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Short Yardage vs. the Long Game: The NFL’s Fumble

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NFL Referee LockoutWould you risk your company’s reputation in an attempt to save what amounts to 0.16% of your annual revenue?

The owners of the NFL franchises have spent decades building the league’s reputation as a trustworthy, venerable institution – with a lot of success. Now, literally in the blink of an eye, the NFL has risked its credibility for relative peanuts.

In case you haven’t heard, the NFL has locked its referees out because they didn’t want to switch their pension plan from a defined-benefit to a defined-contribution model. A hill to die on? Not.

Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Referees missing calls isn’t quite news (insert your favorite blind ref joke here). Across all sports, poor decisions are made that affect the outcome of games. What makes the NFL’s referee lockout so newsworthy are the repeated bad calls the league has made.

The NFL made an initial, and forgivable, mistake by not standing by its refs. True, the NFL is a business, and it’s hard to overlook $16 million a year. But by not taking responsibility for their mistake, they are compounding the problem, letting it grow and sacrificing their reputation in the process.

When yesterday they unequivocally denied that a mistake was even made, they simply added further tension to an already stressed situation.

Time to Call an Audible

The NFL’s denial of the controversy is a classic example of institutional refusal to face facts confronting a failure of trust. The desire to cover up – from Watergate to Penn State – runs deep.

But this season is still young; there’s time to resolve the issue and begin to rebuild the lost trust. If the NFL acts humbly, admits its mistakes and ends the lockout, all can be forgotten in a matter of weeks or even days.

But the longer they refuse to admit the breach of trust, the more trust they’ll leave on the field.

Don’t Manage My Expectations

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It’s received wisdom by now that you should manage expectations. How could you argue with that? Nobody likes to be surprised on the downside. But as with many platitudes, the devil is in the details. And there are a few devils lurking out there in expectations-management land.

Always Exceeding Expectations

Exhibit 1 is the mantra to always under-promise and over-deliver, perhaps as a way to achieve customer delight. The problem is, if you consistently under-promise and over-deliver, you are – in an important sense – lying. You are deliberately telling your customer (or whomever) one thing, and then doing another. How else to describe that form of managing expectations?

The downside is that, over time, it destroys your credibility. Whether it’s stock analysts looking at your quarterly guidance, or employees expecting you to top last year’s ‘surprise’ holiday bonus, once you say one thing and do another, the only expectation you’ve ‘managed’ is the expectation that your future behavior will resemble what it was – an under-promise – not what you said it would be.

And so the party you’re trying to influence makes their own mental adjustment to counter-balance your expected over-delivery– negating your attempt at ‘management.’ Except that another degree of uncertainty is added on each end.

Managing Attitudes

There’s no question that a good attitude helps with life. Measured optimism, a propensity to trust, a positive outlook – all these increase the odds of positive interactions with others. Whether you expect ill or good of another person, that’s probably what you’ll get.

But what if an entire generation is raised the Lake Wobegon way, believing they’re all above average? What if self-help affirmations are of dubious benefit because on some level we don’t believe what we’re trying to tell ourselves? What if corporate and political spin get so bad that they destroy our trust in the very institutions and people who are seeking to manage our expectations?

Attempts at managing attitude are utlmately seen as patronizing. Whether it’s “don’t get your hopes up,” or “you should feel really good about this,” we resent others doing our feeling for us. We want the right to determine our own reactions, therefore our own attitudes.

Managing Expectations the Right Way

It is true that bad surprises are not a good thing. It’s also true that expectations aligned with reality (or slightly more optimistic) are preferable to living in a fantasy world. The problem is not with the noun ‘expectations.’ It comes with the verb – it matters who does the ‘managing.’

