With trust, you deposit in cents and withdraw in dollars. And that results in poorer performance over time.
With trust, you deposit in cents and withdraw in dollars. And that results in poorer performance over time.
Facing the future with trust
Things are changing, faster and faster. It means whatever assumptions you made when you begin a working relationship will continually require revision, face challenge and need collective problem-solving.
If the relationship is trustful, then those involved are more likely to be able to respond to change collaboratively, having a win-win mindset that sees any challenges and solutions as collective. Right now, this approach can make the difference between success and failure.
The opposite is also true: a transactional relationship will be contractual and mistrustful; a change may be seen by one side as an opportunity to exploit the situation. Win-lose.
This rapid change is also giving people more choice. This applies to customers, of course, and especially when they decide who to appoint for additional work from existing vendors. But it’ s also true of employees, partners and suppliers. Those who work for you can choose to go the extra mile or just do their job; they can adapt to change or resist it; those who supply or partner with you also have agency over where they focus their attention and respond to new needs. If a purely transactional relationship was established from the start then any challenge can trigger blame or excuses.
No-one goes to work intending to damage trust in themselves or their company. No leader decides to destroy trust among their team, no professional plans to reduce the trust their clients have in them.
Yet it happens every day in every context because of the tendency towards transactional behaviors and under the many pressures to perform at pace. With trust, you deposit in cents and withdraw in dollars. And that results in poorer performance over time.
The answer is to recognize this, decide to make it central to the way you work, especially with your most important relationships, and then actively engage in designing high levels of trust and making sure this is consistent. The Trust Triangle is one framework that provides a simple lens through which to do this.
This is how most people would want to be if they spent any time thinking about it. It makes working life more enjoyable as well as successful. It provides the basis for longer term relationships that are more adaptable to change.
In the age of rapidly advancing technology, being more human may be the secret to facing the future with confidence.
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The Kyndryl Institute Journal 63