Announcing the Trust Resources Library

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As well as having a bit a design facelift, trustedadvisor.com now features a great new resource on trust. Announcing: The Trust Resources Library, a new addition to the Trust Institute at Trusted Advisor Associates (The Trust Institute also contains the self-assessment Trust QuotientSM test).

Trusted Advisor Associates is dedicated to increasing trust—in the business world, and the world in general.

Trust is becoming more, not less, important because:

  • the world is getting more linked
  • horizontal external relationships are replacing vertical internal relationships
  • the same forces that link us also depersonalize those links.

Trust provides powerful tools for good in the face of these trends.

Yet our understanding of trust is limited, fragmented and hard to access. There is no library, website or other forum devoted to the breadth of issues surrounding the theory and practice of trust. Students, consultants, strategists, trainers, managers are forced to re-invent the wheel when dealing with trust.

Until now, that is. Introducing the Trust Resources Library.

Trusted Advisor Associates has taken a significant step forward to create just such a place. It is value-adding, far-reaching, and recursive—it gets more valuable as you use it. It is also free—no strings attached.

Click on the link and you’ll get access to over 400 sources—cross-indexed, linked and abstracted with intelligent commentary—ranging from philosophic theory to business texts; from personal to political; from historical to current.

We invite you to use it—to research, to browse, to learn from.

And we invite you to help build it. Add your own citations, links, and abstracts. When you do, you are identified by name as a contributor (if you choose). (We will reserve approval and editing rights).

Go ahead—click. Take a spin around. Welcome to the Trust Resources Library component of the Trust Institute.

Greed, Trust and Executive Compensation

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Back in December 2006, I wrote a blog post titled The Next Big Trust Scandal. After listing the scandals du jour (remember those quaint days of outrage over options backdating?), I suggested a case could be made for executive compensation. I wrote:

"While CEO compensation is massive, and could make a difference if redeployed, the real issue is the cost we pay as a society when institutions are seen to have tweaked data, kept information secret, and in various ways loaded the dice—all the while claiming not to be doing so.
We are all creditors to a system based on trust; and we’re all left holding the bag when some players default on that trust. Trust betrayed is trust eroded. Let’s start letting in some sunshine."

You could of course argue I missed the subprime mortgage debacle. Then again, you could read Broc Romanek’s post “The Trust Has Left the Building,” in the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog about the recent grilling of two AIG ex-CEOs by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. As Romanek puts it:

"The former CEOs expressed no remorse for their actions that drove AIG into the arms of the government and didn’t acknowledge making any mistakes. Rather, they blamed the accounting. The House committee members were visibly disturbed by the sheer audacity of these so-called corporate leaders…It’s clear that there are numerous practices that need fixing and right now, Corporate America doesn’t seem capable of doing it on its own.
…Exhibit A is excessive executive compensation…I believe the reason that the government’s daily solutions to the credit crunch are not working is because the trust within our system has evaporated.
…Without true leadership – setting the proper tone at the top and taking responsibility – I don’t think this market will turn around. To start down the path to true leadership, CEOs can start by voluntarily reining in their excessive pay packages."

Romanek suggests we have seen the failure of board-centric management; boards have simply failed to do the job of reigning in rogue compensation philosophies. As an alternative, he identifies shareholder-centric approaches. I’m not sure what that means—shareholder online voting on exec compensation? Hey, you never know.

Execs may think the driving issue here is some agitation by the hoi polloi about the distribution of wealth, egged on by “leftist” elements. They may think that the issue is the ratio of CEO-to-lowest level pay, and that it can be handle by good PR.

But the problem isn’t egalitarianism. In the US, we’ve always valued meritocracy more highly than equality. The anger goes deeper than that.
It goes to hypocrisy. Which means lying. Which almost always means the pursuit of self-interest at the expense of others. And that nearly all people find hard to abide.

As I wrote nearly back then:

While CEO compensation is massive, and could make a difference if redeployed, the real issue is the cost we pay as a society when institutions are seen to have tweaked data, kept information secret, and in various ways loaded the dice—all the while claiming not to be doing so.
We are all creditors to a system based on trust; and we’re all left holding the bag when some players default on that trust. Trust betrayed is trust eroded. Let’s start letting in some sunshine.