I want to manage my own expectations. You can help me by telling me the truth. That means six things:

  1. Be transparent. Get way past just not lying to me. Tell me all the truth you have access to. Make it a policy to give me access to data-without-interpretation.
  2. Prove to me – over and over– that I can depend on you. Promise me lots of little deadlines and meet every one of them – precisely, on the money, not ‘over-performing.’ Do exactly what you said you would do.
  3. Trust me. Share things about yourself with me that I could misuse against you, take risks on me that allow me to over-perform. Because then I have a chance to prove to you how competent and trustworthy I am.
  4. Respect me. Give me the data and let me make up my own mind how I feel about it. Don’t spin me, don’t tell me how I should feel.
  5. Be straight with me. If you do see my expectations careening out of control, and you think I’m about to make a serious error, then pull me aside and tell me straight; don’t sugar-coat it.
  6. Hold me accountable. Call me on my bullshit; confront me when I fail to deliver on time; be forthright with me when I let you down. And let me know that you expect me to do the same.

The best way to manage my expectations is to treat me like an adult. That’s my truth anyway; what about you?

Lying is to Trust as Kryptonite is to Superman

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That may sound self-evident. But lying isn’t the only way to kill trust. It’s useful to review the bidding, in order to realize just how potent lying is.

Then too, there are green kryptonite and red kryptonite forms of lying.

Read on.

Four Ways to Destroy Trust

Using the trust equation as a checklist suggests at least four generic ways to destroy someone’s trust in you:

  • Develop an erratic track record. That leads to a reputation for being flakey, undependable, that you can’t be counted on. Soon enough you’re losing the big jobs, then the little ones. All because you’re unreliable.
  • Abuse others’ confidences. Develop loose lips. Tell secrets. Make hay on inside information. Laugh at others’ misfortunes, or just be emotionally tone-deaf. The invitations will stop soon enough.
  • Use others for your own ends. Do unto others before they do unto you. Always be closing. Find the competitive advantage at every turn. Don’t let your guard down, and don’t be a chump. It’s better to receive than to give.
  • Put distance between yourself and the truth. There are white lies, bald-faced lies, lies of omission, half-truths, partial truths, packs of lies, and lies of convenience. They’re all kryptonite.

Which is the worst?  It’s hardly a walk-away, but I say the last one–lying.

Cold, Flat-Out, Straight-up Lies

Robert Whipple told me of the experience of being lied to, to his face, with full eye contact. That degree of trust destruction is strong enough to take effect instantly. Let’s examine why.

Obviously, if someone lies to you, you can’t believe what they’ve told you. Which means the next thing they tell you has to be suspect as well. Being lied to immediately ruins the speaker’s credibility.

But that’s just a start. Lying also infects reliability. Because if you tell me you’ll do something, but you’ve lied to me before, then I don’t know if I can trust you’ll do what you’ve said you’ll do.

Lying also affects intimacy and confidences. If you’ve lied to me, your motives are suspect. I’m not about to share confidential information with someone who’s been dishonest with me about their motives.

Finally, that same issue of motives makes me profoundly suspicious of your intentions. We do not assume people have lied to us for our own good, but rather for their good. And we do not like that.

Green and Red Kryptonite Lies

As is well known, krytponite of all forms is debilitating or lethal to Superman, but red kryptonite is more harmful. To extend the metaphor, which is more lethal to trust: a bald-faced lie, or a series of veiled, half-truths? I suggest that the latter is worse.

A flat out lie has two elements of truth: transparency and completeness. It’s all out there, right away. When Shaggy sings It Wasn’t Me, it’s such an in-your-face lie you have to laugh. The band-aid is ripped off the scab all at once. If you trust after that, it’s entirely your own fault. That’s green kryptonite.

Then there’s the really bad stuff – red kryptonite lying.

Red kryptonite lying consists of half-truths, incomplete truths, truths not told at the right time. It is often justified on the grounds that it isn’t green kryptonite: “I didn’t actually say anything that wasn’t true.”

Red kryptonite lying is riddled with layers of bad faith. It leaves the receiver with nagging doubt. Why did he not tell me the whole truth? Why did she not bring this to my attention earlier? What about all the other questions this raises?

One trouble with red kryptonite truth is the nagging doubt it leaves you with – the lack of resolution about the issue at hand.

But perhaps the worst nagging doubt is about the nature of the liar himself. Is the liar incompetent? Or is he dishonest? Does the liar even know the difference? Finally – does the liar even know he is lying?

It is sometimes said that the best salespeople are those who can first sell themselves. Indeed, some high-selling salespeople have that ability; but I wouldn’t trust them.

