Can trust really be quantified?

In a provocative piece for Harvard Business Review’s blog area, John Baldoni asks whether there is a way to find out just how trustworthy a business leader (or anyone else in a leadership position) might be (“How Trustworthy Are You?”).

His question is provoked by a new book called The Trusted Advisor by David Maister, Charles M. Green and Rob Galford. One of those authors, Charles Green, has now gone a step further by presenting an online self assessment that measures an individual’s “Trust Quotient.”

Charles defines trust via four attributes: credibility, reliability, intimacy and self orientation.

Credibility rates “what you say and how believable you are to others.” In other words, you must be credible if you are asking others to follow your lead.

Reliability measures “actions, and how dependable you appear.” Can you be counted on? People need to know that their leaders will come through for them.

Intimacy considers “how safe people sharing with you.” So often leaders do keep their emotional distance from their followers, but when you are presented with confidential information, you need to keep it so.

The fourth characteristic, self orientation, refers to personal focus, e.g. yourself or others. Too much self focus will lower your degree of trustworthiness. It is important to demonstrate a strong ego but if your power is all about you, then few will follow.

You can dominate, trick, manipulate, cheat and hurt others without bothering about trust, but you cannot lead them; nor can businesses develop stable relations with customers or suppliers, if those people don’t find them trustworthy to do business with.

Today’s macho management style undervalues trust — if it thinks about it at all — which is one of the reasons why corporations continually resort to sleight of hand and hype to cover their essential dishonesty. That’s way some way to start talking seriously about what trust is and how you can understand it more fully seems to me to be extremely timely.

Technorati Tags: trust, honesty, relationships, openness, leadership, trustworthiness