The killer of institutional trust is not the existence of those who made it rich by achieving the American Dream (or any other dream); it’s people who will piss on you and tell you it’s raining.

Trust-based Selling in the Real World: Bruce Abbott

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Judy and I were in San Francisco a few months ago and ducked into a shop in Ghirardelli Square full of gorgeous wood carvings—One of a Kind. I’d been there before; beautifully turned bowls, unique tables—if you love wood, you’d love this store.

We noticed a unique sculpture—a Balinese statue of a woman, 5 feet tall, nearly Giacommetti-thin, carved from a single piece of wood. We quickly realized it was the piece we’d been looking for to fill an important empty corner at home.

The price was surprisingly reasonable. We bought it.

Bruce Abbott, the proprietor, took complete responsibility for the packaging and shipping, saying he’d personally supervise the packing, advising us on insurance, etc. Incredibly busy, he nonetheless managed to serve us impeccably and with great conversation (ask him about Bill Clinton asking to use the bathroom on a recent visit.)

The piece looks great at home. And I sent Bruce a note complimenting him on running a good set of business processes and an obviously successful business. Here’s his response (excerpted):

"People rarely appreciate all the details and "process" involved in a business like this, which starts at the "roots" and gets refined into pieces such as the one you received. I spend time in the woods selecting woods for my production and take care of pretty much everything else. I have help in my own production in the shop and also buy from several others, several of whom receive the wood they need from me.

"The store, at the moment, is full and very beautiful. I no longer worry so much about the cash flow but just try to produce and keep the store at higher and higher levels of fine woodworking and yet affordable. We have many things under $30, $20 and under $10.00, all of which are still cool pieces. I just make it difficult for people to walk in and not find something they’d like to have even if they cannot buy at the moment."

“I just make it difficult for people to walk in and not find something they’d like to have even if they cannot buy at the moment.”

Think about that as a trust-based philosophy of doing business. He’s saying:

• I’ll carry inventory that’s not likely to sell just now
• I don’t sell, I just make it easy to buy
• I focus on customer needs, not cash flow
• I’m building a store for your next visit, and the one after that.

The essence of trust-based selling is a paradox. If you stop trying to make the sale, and instead focus on helping the customer get what they want, you will end up getting more sales.

I won’t get into the psychology of it now; just enjoy clicking through pictures of some beautiful pieces at One Of a Kind .

If you go there, say hey to Bruce for me, and tell him I’ll be back again.

If Your Sales Training Department Ran Your Church

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What if your sales training department ran your church? (Or synagogue, or mosque; this is meant to be an equal-opportunity religious metaphor).

Suppose you move into a new community, and are looking for a place of worship. The minister (I’m just going to use the one metaphor from now on, please infer your preferred tradition) meets you, and says:

“Welcome. First we’d like you to fill out this spiritual needs-assessment instrument, so we can appropriately benchmark you for your level of sinfulness and spirituality potential.

"Part I evaluates your sinfulness; we prefer the so-called "Ten Commandments" instrument; Part II measures your level of mastery of the behaviors and habits of Highly Spiritual People (HSPs).

"You can fill it out over there in the cubicle; be sure to use only the Number 2 pencils provided.”

You do so. You take it back to the minister.

“Well, let’s see what we’ve got here, let’s pull the quick-scoring answer template. Hmm, only 5 out of 10 on the commandments. Well at least you go the biggies right, didn’t kill anyone lately, am I right, heh heh, sorry my little joke there…"

“You’re also scoring at a “meets expectations” level on your HSP. You probably know the Golden Rule, that sort of thing; but you probably don’t give alms to the poor, right? And tithing, fuggedaboudit! Am I right? Heh heh heh thought so, yup.

“OK, your achievement levels put you into the AIS group; Advanced Intermediate Spirituality. It’ll be a bit of a stretch, but we have some remedial online CBT programs that you can study up on. They meet at 11AM.

You sign up. Your kids are admitted to their own appropriate Sunday school classes. Embarrassingly, at higher levels than you.

You show up Sunday early, to be greeted at the door by a deacon.

“Please fill out this expectations document for today’s service. You can write in your own expectations if you want, but the multiple choice checkboxes are enough for most people.

You go in. You listen to the sermon.