Straight from the Headlines: Trust in People, Companies, Nations

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Three trust-related headlines last week:
  1. An insider trading conviction for hedge-fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam,
  2. A free-fall in Morgan Stanley’s stock price, and
  3. A drop in the Chinese government’s credibility.

A Person

Mr. Raj Rajaratnam, former head of the Galleon Group hedge fund, and once worth a billion and a half dollars, was sentenced to 11 years in prison.  His crimes were the stuff of movies—secret deals and secret messages—insider trading.

Some finance theorists think “insider trading” should be legalized, though most people would sooner see heroin legalized if they had to choose.  Rajaratnam’s white-collar hand-in-the-cookie-jar crimes are, it is generally agreed, egregious and immoral. He’s going where he belongs.

Raj is a poster child for low trust. Lying, cheating, conniving, sneaking—he was everything you wouldn’t want in a trusted partner.

But he is a sideshow. Rajaratnam, Bernie Madoff, Ivan Boesky—these are the movie versions of white-collar crime. Raj and Bernie no more caused our current financial malaise than Bonnie and Clyde caused the Great Depression. And we cannot solve our global trust problems by simply picking off colorful foot soldiers from the Dark Side, no matter how untrustworthy they are.

A Company

Jesse Eisinger in the NYTimes notes that by nearly every financial measure of strength and trustworthiness—more capital, longer-term financing, lower leverage—Morgan Stanley is a stronger bank than it was in September 2008, at the height of the crisis. So, why has their stock price dropped 42% this year?

Trust, that’s why.

Morgan Stanley, and other banks, still holds massive amounts (defined as over $50 trillion) in unregulated derivatives. And of course they don’t want regulation. But they are not stupid—the banks themselves are not about to trust each other when they know the other guy is holding part of that unregulated $50 trillion. As Eisinger puts it:

“Surely no bank would be so reckless as to accept dodgy collateral these days. It would hold out for something unassailable, like, say, Triple A mortgages on American homes. Wait, scratch that. It would accept sovereign debt, perhaps from some European realm that has been around for centuries. Whoops, no, no. Well, O.K., maybe United States Treasuries—and we’ll agree to ignore that one of the country’s two major political parties was willing to plunge the United States into default to achieve its aims.”

The banks don’t trust each other. They do agree that they don’t want governments checking their numbers; they also agree that letting Lehman go was a big mistake—that governments should be willing to bail them out.

But the people are not too happy about their governments bailing out the rich guys, whether they’re at OWS, in Greece, or even in Germany.  The governments are looking like neither paragons of virtue nor representatives of their citizenry.

A Country

Never mind the GOP playing chicken with the US’s credit ratings; never mind Germans and Greeks playing chicken with Europe. As Reuters notes:

Equities jumped 10 percent on the day three years ago when China said it would buy up bank shares in the market. They barely budged after a similar announcement on Monday. The difference is credibility. A sustained financial crisis has shown that governments around the world have a limited ability to make things better.

Nations around the world have kicked the can down the road regarding public expenditures. They’ve done the same thing regarding energy and the environment.

The human race has been conspicuously failing recently at two key trust skills—collaboration and constructive confrontation.

Trust Recovery: Where Do We Start?

Yes, it’s complicated. There are feedback loops everywhere. Beware of simple answers. 9-9-9 may work in a computer simulation game, but does not a tax plan make.  8-8-8 is not the answer to health care, and 7-7-7 is a better lotto number than a plan for campaign finance.

But complexity works both ways. It means the whole system is loaded with causality.  No single change at the person, policy or institution level may be necessary, or sufficient. But actions at every level do have impacts. We can push back at the personal level, at the company level, and at the national level.

It is a good thing that Raj Rajaratnam got the longest-ever prison sentence for insider trading; it sets a moral tone that is in stark contrast to an amoral ideology that we have allowed to infect our entire commercial sector.

It is a good thing that people are protesting the serious transfer of wealth and power that has taken place in recent years, because increasing inequality ruins social trust.

Yes, it’s complex to recover trust, but it can start simply. Here are three steps.

