How to Coach Yourself and Others Influencing, Inter Personal and Leadership Skills | Page 78

 How does this affect how you work with others?
Deciding to Trust
Your capacity for building trusting relationships, in general, is a function of your
propensity to use trust-enhancing behaviors and the degree to which you expect others
to use them.
But what about specific relationships? Your decision to trust a specific person, and the
degree of trust that you place in that person, are influenced by many factors, including:






History and experience with that individual.
The person’s level of competence and ability.
How much risk is involved, or the potential for negative consequences.
The person’s relative power and authority.
The organizational environment.

So, you can work diligently on your general propensity to trust, but some people will still
let you down. Does that mean that you shouldn’t trust?
No, because although trust can be person-specific and situation-specific, you still have a
general propensity to (or not to) trust. And that propensity will in turn influence the
decisions that you make. Most people can stand to expand their capacity for trust.
Expanding Your Capacity for Trust
First, you can simply be aware of the kinds of behaviors that help to build and maintain
interpersonal trust, including those that you personally tend to (or not to) demonstrate.
Then, you can identify instances, examples, and situations where you can try to use
those trusting behaviors (that you might not use enough) more frequently.
Trust-Reducing Behaviors
We have discussed a number of ways to build trust and fulfill the expectations of a
trusting relationship: doing what we say; communicating honestly; respecting one
another’s knowledge, skills, and abilities; maintaining confidentiality; and keeping our
interactions unguarded.
Just as consistently fulfillin g expectations strengthens trust, failure to act in these ways
invariably undermines and erodes trust.
For example, the following types of behavior will invariably reduce trust:









Distorting, withholding, or concealing real motives.
Falsifying relevant information.
Attempting to control or dominate.
Not discussing or meeting others’ expectations of performance or behavior.
Attempting to evade responsibility for behavior.
Accepting credit for other people’s work.
Not honoring commitments.
Gossiping.

Any of these behaviors can be intentional or unintentional.
Remember, building trust is a slow process, and trust can be destroyed by a single
event. Trust is destroyed by a win/lose mentality, and trust is strengthened by a win/win