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Trust Matters Primer vol. 3

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Announcing Volume 3 of the Trust Matters Primer—the Best of series from the trustedadvisor.com blog. You can download it by clicking here.

I’ve written the ebook series to add more dimensions to the dialogue about trust—to draw connections between otherwise disparate blogposts, to highlight some of the dialogue, and to offer it in a form you can share with others.

What do these three pieces have to do with each other?

  • a random act of kindness on the flight from DFW to Boston
  • a shift in thinking about capitalist theory by a management icon
  • a Harvard Business School study debunking conventional wisdom about cognitive learning.

Hint: they all have to do with interpersonal relationships and trust.

Enjoy.

 

Trust Matters Primer vol. 3

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Announcing Volume 3 of the Trust Matters Primer—the "Best Of" series from the trustedadvisors.com blog Trust Matters.  You can download it by clicking on the link below:

Trust Matters Primer Volume 3

I’ve written the ebook series to add more dimensions to the dialogue about trust—to draw connections between otherwise disparate blog posts, to highlight some of the dialogue, and to offer it in a form you can share with others.

What do these three articles have to do with each other?

  • A random act of kindness on the flight from DFW to Boston
  • A shift in thinking about capitalist theory by a management icon
  • A Harvard Business School study debunking conventional wisdom about cognitive learning.

Hint: they all have to do with interpersonal relationships and trust.

If the interplay of interpersonal relationships and trust interest you in a business context—or any other sphere, for that matter—I hope you will read and enjoy Trust Matters Primer Volume 3. I look forward to your feedback! 

 

  1. Trust Matters Primer Volume 1
  2. Trust Matters Primer Volume 2
  3. Trust Matters Primer Volume 3
  4. Trust Matters Reader

Realms of Trust and Manifestations of Trust

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Most would agree that trust is a hot topic just now.  That’s about the only thing agreed upon about trust, however.  We can’t even decide what it means.

I wrote a post last week called Trust, Trusting and Trustworthiness.  I suggested that much writing about trust confuses these three manifestations.

Think of that post as Managing Trust Part I — Trust Manifestations. Think of this as Managing Trust Part II — Trust Realms.

There are three trust realms in all: interpersonal trust, organizational/institutional trust, and social trust.

The realms of trust are well known to academic trust researchers, not so much to business people. They do make simple common sense, however.

1. Interpersonal trust

Interpersonal trust deals with one-on-one dynamics. Most of my work has focused in this area. It’s the stuff of relationships, selling, advisory businesses, and personal risk-taking.

2. Organizational and institutional trust

This form of trust covers a wide range of issues: the organizational environment conditioning interpersonal trust relationships, the trust of individuals in their organizations and institutions, and the nature of trust relationships between organizations themselves.

Surveys that measure “trust in government” can shift dramatically and quickly, with the election of an Obama, or the humbling of an SEC, for example. In these respects—speed and personalization—organizational trust resembles personal trust. But it also deals with organizational cultures and values—undeniably group phenomena.

3. Social trust

Social trust deals with the generalized beliefs individuals hold about “other people."  Think under what conditions you’re likely to lock your car doors. Unlike the other two realms, this trust doesn’t deal with people as individuals; also, it tends to change only glacially, perhaps across generations.

If we array the realms of trust against the manifestations of trust, as shown below, we can begin to have a structured conversation about trust.

Trust Realms and Trust Manifestations

Manifestation/Realm

 Trusting

Being trusted

State of Trust
Personal      
Organizational      
Social      

 Until then, we are going to have vague, or circular, or meaningless discussions about trust.

When Steven H.R. Covey talks about how trust affects speed and cost, he is largely talking about the manifestion dimension—the presence or absence of a state of trust. But is he talking about the state of personal trust? Or organizational? Or cultural/social?

Gatehouse, a UK communications consultancy, says “business is facing a massive and global crisis of trust right now.”  But what are they talking about?  Which manifestation?  Which realm?  Or are we descending into an inevitable and inescapable downward spiral of rampant anarchy? 

Do they mean that individuals are less trusting of business? Or that more businesses are untrustworthy? Or that the state of economic uncertainty has rendered the state of trust lower?

Paul Seaman’s review of the Edelman Trust Surveys (Would you trust a trust survey?) does a nice job of taking apart the apparent meaning of trust survey data.  A small example: trust in banks is down, trust in government is up: does that mean we want the government to take over banks?