“Today I’ll talk about Daniel and the lions. You will learn the skills and behaviors associated with Advanced Intermediate Spirituality with respect to faith. On leaving, you will be able to recognize faith when you hear it, identify the three main levels of faith, and to be reasonably faithful yourself. And we’ll do some faith role-plays (what we like to call “praying”) to make it realistic. So now let’s get started, shall we?

You sit through the sermon. It concludes with:

“The sermon today has been about Daniel and the lions. You should have learned the skills and behaviors associated with Advanced Intermediate Spirituality with respect to faith. You should now be able to recognize faith when you hear it, identify the three main types of faith, and to be reasonably faithful. And, you’ve experienced the behaviors of faith through role-play (“praying”).

“Please take a moment now to complete your evaluation document that the deacon handed you on the way in.

You read the document. It asks:

“The sermon for today met my expectations" (1 definitely, 2 mostly, 3 sort of, 4 not really, 5 not at all)

“I am now able to recognize basic faith” (1 definitely, 2 mostly, 3 sort of, 4 not really, 5 not at all)

“I now have a moderately high faith level” (1 definitely, 2 mostly, 3 sort of, 4 not really, 5 not at all)

“The minister trained well today" (1 definitely, 2 mostly, 3 sort of, 4 not really, 5 not at all)

You leave the church; the minister greets you on the way out the door. “How’d you like the service?” he asks, sneaking a glance at your evaluation document.

“Well, I’m still not sure I feel like I really have faith,” you say apologetically.

“That’s OK,” says the minister. “Just fake it ‘til you make it. You’ll get the hang of it. Continue to meet your metrics, and everything will work out—just have faith in the process.”

————

Hopefully you enjoyed that. In case it’s not clear, I’m trying to suggest that when it comes to certain "soft" subjects, the traditional management-by-numbers and train-by-behaviors can feel inadequate to the task.

How is this relevant? In training, I hope it’s clear. Different techniques suit different subjects.

But I think it speaks to issues of management and leadership too. Do you believe in values, missions and belief systems? If you’re trying to manage a values-based organization, what approaches work?

Managing through behavioral metrics doesn’t quite do the job when it comes to motivating people to higher-order beliefs.

Or, to put it nakedly, if still metaphorically: what’s the ROI on believing in a God? And what’s wrong with that question?

Are You Connected? Or Just Linked?

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Are you connected? Or just linked? You know the difference when I phrase the question that way. It’s obvious.

• If you’re three degrees of separation away from someone on LinkedIn, you might be a Linker—but you’re not connected.

• If someone’s birthday is in your Act or Outlook database, and it links to their MySpace page and auto-triggers digital happy birthday emails from you to them, then you might be a Linker—but you’re not connected.

• If someone picked up your business card at your tradeshow booth, you might be a Linker—but you’re not connected.

We all know the difference.

But we all forget it—frequently, regularly, unconsciously. And we all suffer because of it. Here’s what I mean.

The ability to “link” is what freed up the mortgage industry. When a local savings bank sold loans to a larger aggregating bank, it “linked” to them by a financial contract; you pay me X, I give you rights to a mortgage. Ditto for that same savings bank paying mortgage originators to find mortgages. And for the aggregating banks to securitize their mortgages, and link to buyers of mortgage-backed securities.

The links, in every case, were one-off contractual transactions. They replaced connections. Connections were relationships, not transactions. They were ongoing, not one-off. They were between people, not just between corporate entities and lawyers. Connections presumed lots of links; but links alone don’t presume connections, any more than one night stands presume relationships.

The wholesale replacement of connections by links is a key feature of the economic landscape today. It is by no means all bad.

“Linking” has been key to outsourcing, and to globalization. Chop business processes up into smaller and smaller pieces, then Link them to a third party, maybe in Bangalore, maybe in North Dakota. The result is global scale of processes; global markets; and global risk-sharing. All good, per se—as far as they go.

“Linking” has meant greater efficiencies of the things being linked. Ten companies all with separate HR departments cannot run HR as efficiently as one company outsourcing HR services to ten users. One Match.com does a dramatically better job of forming markets for daters than a thousand bars in the Naked City could ever do.

There’s just one thing wrong with Linking. If allowed to entirely replace connection, linking will destroy connection.

