The high cost of low trust

Johannesburg, 08 May 2008 - The enormous cost of low trust within an organisation is often underestimated, says world-renowned author and leadership guru, Dr Stephen R. Covey.

Covey, who will be in Cape Town next month to present a one-day Leadership Greatness workshop, says there is often little motivation to seriously address the problem of low trust, as there is no real means to measure the bottom-line impact.

The all day event organised by FranklinCovey Southern Africa and Life College is set to take place at the Grandwest Arena on 2 June.

“Low trust creates a culture of toxicity,” says Dr Covey, who took some time out to discuss the high cost of low trust. “You absolutely cannot do business without trust.”

Q: Can you do business without trust?

A: Trust is not only important in business; it is absolutely vital. It is the lifeblood of all relationships, of all transactions and is foundational and fundamental to everything in life. There are so many elements to the simplest transaction that require trust.

Q: What is a low trust environment?

A: Low-trust environments are filled with hidden agendas, political game playing, interpersonal conflict, interdepartmental rivalries and people bad-mouthing each other behind their backs, while sweet-talking them to their faces. It is an environment filled with rules and regulations that take the place of human judgment and creativity.

Q: What is low trust costing us?

A: Low trust has a huge tax associated with it. It creates a culture of toxicity, just like you have toxins in your body. Imagine what it costs a body to be full of poison? And that is what a low-trust culture is - it is full of poison. You see people embracing and promulgating what I call the six metastasizing emotional cancers; complaining, comparing, competing, contending and cynicism. By competing, I don’t mean the healthy competition you find in the marketplace or on the sports field, but the kind of competition where you are competing for your own internal sense of worth. These emotional cancers are the forces that literally undermine and eventually destroy relationships.

Q: Why build and maintain trust, is it worth the effort?

A: The speed of trust is an amazing thing, without it, everything gets bogged down and slows down. People protect themselves, they think defensively and they gather other people around them to form cliques.

Q: What behaviour reduces trust?

A: I’ve coined it an Emotional Bank Account. It’s like a financial bank account into which you can make deposits and take withdrawals. If you get into a situation where you are constantly making withdrawals - the kinds that I have just been speaking about - you get an overdrawn Emotional Bank Account. We all know what happens when you have an overdrawn account, it kills your freedom, your flexibility and your credit capacity.

Q: What behaviour increases trust?

A: Trust is not a skill you can learn; it is a character trait that you have to develop. The most important skill is empathy, because empathy, or listening to another within his or her frame of reference, tells you what is most important to that person. Every person is different. The key is to always develop a relationship that produces win / win agreements, so the feeling is that everyone wins. But to do that, you have to deeply listen to other people to find out what the win is for them.

Q: Is it possible to regain someone’s trust?

A: It is absolutely possible to regain trust, but if you are in a state of denial and don’t have the humility to admit that you’ve made a mistake, then people will not trust your apologies.