Uncertain Certainty - The Role of Trust

Everywhere I look it seems I am reminded of what an integral role trust plays in just about every part of our lives. This is certainly true with friends or a significant other but there is also a higher level trust that really effects us. It shapes our perspectives of just about everything - from the organizations we are a part of, to the churches we attend, to the governing bodies we are under.

A good definition of trust that I have found is:

The willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party (Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman, 1995).

I probably shouldn't have to be reminded about trust, it is basically what I wrote my Master's thesis about. Really, I wrote about how a person's social environment in their workplace effects their perceptions of fairness of their employer, but a major part of it and by far the biggest finding was the role of trust. I found that when employees trusted their coworkers and their supervisor(s), they perceived their employer and working conditions as much more fair and visa versa. Without getting too academic, there is also a fair amount of research linking perceptions of fairness to performance. This leads me to believe that trust effects perceptions of fairness which in turn effects performance. That's huge! Whether or not we trust our coworkers and our boss influences how productive we are? From an employers perspective, there is a big opportunity here.

I am on a team at work to put together a pandemic plan - what do we do if half our workforce can't report to work, do we pay them if they don't come in, do we shut down, do we limit travel, etc. In attempt to get up to speed on all things pandemic I have been reading a book - The Unthinkable, by Amanda Ripley. One of the things Ripley discusses is a general lack of trust from the top down:

First and most important, the people in charge of warning us should treat us with respect. It's surprising how rarely warnings explain why you should do something, not just what you should do. Once you start noticing this problem, you'll see it everywhere. In fact, I think that the mistakes the public makes in calculating risk are primarily due to this pervasive lack of trust on behalf of the people charged with protecting us.

In the context of the book about disaster situations, her point is that by not trusting people with the facts and some context, people make mistakes in these types of situations. This got me thinking that trust goes both ways. Not only is it important for employees to trust other employees and their bosses or citizens to trust their government, but its also important for their bosses, their company, and their government to trust them. In fact, this may be the precursor to that upward kind of trust (coworkers for boss, company, etc.).

We all tend to have an "us and them" mentality and I think struggle sometimes to extend trust to "them." Police Officers tend to think of civilians as a little less; the same is true with retail sales associates and customers. What would happen if we made a conscious effort to level with "them" by showing respect and extending trust?

I recently attended a conference where I saw a popular speaker/writer talk about the speed of trust. While his talk and book are decidedly pop-business, he makes a good point. Though we often think of trust as something that moves slowly, when it is present, it speeds things up. He used the example of business deals going through more quickly, but this is also true with other areas. If you trust your coworkers and boss, you are going to be more productive, if you trust your spouse, you won't spend as much time worrying and arguing, and in Ripley's example, if you trust your protector (and they you), you will respond better and more quickly in crisis situations.

What I'm getting at here, is that trust is absolutely essential, and not only in our personal lives as we so often think. Rather it profoundly effects every area in our lives and we would be wise to devote a little thought to the kind of trust that has been extended to us and that we have extended to others, whether individuals or groups.