These are not word games.  Intelligent policy formulation depends on being able to clearly define problems. For example:

• When is structural regulation preferable to greater enforcement?
• For what trust issues is transparency an appropriate remedy?
• Do we have any institutions that teach the personal manifestation of trusting?
• If you change personal and organizational trustworthiness, do you have to worry about social trust?

We’re entering a period where trust has gone viral; it’s got buzz. We’re about to see more survey data, telling us with greater and greater precision whether doctors are gaining on nurses in trust ratings, who has the most trusted brand name, and whether trust in Romanian economists went up or down in October. 

Watch out for conflicts of interest: who’s paying for a ranking of trustworthy companies?   What problem is being solved?  What issues are being addressed?

Get ready for many tales, full of sound and fury, signifying—well, just what? That is the question.

 

Day Trader Management

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The NYTimes’ Joseph Nocera  wrote Saturday about the closing of Neil Barsky’s hedge fund, Alston Capital.  Barsky, it seems, is one of the good guys. (The same issue has an article titled “Hedge Fund Manager Accused of Fraud,” just so we keep things in perspective).

One of the reasons Barsky left the hedge fund biz after seven years was:

[he was] “tired of the ways the business had changed. “When I first started in 1998, we used to send out quarterly numbers. Now investors want weekly numbers. Professor Louis Lowenstein” — the iconoclastic and recently deceased Columbia University business law professor — “has a great line in one of his books: ‘You manage what you measure.’ ”

I for one wouldn’t call it a ‘great line,’ but the practice has certainly become widespread—and we are generally the worse for it. Let me explain.

If Measurement is Good, How Much More Measurement is Better?

Nocera provides another example of change, in his fascinating book Good Guys and Bad Guys.  In the mid-1970s (not that long ago for some of us) investors couldn’t be dragged out of bank savings accounts into new-fangled money market funds. Too risky, doncha know.

Fast forward to 1987, the go-go ga-ga days when everyone was focused on—daily mutual fund prices. Awfully risque.

But it’s not just finance. MBA programs and systems consulting firms have been pushing a hot product for some years now. It’s sold as efficiency, liquidity, process outsourcing–but at its heart is Lowenstein’s ubiquitous link between measurement and management.  More measures, more frequent, more detailed: equals better management.

If you can measure it, you can manage it; if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it; if you can’t manage it, it’s because you can’t measure it; and if you managed it, it’s because you measured it.

Every one of those statements is wrong. But business eats it up. And it’s easy to see why.

I just got an iPhone app that lets me check my QuickBooks account. Now, of course, I crave my receivables data updated instantly, constantly, 24-7. Because I can. And because more is better. Isn’t it?

A consultant friend was about to be hired to help improve engagement survey scores for an executive’s team.  He tells me::

“In no time, you heard middle management’s attitude evolve; ‘OK, this group is going to meet its goals; we are not going to be the ones lagging behind on these numbers. We will be able to show measurable improvement in engagement.’ And so they were about to turn ‘engagement’ into another meaningless exercise in meeting the numbers.”

The ubiquity of measurement inexorably leads people to mistake the measures themselves for the things they were intended to measure. It doesn’t have to be this way–but it too-often is.

Even Malcolm Gladwell feeds the measurement frenzy. In his current New Yorker article How David Beats Goliath, he cites Vitek Ranadive. Ranadive has made a career of turning un-integrated batch processes into aggregated real-time processes—faster, more data-rich, integrated. He suggests the problem with national economic policy is that the Fed has to wait weeks for data.  Presumably if the Fed worked with real-time data, we’d have better economic decisions. Call it day-trading national interest rate policy.

If Barsky thinks weekly investment numbers for his hedge fund are too short-term, let’s hook him up with Ranadive. Set up the databases right, and we could all be day-trading hedge funds! And of course, there’d be an app for that.

Management by Measurement Isn’t Just a Financial Disease

If MBMM—management by massive measurement—actually worked, day-traders would outperform Warren Buffett. I think they don’t.

The US mortgage industry morphed from a web of relationships (banks, bankers, home-owners) into a global impersonal market of short-term transactions. More liquid? Yes. More efficient? Yes. Lower cost of funds? Yes again.