If no one is connected across the whole mortgage business—if no regulators or companies or customers have stakes in the system as a whole—then the “market” will eat itself alive, as everyone maximizes their own good. The Invisible Hand simply does not work in a Linked-only system—it works only if someone has a stake in the market as a whole, and over time. A market of strangers linking once-off and then disappearing into the haze of transaction-land is what you see in dating bars at closing time, operating by rules of caveat emptor.

This is why eBay has buyer ratings. This is why stocks go up when governments intervene after linking-only has gotten pathological enough. This is why the internet (and new media channels) will drown in spam if they are nothing more than links. To be vibrant, these new marketplaces must find community—a sense of connection.

Our financial markets right now don’t suffer from just liquidity, or even solvency. They suffer from lack of trust. And nothing kills trust like the drowning of connection in a sea of links.

Stop Measuring ROI on Soft Skills Training

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Let’s tackle a garden variety corporate orthodoxy: the one that says your company shouldn’t do training without a measurable return on your training investment.

Variations on the theme: if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it; all training must be defined in terms of behavioral objectives; each objective must link to behavioral milestones, each quantifiable and financially ratable.

Let me speak plainly: Subjecting soft-skills training to pure skills-mastery financial analytics is intellectually dishonest, foolish, wrong-headed, useless at best and counter-productive at worst.

There, I said it.

Now let me explain—and offer an alternative.

There are are sprinklings of truth in the rush to measure soft-skills ROI—but they are surrounding a germ of crap, like a Bizarro oyster and anti-pearl. Worse yet, the ones who buy and propagate this dogma are those who buy training, and those who sell and deliver it.

The ROI-behavioral view of training is fine for pure cognitive or pure behavioral skills. If your focus is on teaching Mandarin to oil company execs, mastering the report generation functions of CRM systems, or teaching XML programming, you can stop reading this now.

But if you’re talking about communications skills, trust, customer relationships, listening, negotiation, speaking, giving and receiving feedback, consultative thinking, influencing, persuasion, team-building and collaboration, then read on.  There are at least four problems with measuring "return" on these kinds of programs.

First problem: definitions. We evaluate golf coaching by lowered golf scores—neat, clean, unarguable. But try defining “good communication.” Or trust. Or negotiation. You might as well define the taste of water, or the quality of love. To accept behavioral indicators (“she smiles, she touches me”) is to miss an essence.

Second: causality. All causality is unprovable, though we know when to accept it anyway. “I had 3 lessons with a golf coach, and cut my score by 8 strokes. It was the coaching—you can quote me!”

But what if I take one course in trust, and another in listening. Suppose my sales go up next year by 50%. Which course did it? Or did my company’s 70% growth have something to do with it? Or my happy new marriage? Too many variables.

Third: the Hawthorne effect. (Or, the Heisenberg Principle in physics). Sometimes the act of measuring alters the measurement of the thing being measured. If I know I’m being graded on listening, I’ll do whatever it is I think that you think makes me look like I’m listening. Which destroys real listening.

If you hype net-promoter scores, many will game the scoring—thus reducing the genuineness that underlay the original idea.

Fourth: the perversion of individual measurement. Most soft skills deal with our relationships to others. The drive to individually behavioralize, then metricize, has the effect of killing relationships—an ironic outcome for relationship-targeting training.

Suppose a course teaches focusing more on the customer, listening, helping others achieve their goals, helping teammates grow—worthy objectives, found in many programs.

The only reason to define those results financially is to evaluate them financially. Thus someone—somewhere between the CEO and the person getting trained—is responsible for deciding to do more, or less, relationship-building programs—by using short-term individual measurements, usually with short-term incentives.

Hence the perversity: training people to focus on relationships, by measuring and rewarding them individually.

“The more unselfish you are, the more money we’ll give you for being unselfish.
“The more you get rated as providing ‘excellent customer service,’ the more we’ll pay you” (which leads to pathetic begging by CSRs)
“The more you focus on others, the more we’ll pay you.
“Quick, get over here, I want to genuinely listen to you so I can raise my quarterly bonus and get promoted.”

Raise this perversity to the level of an industry over decades, and you can understand why pharmaceutical and brokerage companies have accrued such low ratings on trust.

So what’s the answer? Simple. And you don’t even have to give up your addiction to metrics.

Just measure subjective rankings.

