Speed of Trust

The Speed of Trust, then, is once you have trust—in relationships, in a team, with a customer, in a country—you can move exceptionally fast. Trust becomes a dividend, a performance multiplier, elevating and improving every dimension of your organization and your life. In a company, high trust materially improves communication, collaboration, execution, innovation, strategy, engagement, partnering, and relationships with all stakeholders. There’s the perception that trust is slow to build, but once you understand it, in many cases you can establish it far faster than you might believe.

2) Your book talks about five waves of trust, starting with Self-Trust, credibility. For relationship trust, you advocate Consistency. In today's fast changing world, it is almost impossible to stick to old rules, old paradigms and be consistent all the time. We need to change. How can we maintain consistency when things are changing so fast?

Great question. What I’m actually advocating is consistency in behavior. There are 13 Behaviors common to high trust people. Things they do and how they do them. Behaviors such as: Talk Straight. Confront Reality. Clarify Expectations. So be consistent with these behaviors, but not necessarily with rules, paradigms, etc. that may need to change. Change might become a natural component of where that takes you. Sometimes the old rules no longer apply. Doing the behaviors may have you changing paradigms. What consistency in behavior does is build credibility, which gives you good judgment, so you know when to change and when to stay the same. Consistency is good once you know you’re doing the right thing. If you’re not doing the right thing, consistency might be foolish.

3) Most of the successful corporations in United States have *anti-trust* law-suites against them. If we look at the real world, it appears as if Trust is just a moral virtue, it has nothing to do with business success and real results. Kindly explain relevance of trust in producing results?

The reality is this: Trust is a hard, economic driver. Here’s a sample formula that will enable you to take trust from an intangible and unquantifiable variable to an indispensible factor that is both tangible and quantifiable. The formula is based on this critical insight: Trust always affects two outcomes—speed and cost. When trust goes down, speed will also go down and costs will go up. This is a tax, a low trust tax. When trust goes up, speed will also go up and costs will go down. This is a dividend, a high trust dividend. Take a look at the hard data: High trust increases value in two dimensions. The first dimension is shareholder value. In a 2002 Watson Wyatt study, high-trust organizations outperformed low-trust organizations in total return to shareholders by 286 percent. Additionally, according to at 2005 study by Russell Investment Group, Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work for in America” (in which trust constitutes 60 percent of the criteria) earned 416 percent—over four times the returns of the broader market. Trust pays. It is a dividend. It’s true of a company; it’s true of a leader. The second dimension is customer value. High-trust organizations are consistently able to create and deliver more value to their customers. This customer value, in turn, creates more value for other key stakeholders.

4) In hotel industry, our readers are small to medium sized hotel owners. There are pressing demands everyday that need urgent attention. How can our readers implement lofty ideas of building trust, inspiring others and similar stuff?

Trust is practical. It will pay dividends. Creating trust is the first job of any leader. It helps you get better results. Hotel owners care about being more profitable, especially in a recession. You want to raise the occupancy rate and the average daily rate. You have to look at the process with a new lens—building trust with your own people, within your own organizations will help drive and accelerate those rates. Kent Murdoch, President and CEO of O.C. Tanner Company said, “If your workplace culture isn’t open and honest, it won’t create employee satisfaction, and you’ll experience turnover and a lack of productivity that will cost you money, ideas and time. On the other hand, if the work environment is ethical, productive and positive, people will stay—and stay committed. They’ll drive your company forward.” The more pleased the customer, the higher your referral rate, and the higher your customer and employee loyalty. This is The Speed of Trust in action. Don’t keep it in the realm of a lofty ideal. Translate the speed of trust into a practical, actionable, economic dimension, and see more profit and a greater market share.

5) Your book also talks about motives and values. For most hotel owners, the simple motive behind the hotel business is to pay the mortgage, credit card debts, health insurance and kids tuition fees. How can they inspire others with such simple and factual real life motives?

We all have to survive. But it’s a circular process. Your staff has the same concerns. If you are fair in wages and help them to succeed, the more they trust you and the higher the dividends. This gets extended to your customer, who remains loyal and refers new business. If you tend to focus on your “win” only, others may sense that it’s not a win-win deal. They won’t trust. Intent is vital. Motive matters. Behavior matters. The trust is, in every relationship—personal and professional—what you do has far greater impact than anything you say. You can say you want to engage in win-win negotiation—but unless your behavior shows that you really mean it, you will come across as insincere.

Let’s go back to the team example: intent matters with them also. They want to feel valued, to grow, to be heard, to develop in chosen areas, to be respected and trusted. So create a culture where you care for those you’re serving. It’s a win-win—for your own people and the marketplace. Horst H. Schulze, former founding President and COO of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, said, “In life and business, relationships are important—but they are empty unless they are established and based upon trust. Trust is the fundamental building block for a brand, and it is the glue for any lasting relationship.”

The trust you build with a customer will accelerate and be enhanced by the trust you build with your people first.

For more information: Call: 801-492-5068
Visit: www.speedoftrust.com