But today’s meltdown arose precisely because replacing lengthy relationships with multiple transactions, substituting markets for relationships, and metrics for management leaves nothing but short term, impersonal money at the heart of business.  The saying on Wall Street became, "I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone–do the deal."  On Main Street, it translates as, "just tell me you’re going to meet next month’s metrics."  It’s seductive, and it’s addictive.  And not good for business.

When hooked up to its kissing cousin incentives, MBMM is a powerful drug.  As incentives critic Alfie Kohn says, "Incentives work.  They incent people to get more incentives."  Like I said, addictive.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with measuring. Or transactions. Or markets. They’re fine things.

But undiluted and without moderating influences, they become not just a bad deal; they can be a prime cause of ruining the whole deal.

 

 

How Can I Get Them to Trust Me?

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The trust equationHow can I get them to trust me? 

It’s an important question for lots of people: financial planners, TV news anchors, IT help desk people in companies, HR folks who want a seat at the table, pharma company management, and parents and teenagers.

There are three broad approaches to getting others to trust you.  They are not mutually exclusive, and are probably not exhaustive—but they come close.

Of course, you can’t control another human being.  Trying to do so will paradoxically destroy their trust in you.  Which is why all three approaches involve full acceptance of the one whose trust you seek.

Trust Creation Strategy 1: Trust Them. 

We are powerfully wired as part of our social instincts to engage in reciprocal exchanges with each other.  These acts of reciprocity create networks of cumulative obligation—or of enmity. 

If someone behaves well toward me, I “owe” that person parallel behavior.  This simple fact underlies the social role of etiquette, as well as things like gifts, Don Corleone’s power, or ritualistic forms of greeting like secret handshakes.

We are powerfully motivated to return in kind what we are given.  If you want to be trusted—first seek to trust.

Trust Creation Strategy 2: Be Trustworthy. 

It sounds trite, but it’s not.  It is a strategy of attraction, not promotion.  To be trusted, try to be worthy of that trust.  All else equal, people trust those who are worthy of trust.  And people have finely honed capabilities of discrimination that far exceed our abilities to articulate them.

Which begs the question: what constitutes trustworthiness?  Steven M. R. Covey,  following consistently in his father’s Seven Habits behavioral pattern, identifies 13 behaviors—phrased as imperative-form verbs like ‘get better,’ or ‘confront reality.’ 

Much though we may like verbs–they suggest definitive actions we can take–they are misleading.  You don’t make people trust you, they choose to do so.   You attract trust by being who you are, not by acting upon others. 

I prefer the Trust Equation: it is couched in the ways people see us—as attributes.  Four of them pretty much sum it up: credibility, reliability, intimacy—and whether we are seen as self-oriented, or other-oriented.

This definition of trustworthiness underpins the Trust QuotientTM self assessment test—take it here and find out how trustworthy you are.

Trust Creation Strategy 3: Listen.  

The single most powerful trust-creating action we can take is to give to another the fine gift of our own attention.  To listen—intently, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, without simultaneous cogitation, and devoid of judgment. 

This has nothing to do with the content of what is being heard.  It is simply about the act of offering attention.  It translates, to the one being listened to, as an act of respect.  As such, it triggers the reciprocity reaction: we are willing to listen to those who have listened to us. 

All three strategies, to work, must be done cleanly.  While we can all become more trustworthy, or better listeners, or better trustors ourselves, we have to keep our motives intact.

If we want others to trust us solely as means to our own ends—they won’t.  The concepts of giving freely, and without attachment, are key. The paradox is: if you do these things, you become trusted.  But if you set out to do them in order to be trusted, so that you can etc. etc. etc.—you don’t.  
 

Trust, Trusting and Trustworthiness

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The word ‘trust’ gets used in many ways.  Consider the simple joke, “I’d trust Bill Clinton with the economy—just not with my daughter.  On the other hand, I’d trust George W. Bush with my daughter.  The economy, not so much.” 

Considering that we tend to use one word to cover so many duties, it’s surprising we ‘get’ the meanings as well as we do.

The Word ‘Trust’ Gets Used Imprecisely

Let’s break it down.

There are three ways we talk about ‘trust.’ 