Ask people these simple questions, over time:

1. Would you do that training again?
2. Would you recommend others attend?
3. Would you include it in your budget?
4. How do you rate that training compared to these other five programs?

You can run regressions, chi-squares and segmentations on that data to your heart’s content—as long as it’s measuring subjective data in ranking terms. Just stop trying to monetize interpersonal relationships by measuring ROI on soft skills training.

Top Ten Ways for Your Business to Deal With a Recession

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Global equity markets set all-time upside records yesterday. But US credit market trading was closed. By the time you read this in the morning, you may or may not think you need to worry about a recession.
Hint: you still do.

So here are some ideas. I have readers in large companies and solo consultancies; lawyers and salespeople; private and public sectors. Tweak the ideas to suit your own situation.

And please generously share your own ideas by commenting!

1. Shift some of your marketing budget to sales. You’ve planted the fields; now pay the harvesters to go to work.

2. Hire some key people from competitors in your industry. Increase your strength and get good PR for doing it.

3. Buy capital equipment now (or soon), when it’s off-cycle, suppliers are desperate, lines are short, and customers like you are welcome. When the up-cycle returns, you’re set to cash in, while others pay high prices and wait in lines with the other unfaithful.

4. Set a new metric; be in the slower half to lay off people. Not as wishful thinking, but as a conscious strategy to invest in people, and to be seen as and known for doing so.  Did you believe that stuff about people you said?  Now’s the time to walk the talk.

5. Higher levels of management—take a pay cut. Not just bonuses, either. The higher the level, the deeper the cut. What part of “leadership” didn’t you understand?

6. Tell your shareholders to suck it up. Not all stakeholders benefit equally at all times. This is not their time. Their time will come again, and even better—if they have the foresight to help customers, suppliers and employees when it is they who need the help.

7. Ask your key customers what you can do for them. They know you’re short on cash; offer services, advice, free consulting, and non-cash expenditures.

8. Tell your key customers that you’re extending your receivables terms by 15 days—because you understand how things are.  Do not stiff your suppliers.  And don’t hide these two particular lights under a bushel; tell customers and suppliers personally what you’re doing, and let them thank you.  Personally.

9. Identify a local charity in severe trouble. Make a contribution to them. It will have outsized impact, you’ll make an impression, and others—like board members and the community—will notice it. This one you do hide under the bushel.  Don’t worry, it’ll be noticed. 

10. Talk to your bank about why you’re doing steps 1 – 9. Say you want them to know you’re not just cost-cutting to make it through each month, but intelligently investing in the future through a longer timeframe than your competitors. In other words—you’re the kind of responsible customer they should want to lend to.

There are a few common themes here:

• Don’t fall prey to short-termism
• Do well by doing good
• Meet transactional opportunism with relationship strategies
• Be there for others now, and they will be there for you later
• We remember those who helped us when times were tough
• Now’s the time to prove you’re trustworthy—worthy of trust.

When Well-Intended Mistrust Masks Oppression

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Item 1. I went to my 40th high school reunion this weekend. We took a tour of the old gymnasium and the (new) pool. The women in the group were visibly touched. “Remember those stupid blue bloomers we had to wear?” “Look at all those trophies—we never got to play those sports.” “Thank god for Title IX, my daughters had these opportunities.”

Item 2. Some of you will know the name Kathrine Switzer. She was the first woman to officially enter the Boston Marathon; Jock Semple, who organized the event, tried to eject her, but some male friends body-checked him and she finished. She went on to run 35 more marathons, ranking as high as 3rd in the world.

Item 3. A black woman I know, now in her 50s, remembers the first paper she wrote for an advanced English class in her freshman year at college. She was talented, and worked hard on it. But the paper was graded an F. Upset, she went to the teacher to find out how she could have misjudged herself so badly.

“You obviously plagiarized,” the prof said. “No way you could have written this.” Dumbfounded, she was speechless, finally finding the words to deny it. “Don’t lie to me,” he said. “Affirmative action doesn’t mean you can plagiarize.” It took her days to convince him she had written it herself. (It shouldn’t be relevant, but she was not an affirmative action admission either). She became a successful IT consultant and telecoms exec later in life.

What these vignettes have in common is that they’re examples of excuses given to not trust people.