1.    Promote personal character. Don’t fudge your taxes. Don’t lie, don’t ask others to do so, and just say no to those who ask you to do so. Teach your children. Thank people who do good and shame those who don’t. Stick your neck out a little. On alternate Thursdays, pay the toll for the car behind you.  Pick out a small sum of money and give it to a charity that needs it more than you do.

2.    Promote better thinking. We have seen the result of four decades of economists who think that markets are self-clearing and that financial institutions will self-regulate out of concern for their reputation; business theorists who preach competition instead of collaboration; CEOs who think the purpose of a company is to raise shareholder wealth; and politicians who think either that government is a feeding trough or that interstate highways are communist plots.

The result is not good, and much of the trouble arises from bad beliefs. We will not solve our problems through belief in econometrics, patent litigation, or demonization of foreigners. Tell the b-school professors, the law schools, the think tanks and the industry associations to apply their talents to understanding and building systems around collaboration instead.

We are, in fact, all in this together. We need to start believing it so we can act on this belief.

3.    Promote better politicians. Don’t support simplistic ideologies.  Stop contributing to single-issue pressure groups. Scream for campaign finance reform; on everything else, stop screaming.

Read up. On alternate Tuesdays, watch Fox or CNBC, whichever one you makes you uncomfortable. On alternate Fridays, read a foreign newspaper online. Don’t give money to, talk about, or vote for candidates who out-negative their opponents.  Support those with a message and a plan of their own.

Tell the media, the politicians and anyone who wants your support that you’re done with vague platitudes and simple slogans. Tell them you want the truth.

Ask them, “Why should I trust you?” And don’t settle for an answer you can’t believe in.

Why Hard Trust is Gained from Soft Skills

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I was in Toronto. Barely glancing at a $10 bill, I thought, “Ha—they misspelled the word ‘dollar,’ those silly Canadians.”

An instant later, I realized the fault was mine, not Canada’s. But before that realization happened–I had made a judgment. And much trust works that same way.

Think hard data causes trust? Think again. Hard trust is gained from soft skills.

The Myth of Rational Trust

Based on 14,000 takers of the Trust Quotient self-assessment test, we can confidently say most businesspeople overrate the importance of credibility in establishing trust. In practice if not in theory, they believe they can induce trust through PowerPoint. The fact is, more expertise ≠ more trust.

Most also believe that trust takes a long time to build and only a moment to destroy. In fact, trust takes about as long to destroy as it took to build—the time for each is a function of the depth of trust involved.

Both these beliefs—over-stating credibility and misunderstanding the speed of trust—are part of what I’ll call the Myth of Rational Trust. Simply stated, the myth says:

“The decision to trust is a conscious and cognitive process of weighing risks and returns, seeking the option most suited to increase the present value benefits of the one potentially doing the trusting.”

And monkeys fly.

How People Really Trust

People make decisions to trust, or not to trust, well before cognition can show up on the scene. Consider my immediate judgment that the Royal Canadian Mint had neglected to use spellcheck on its currency.

We make many trust decisions not on the basis of analytical criteria, but on the more autonomic instincts of whether something accords with deeply ingrained habits. Is he frowning or smiling? Is he holding out his hand to shake mine? Is ‘dollar’ spelled with one L or two?

Who was I to believe—my spelling instincts, honed since elementary school, or the Canadian government, with whom I have far less experience?  It was, pardon the pun, a no-brainer. I’m a very good speller; and I trust my instincts. Just like you do.  And if that meant Canadians couldn’t spell, I was for an instant willing to conclude that must be the case.

That is how the brain comes to trust.  In the case of currencies, the rational mind can quickly step in and say, “Wait a minute, are you kidding–how likely is that!? Does not compute. Hey, lying eyes, go take another look at that loonie bill.”

Easy enough when it comes to currencies.  But what happens when it comes to more complex phenomena? How do we come to trust in nurses, in salespeople—in politicians and institutions?

Lessons for Trusting

I recently saw an online comment to an economist’s article.  It started out, “I am open-minded, but when I got to your second sentence about the Bush tax cuts I quit reading—you are obviously a fool.”

Not open-minded at all—but neither are most of us.  We all have opinions on the issues du jour, and we dangerously tend to read only those who agree with us.

