must be earned.  Building and sustaining a trusting relationship requires valuing the relationship, clear communication, and a great amount of effort. Trust is hard to sustain and very easy to lose.

At the workplace, trust is a key ingredient that enables organizations to achieve success. It is the glue that holds the organization together and the soul that gives meaning to the enterprise.   You must have trust in your coworkers, your boss, your peers, Senior Management, and products and services you provide.  For the company, trust is based on consistency between its vision, mission and values its promises to its stakeholders’ and its contributions to society; versus its actual behaviors, decisions and actions.  Some recent examples of how inconsistency diminishes the public trust towards a brand or institution: Goldman Sachs, Toyota, Enron and Tyco International.  They all espoused commitment to high quality, strong customer focus, and ethics before profits. As my colleague, Rick Gilbert, wrote in our last white paper entitled “Why Integrity Matters,” their actions and decisions were driven by an implicit operational value of “win at all costs”, which was fundamentally inconsistent with their explicit values, resulting in a catastrophic outcome for both their brand credibility and their leaders’ trustworthiness.

When we engage with people in the workplace there is a certain level of initial cautiousness; this is the normal process for gathering enough information to judge the individual’s degree of integrity.  With consistently positive interactions, we build that foundation of trust. The time it takes to trust someone is impacted by a number of factors:  the stakes at hand, the individuals existing reputation, the history of trust or distrust between the two individuals, and each person’s own life experiences.

Click here to view the entire white paper Trust – The Glue and the Soul of any Enterprise.