Most people—not all, but most—now believe that young women benefit from organized athletics as much as do young men. But that’s recent. The excuse given back then was that women were too delicate, and had to be protected. By the majority, of course—in this case, men.

Which meant my female classmates appeared in the yearbook in the Future Homemakers Club and the Home Economics Club; not in athletics. And my black woman friend could never avoid being reminded—usually in more polite, subtle ways—that she couldn’t be trusted to achieve at a level to which the majority (in this case, white) people were held.

We know to condemn sexism and racism. But when they’re served up as good intentions, we can get confused. Poor Xs; we can’t expect as much of Xs as we can of Ys. In fact, to even allow them the chance is just setting them up for failure and hurt; we can’t trust them to know their own limitations. We’ll just have to manage that for them.

Years ago Herbert Marcuse wrote about “repressive tolerance,” the idea that majority tolerance of a minority was an effective form of repression. This is something akin. To distrust a minority—using the language of altruism—is a form of repression.

Girls’ athletic programs have made progress (though are constantly threatened by demands for lower taxes). Progress against racism has been made (though the majority culture is always in a big hurry to over-state just how much).

But what are the new frontiers of repressive mistrust? Here are a few starters. What do you think?

  • Doctors and corporate lawyers who mistrust paraprofessionals “for the sake of” the paraprofessionals and the customers.
  • Ditto for teachers and teachers’ aides, and for those involved in real estate closings.
  • Consumer protection laws that substitute reams of language for common sense.
  • National trade laws that decry “shoddy foreign goods” as a cover for protectionism.
  • Politicians and media who rationalize least-common-denominator sound-bites by appeal to market demand rather than taking responsibility for talking up, not down.

What do you think? From the standpoint of 40 years from now, what will appear in the rear view mirror to have been aother case of repressive mistrust?

Do Lawyers Behave Rationally?

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Of course they do. Just ask them.

They—at least those in the US—will also tend to define “rational” as based on linear, deductive thinking. Not unlike the law.

Dispute resolution, from this perspective, is largely a zero sum battle. That “win-win” stuff may work in business, but not when the chips are down in a court of law. Right?

Well, not so fast. Jim Peterson is a lawyer who handled European litigation for one of the global accounting firms; an American in Paris, he has a lot of perspective. And he shared with me this story:

I picked up a valuable lesson early in my expatriate experience in Europe – where the importance of personal contacts and relationship-building can elude the grasp of typically impatient Americans.

When I first arrived in Paris, I inherited a file on a long-standing claim by a French company against my American client. The suit was pending in Germany, where it had been largely dormant for five years, partly because of the ponderous system for large commercial litigation but more because local German counsel felt they were handling an annuity matter that would fund their retirements.

With this lack of urgency, the parties had had only desultory contacts about settlement, and the case management budget steadily hemorrhaged legal fees.

My first task was to contact my opposite in-house number about some trivial interim topic. From a brief telephone call that barely got beyond the “new guy in town” introductions, it was clear that for the time being the two companies had nothing to talk about.

Notwithstanding, as a new resident I triggered a follow-up call, to invite my French adversary to lunch. The explicit condition was that we were not to transact business or mention the litigation.

In summary, a good time was had, over an excellent meal.

More years passed, with no activity other than the ongoing drain of fees, until suddenly the settlement cork was pulled. Led by the Germans, there was real progress but an eventual make-or-break impasse. The local clients and outside counsel had gone as far as they could.

We inside counsel re-convened in France. Drawing on the modest but real stock of personal good will built up over lunch those years before – in truth not much more than the prosaic “How’s the family”– we were able to negotiate successfully and bring the matter to a mutually satisfactory close.

Could it have happened other ways? Perhaps. Had a long-term friendship been established? Clearly not. But I would never underestimate the value of the pay-off, from two hours invested in the sole achievement of a fine French meal and a measure of camaraderie.

Did Jim pursue a “rational” approach? If by “rational” you mean did it make sense, did it achieve outcomes, quickly and inexpensively? Absolutely.  In fact, the "French lunch strategy" beat the crap out of the usual adversarial system.

But if by “rational” you mean according to cognitive rules, case law and the procedures of the court—no way Jose. The traditional “rational” approach would have resulted in, as Jim said, only in an annuity for many lawyers.