Which suggests that very few people’s minds are changed by confrontation with disconfirming data.

Instead, they are changed by the deeply-ingrained instincts we have come to rely on.

Personal Trust

In the personal-trust arena, our TQ research shows that the “intimacy” factor is the strongest of the four in the trust equation. Whether someone feels safe and secure sharing information with you is more powerful than your hard-won credentials, fancy slides and long list of past clients.  The saying, “People don’t care what you know until they know that you care” is not some idle sales line; it is deeply grounded in psychology.

A recent Wired story (Why Brains Get Creeped Out by Androids) suggests that we may trust robots doing people tasks, and we may trust people doing people tasks, but we get deeply suspicious if we see robots who look like people doing people tasks.  It has nothing to do with robots or tasks, but simply to an incongruity (“Wait, they’re not supposed to look like that, what’s going on here!?”)

How to be trusted? It lies in connection, focus, good will, hand shakes, empathy, listening, caring, bedside manner.  The road to hard trust is paved with soft skills.

Social Trust

How can Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation regain trust? Not by hiring a PR firm.  How can the US Congress recover from the debacle of its recent circular firing squad exercise? Not by more speeches.

The decision to trust often happens in an instant.  But that instant is just the reaction to a lifetime of conditioning experience.  If we are conditioned to think that all politicians are self-dealing bloviators, we didn’t get there overnight.

Trust takes as long to lose as to gain; and as long again to get it back. The answer to low trust in our companies and our institutions will not be found in quick hits, PR campaigns, new ideologies, changed incentives or new leadership.

It will come about as a natural result of sustained, across-the-board changes in beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. Companies actually have to behave responsibly; Congress actually has to make things work; advisors actually have to have their clients’ best interests at heart.  There is no quick fix. There is no reason to trust someone if they have created a history of being in it for themselves and untrustworthy.

But it can be done. Institutions used to be more trusted than they are now. We un-did that work, we can re-do it again.  And if we do, the instinct to trust can work as quickly as the instinct not to.

Think Before Sending

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What would you do?

That’s what my daughter’s 8th grade class was asked last year. The subject: texting secrets.

One girl had texted to a friend another friend’s embarrassing secret. But she didn’t just send it to one BFF— the text went out to everyone in the class—including, of course, the hapless girl whose secret was no longer.

Sound familiar? I recently received a message sent from one educator to a couple of colleagues regarding a student.  It also went to the institution’s entire mailing list.  This happens a lot in business too.  “Reply all” inadvertently pressed sends messages to the wrong person or people, or to entire lists.  Sometimes those slipped messages lead to a career and/or personal life hurt or destroyed.

The cause: carelessness, haste, anger? Doesn’t really matter. Who would think a simple button on a screen marked “send” could cause so much havoc?

Not Just Another Reply-All Horror Story

We could talk about how to recover from the gaffe via an apology. We could talk about how to use email properly.

Or–we could discuss how these types of issues affect trust.  And they do.  Think of this from the perspective of the Trust Equation.  Sending to the wrong person or group of people reduces Credibility and Reliability.  What gets inadvertently shared decreases Intimacy–after all sharing a secret shows a lack of discretion, even if done by mistake.

Here’s what my daughter learned as a result of this exercise with her class:

  • Double check everything before sending any electronic message (email, text, Facebook, IM)
  • Consider the medium–should the message be sent electronically, or is it better delivered in person or by phone
  • Should it be sent at all, by any medium (is it gossip or otherwise inappropriate to share)
  • Be prepared to do the right thing in the event things don’t work out.

The Big Lesson—Less Is More

As I thought about it, I think the third point—“should it be sent at all”—is by far the more powerful lesson my daughter learned that day.  Think it through.  Take a deep breath.  Count to ten. What’s your role in the situation?  What will the consequences be? Will saying anything really matter in a positive way?

These are profound lessons for all of us.  Adults suffer all the time from not having learned these lessons earlier in life.  How often do we act out and regret later?  How often do we say hurtful things even when we don’t mean to and suffer remorse?  How often do we hurt those we love?

Some time ago I learned from a lawyer colleague I respect and trust, that when it comes to the written and spoken word, less is more.  Shouldn’t we at least think about this before we hit Send?

