Showing the value of the change is important, but it’s worthless without this one thing. Having the data to support change is useless if you haven’t built TRUST with your stakeholders. They won’t trust your theory, your data, or your business case, if they don’t trust you. But how can you build trust? Years ago I sought out that very question and found the most expert person on trust, Charlie Green. In fact, Charlie and his two HBS friends, David Maister and Robert Galford, penned The Trusted Advisor (recently published the 20th Anniversary Edition.) The book features The Trust Equation; 4 variables to becoming trustworthy that all change agents should pay attention to. 👉 CREDIBILITY has to do with the words we speak. In a sentence we might say, “I can trust what she says about intellectual property; she’s very credible on the subject.” 👉 RELIABILITY has to do with actions. We might say, “If he says he’ll deliver the product tomorrow, I trust him, because he’s dependable.” 👉 INTIMACY refers to the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something. We might say, “I can trust her with that information; she’s never violated my confidentiality before, and she would never embarrass me.” 👉 SELF-ORIENTATION refers to the person’s focus. In particular, whether the person’s focus is primarily on him or herself, or on the other person. We might say, “I can’t trust him on this deal — I don’t think he cares enough about me, he’s focused on what he gets out of it.” Or more commonly, “I don’t trust him — I think he’s too concerned about how he’s appearing, so he’s not really paying attention.” These four variables comprise the Trust Quotient Assessment, with over 70,000 people who taken the assessment to discover their own score. How do you think you would score on such an assessment? For more on the Trust Equation, listen to my interview with Charlie Green on The Delighted Customers Podcast