Sometimes it makes sense—a ton of sense—to completely avoid the “rational” set of logical processes and systems.

Sometimes it’s rational to just be human. (Not to mention more pleasant). Yes, for lawyers too. Even American ones. In fact, for all service providers. (And it probably even works with California wines).

(Jim used to write a column for the International Herald Tribume. It continues at Re:Balance, where his current post compares Lehman Brothers’ fall with that of Arthur Andersen).

How Obama and McCain flubbed the trust question and how they could have answered it right

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In the second US presidential debate October 7th, citizen Theresa Finch stood to ask her question of the two aspirants to the office of FLOTFW (Former Leader Of The Free World).

How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got us into this global economic crisis?

A perfectly fair question any day; an especially relevant question these days. And—since this was an overt trust question—let’s talk here about what the answers were, and what they might have been.

Let’s begin with the Trust Equation (credibility + reliability + intimacy, all divided by self-orientation) as a route into the question. What constitutes a good answer to the “why should we trust you?” question? Salespeople have to face this question all the time. Let’s see how The Two answered it.

Answer A “Well, look, I understand your frustration and your cynicism, because… you’ve got a family budget. If less money is coming in, you end up making cuts. Maybe you don’t go out to dinner as much. Maybe you put off buying a new car. That’s not what happens in Washington. And you’re right. There is a lot of blame to go around.” [Proceed to attack other and promote self.]

Answer B Well, Theresa, thank you. And I can see why you feel that cynicism and mistrust, because the system in Washington is broken.” [Proceed to attack other and promote self.]

Their answers are nearly identical. Their first words were to channel Bill Clinton, minus the sincerity. “I understand your frustration. You’re right. I can see why you feel….”

Trust hint 1 Do not assert, after hearing a total of one sentence from a stranger, that you “understand what you mean” or “can see how you feel.” You don’t, you can’t, and even if you could, it’s a form of arrogance to assert it. Low marks on intimacy (faking it) and on self-orientation (clearly focused on their own agenda).

Trust hint 2 Avoid the non sequitur. If there’s a logical link between the faux Clinton opening and the blatant self-aggrandizement that follows, at least give it a few sentences to establish the logic. Low marks on credibility (illogical), and again on self-orientation.

Trust hint 3 At least attempt to answer the question. Their concluding sentences—which ought to close the loop on the question—were “The key is whether or not we’ve got priorities that are working for you,” and “I know how to fix this economy, and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, and stop sending $700 billion a year overseas." Huh? Say what? Again, high self-orientation and low credibility.

Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, said, “Never answer the question they ask; answer the question you want to answer.” Was there ever a better reason to mistrust someone than that philosophy? Yet it persists in politics.

In fairness: how can you be trusted when you need 51% of the vote—every vote?

Let’s hear from you. How might either candidate have answered? To get us started, I’ll take a shot at it.

“Theresa, I happen to think that’s the most important question of the night. Lack of trust is what lies beneath liquidity and solvency in our banking crisis; is what’s causing us to spend massively on defense; and is costing us a mint in wasted litigation and transaction costs.

You’re right to point out that both political parties have mud on their hands. Regaining trust lost is doubly hard; and the country doesn’t have the luxury of saying ‘wait and judge us on our track record.’

So my answer is, partly—because you have to. We have no viable third party, and we’re still a stable democracy. Only we two are running. Still, that’s a big choice. You can choose X, or you can choose Y. Whichever you pick, a lot of people will agree, and many more will disagree with you.

Given that you’re stuck, the answer to “how will you trust” has got to morph into “what can I do to help make us a better country?” And I’d say this: hold us accountable. Don’t fall for us when we talk down to you in slogans. Write letters. Engage. Open your minds. Read magazines and blogs. Change the channels. Go talk to someone you disagree with. Don’t settle for someone who panders to the lowest common denominator. Figure out how to trust someone who’s leaning to vote the other way—then tell us all how you did it.

You want to trust one of us? Demand that we be worthy of your trust. Don’t settle. And why should you trust one of us? Because if you don’t, and don’t work at your part of it, you just withdraw from the game. And we need you to play your part.

Over to you. Post your own “why should we trust you” answer right here. I will personally pass on the winning answer to my good buddies Barack and John (both of whom could use it).

(Thanks to Stewart Hirsch for suggesting this post).