I think my daughter learned a few rules of email etiquette that day—and one massive lesson about living life as a human being.

I’m pleased it was a topic for an 8th grade class, and it’s not the first time her school addressed real world issues.  I just hope we don’t have to wait for this generation to grow up before these valuable lessons are commonly used in the business community.

Creating a Culture of Trust: Virtues and Values

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This post comes from our upcoming book, The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading With Trust, from the chapter on Implementing a Culture of Trust. Tools for trust initiatives include principles, or values, at the organizational level, and personal attributes, or virtues, at the individual level. The chapter explores five tools for implementing trust change initiatives: leading by example, stories, vocabulary, and managing with wisdom. This post explores two diagnostic tools: the Trust Temperament™ and the Trust Roadmap™.

We will be sharing selected portions of the book with our readers leading up to the publication date. The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook will be available from Wiley Books on October 31, 2011, or you can pre-order The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook today.

What Is a High-trust Organization?

Our definition: an organization of people who are trustworthy, and appropriately trusting, working together in an environment that actively encourages those behaviors in employees as well as stakeholders.

Creating a culture of trust requires a different emphasis than do most change initiatives. What works to reduce accident rates, increase customer-centricity, or become ISO-9000 compliant isn’t the same as what’s needed to create a high-trust organization.

Trust is about interpersonal relations. For people to trust and be trusted by others, they must take personal risks and face personal fears in ways that cannot, by their nature, be fully planned and structured in ways that typical change initiatives can rely on.

That suggests a different emphasis: an initiative built around personal change.

Two Keys to Trust Culture Change: Virtues and Values

Creating a high-trust culture boils down to two main thrusts: virtues and values. “Virtues” are the personal qualities that high-trust people embody, and “values” are what guide the organizations they work in. In trust-based organizations, virtues and values are consistent and mutually reinforcing.

We use these words very intentionally, because they’re commonly understood–and common language matters. Each deserves its own word and understanding, and both are required for trust culture change. In our experience, some companies rightly focus on organizational values, but few focus enough on personal virtues.

 

The virtues of trust are personal, and involve your level of trustworthiness and your ability to trust. The virtues of trust are contained in the trust equation: credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self-orientation.

It is virtuous for someone to tell the truth, to behave dependably, to keep confidences, and to be mindful of the needs of others. Unless people take personal responsibility for their own behavior around trust, the organization will never be a trust-based organization.

 

The values of trust are institutional, and drive the organization’s external relationships, leadership, structure, rewards, and key processes. The values of a trust-based organization are reflected in the four trust principles: other-focus, collaboration, medium- to long-term perspective, and transparency. An organization that espouses these values treats others with respect, has an inclination to partner, has a bias toward a longer timeframe, and shares information.

Trust-based organizations take values very seriously. If your organization has never fired someone for a values violation, then either you’ve been astoundingly successful in your hiring and development efforts, or you’re not a strongly values-driven organization.

Diagnosing Trust

To improve virtues and values, it’s helpful to know where you’re starting from—to have some kind of diagnostic. For virtues, there is the trust quotient: for values, there is the Trust Roadmap™.

Virtues.

The trust quotient is a self-diagnostic taken at the individual level, based on the four values of the trust equation.   With individual data aggregated anonymously at the group level, you can profile the organization in terms of Trust Temperaments (the pair of highest-scoring values in the trust equation for an individual), as follows:

Trust Temperament™ Highest Ranked Attributes Motto
The Expert C, R “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”– Anonymous
The Doer R, I “As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.”– Eleanor Roosevelt
The Catalyst C, I “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”– Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Professor C, S “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”– Albert Einstein
The Steward R, S “My goal wasn’t to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers.” – Steve Wozniak
The Connector I, S “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”– Anonymous

 

Values.

The Trust Roadmap is a diagnostic tool that surveys the Trust Values across components of organizations, as below:

Collaboration Medium- to Long-Term Perspective Transparency Other Focus
External Relationships
Leadership
Structure
Rewards
Processes

 

Generic and organization-specific questions are developed for each of the 20 cells, and the survey administered to groups of stakeholders: customers, employees, managers, for example.   For example, the question for Leadership and Medium-to-Long Term Perspective might be “Your leaders are willing to sacrifice short-term gains for the long-term benefit of the organization.”

The survey results allow a management team to assess, in a structured manner, where the organizational values that drive trust are being implemented, and where they’re not; how those patterns vary across constituencies; and what they feel the priority should be in addressing the issues.  In short, a Trust Roadmap.

The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading With Trust will be published by Wiley Books on October 31, 2011.  Pre-order your copy of The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook today.

What Costs More Than a $1,000 Per Hour Lawyer?

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Beginning just three years ago, some large firm legal fees reached that amount – about $17/minute – providing fodder for legal bloggers, and Internet articles on a variety of topics, including new marketing opportunities and excessive fees for bankruptcy matters to name just a couple. Only senior lawyers in the largest firms actually charge that much, and that’s to large companies on non-commoditized work. What about the rest of us? What makes a service worth that much to us? On my daily walks with Sam, we have a lot of epiphanies. Here’s one we came up with just before a Nor’Easter looming on the horizon. And no, this isn’t a rant about lawyers and their fees.

This is about snowplowing. I can only talk about the Boston area. Here, snowplowing costs anywhere between $35-50 per 3 inches of snow per driveway (the rest of you can fill in your own numbers). The average time per driveway – 3-5 minutes.

Here’s what’s interesting to me. Why is a homeowner willing to pay about $10/minute to anyone with a snowplow, yet would complain about that rate for most other services. I applied the Trust Equation to this question.?

  • Credibility: We’d prefer they not wreck the lawn or dig up the driveway, but if they do, well, things happen. We do want them to actually clean up the snow though.
  • Reliability: Jackpot. We’re paying for them to show up. Fast, and often if needed. If they show up relatively on time, they’re worth it. If they don’t, they’re not. Simple as that.
  • Intimacy: No need to empathize with us or share. Just do what is a straightforward job.
  • Self-orientation: If they want to tell us how great they are, it’s fine–just do the job.

This is a transaction, so Intimacy and low Self-orientation just don’t matter. However, Reliability is so important that we’re willing to pay more per minute than just about any other service we get. Credibility is important only in that the job be done reasonably well.

This made us think–where else is Reliability and Credibility so important that we’re willing to pay extraordinarily high rates so we can get it? Here’s our very short list:

a. Ambulance services. This is way out of line on a per minute basis. We’re paying for the competency to be available when we need it. Imagine if the costs were less, and they were only available at certain times. We have to pay more so they’re ready when we need them.

b. Travel–last minute. When you have to get home fast, you’ll pay multiples of the regular cost. I was in Dallas, and was required to stay 4 hours later than my flight. My round trip was about $350. My return flight 8 hours later on the same day was $1800. I wasn’t happy but I was willing to pay it. While air travel is not incredibly reliable, it’s more reliable than alternatives to travel long distances. I knew I’d get home.

Conclusion? Time sensitive needs merit higher rates, particularly where there are limited resources (like snowplows during a storm, planes to a specific destination, ambulance services), knowing you can use the service and it’s reliable is worth whatever it costs up to a point. What that point is depends on our need at the time.

Are You as Credible as You Think? Probably Not.

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There are lots of ways to build trust with others (four, by our count) and Credibility is a big one. In our Trust Quotient research, Credibility shows up as second only to Reliability as the most favored way to build trust. (‘Most favored’ doesn’t mean ‘most effective,’ but that’s another blog, another day.) 

This makes sense, given the emphasis that most business people naturally place on increasing trustworthiness by demonstrating credentials, experience, and know-how.

The risk is that we stop there or—even worse—spend too much time there. Picture the March of 1,000 Slides.

There’s more to Credibility than meets the eye.

Three Dimensions of Credibility

When thinking Credibility, we mostly think words, as in what you say and how you say it. That means that having information, perspectives, opinions, and recommendations are all important—especially for people in professional services whose very existence depends on high quality advice-giving.

But there’s more. Speaking the truth matters too. A lot. As does delivering your message in a way that makes it easy for others to understand and relate to.

Top Ten List of Ways to Build Credibility

Here’s a Top 10 list of tried-and-true Credibility builders, categorized by Credibility’s three main dimensions.

Feature your expertise and credentials:

1.    Be diligent about researching your customer;

2.    Know about industry trends and information, as well as business news;

3.    Write about your areas of expertise—articles, blogs, white papers;

4.    Host events that bring key stakeholders together.

Improve your delivery:

5.    Use metaphors and stories to illustrate your point;

6.    Practice your delivery so you are clear … and clearly relaxed;

7.    Combine your words with presence—a firm handshake, eye contact (when culturally appropriate), a confident air.

Demonstrate your truthfulness:

8.    Offer your point of view when you have one;

9.    Respond to direct questions with direct answers;

10.   Be willing to tell a hard truth when it’s the right thing to do—including “I don’t know.”

 And as a bonus:

11.   Never ever lie. (This includes tiny little white lies and lies by omission.)

This last category, truthfulness, gets at one of the paradoxes of trustworthiness: The thing we’re most afraid to say is often what will build the most trust.

By the way, our clients tell us the truth-telling part pretty much applies to all cultures. Even in Asian countries, where saving face is paramount, the Trusted Advisor’s dilemma is generally less about whether to tell the truth and more about how to deliver the truth in a respectful and culturally-appropriate way.  

Credibility-Building Can Happen Lightning Fast

This expanded view of Credibility is good news for anyone new to a profession or new to a relationship. This part of trust–building your Credibility–doesn’t have to take time; being refreshingly honest can build trust in an instant.

Most clients and customers are so used to spin they will immediately take note. So you can actually leave the PowerPoint deck back at the office (or bring it as a leave-behind) and focus on engaging in a genuine, transparent, and honest conversation. Heck, you might even build some Intimacy in the process.

Take Stock and Take Action

Feeling stuck in a particular relationship? Do a credibility check. Start with the honesty dimension—it’s the least comfortable and highest payback. Ask yourself what you’re thinking and not saying, or saying to some but not to all.

 Then do something about it. You’ll be glad you did.

Trust on the Toll Road

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A good friend of mine, Bob, recently lost his mother.  Following the funeral, disheveled and still in mourning he took to the road to return to Boston.  Approaching the tolls at the New York Thruway, he tried to slow down and discovered he had no brakes. 

In the split second Bob had to choose what to do, he examined his options.  Hit the cement barrier and risk getting hit from behind or go through the toll and hope the car in front of him was moving away thereby minimizing the risk of injuring someone.  He decided to put the car in park–which only slowed the car a little–and go through the toll. 

Unfortunately the car in front didn’t move away.  Luckily no one was hurt. 

When the police officer showed up, he too had a choice.  He had to determine whether it was, in fact, an accident and that Bob was telling the truth about his brakes failing, or if he was simply telling a tale to get out of a ticket by swaying responsibility. 

The officer chose a third option–he assumed Bob was trying to avoid the $1.25 toll.  What made this officer ignore the more likely choices and go for dishonesty of the third kind?  Was it Bob’s disheveled look?  Did he sound drunk? 

I can understand if the officer thought Bob was lying to avoid a ticket. He’s probably seen many people run through tolls.  What baffles me is why he would think Bob would run a toll when there was a car at the toll booth.   What made him select the most improbable scenario?

The implications for trust are profound.   We can influence our own trustworthiness by reducing our self-orientation, and increasing our credibility, reliability and intimacy. 

Yet those factors don’t operate in a rational vacuum when we consider whether to trust others.   Our upbringing, general experience, specific experiences, psychological makeup and even job responsibilities go into the mix. 

Put yourself in the shoes of the police officer.  Perhaps something similar happened in the past.  Maybe he’s heard so many excuses, that everything sounds like a variation on the theme.  Maybe he was just having a difficult day. 

Maybe he trusted someone’s story that turned out to be a lie once too often.  We want to be trusted, and we would like ourselves and others to be trusting.  We have to recognize when our own issues get in the way of trusting others.  And hope that our own hard work to be trustworthy will be enough for others to trust us. 

What happened to Bob?  The tow truck driver confirmed that the brakes failed.  

And the officer made my friend pay the toll, just in case.