1.    There is trust, the verb: to trust.  The one who trusts, the act of trusting. 

2.    There is trustworthiness, a noun.  A characteristic or trait of the one who is trusted.

3.    There is trust, the noun: a quality of the relationship between people, the level of trust that exists between them.

Here is Steven Covey, a well known writer on trust, using the same word to describe all three situations: 

•    “Trust is a competency…There is a risk in trusting people, but there is a greater risk in not trusting them.”  (Meaning 1, the verb: to trust)

•    “Trust is a form of both character and competence….Investors invest in and customers buy from brands they trust.”  (Meaning 2, the noun: trustworthiness).

•    “Low-trust, low-performance organizations typically exhibit [certain] cultural behaviors” (Meaning 3, the noun: the state of trust).

We usually infer the intended meaning well.  Still, it creates confusion about trust itself when we are not clear. 

I hear all the time, “Trust is nice to have, but this is a tough environment, and you can’t take that kind of risk around here.”  When someone says that, I know they are confusing trust and trustworthiness. 

To trust someone is to take a risk.  There is no trusting without risking, in fact.  (As long as we’re talking Presidents, Ronald Reagan’s “trust but verify” was a bit of political rhetoric: if you have to verify, it ain’t trust.)   

Yet to be trustworthy is the opposite of risky.  Others strongly trust those who are honest, believable, candid, unselfish, high integrity, direct, and so forth.   It’s a lot less risky to be trusted than it is to have people suspicious of you. 

The confusion grows when people focus on trusting or being trusted to the exclusion of noticing high-trust environments (where people both trust and are trustworthy). 

You Can’t Manage Trust if You Can’t Define It

To accurately assess, describe, measure and manage trust, we have to get clear on the concepts, the language. Trusting creates trustworthy people, who then attract more trusting from others; pretty soon, you’ve got a whole lot of trust going on.

You can’t build trust if you don’t know which meaning you’re playing with.  Try figuring which meaning of trust is intended in this typical quote from the Edelman Trust Survey: 

Trust in business around the world is, generally, lower today than it was a year ago, according to the Edelman report. And, generally, CEOs and other leaders aren’t held in especially high esteem.

Does this mean buyers are less willing to trust these days?  Or that businessmen are less trustworthy?  Or that the state of trust in the world has declined? Is there causality here or not?  If so, what drives what?

And therefore what are we to do with such data?  Educate people about risk-taking?  Step up regulatory enforcement?  Or increase engagement between business and customers? 

Asking “do you trust XYZ” over time offers the appearance of precision—“it’s up X%, it’s down Y%”—but without any context, it’s hard to say what it all really means.  

It’s no surprise that “trust” has such a “soft” image; casual use of words creates the impression that trust itself is soft and fuzzy, hardly the stuff managers should busy themselves with.

The fact is, all three meanings can be defined, measured, taught and managed—but only if we’re clear just which meaning is being measured and managed.

For examples of metrics that deal strictly with trustworthiness, see The Trust Equation – in its online self-assessment form, the Trust Quotient (go on, it’s free!).

For an example of how to teach and manage trusting, see this on the risk management tool of  Name It and Claim It.

For a good example of the state-of-trust, see a sampling of economists’ and social scientists’ views earlier this year at Trust Trust Trust.

I trust you’ll find me trustworthy enough to help increase our mutual trust.   

 

Buying Lessons from a Master Salesman

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I spent some time in South Florida this weekend with Sam, a retired former rep for a national clothing manufacturer—that is, he wholesaled clothing lines to retail stores and chains. His territory was New York.  Here’s what he taught me about buying.

How Buyers Say They Buy–from Expertise

A few years ago, he got a terrible pain in his left knee.  Three doctors in a row said he needed either a knee replacement or arthroscopic surgery.  A fourth doctor said he suspected it was actually a hip problem which caused a pinched nerve, which resulted in knee pain.

“I’m not a hip guy,” said doc four, “but my new young colleague is.  I’d like you to have a chat with him.  “Fine,” said Sam, “anything to get rid of this debilitating pain so I can get back to tennis and golf.”

“The doctor was young,” Sam said.  “That was no problem.  But he wouldn’t look me in the eye. He told me it was a hip problem all right, and all those other fancy doctors had it wrong.  None of them had even taken an x-ray of my hip, but he did.”

“Problem was, I couldn’t get over him not looking me in the eye.  If a buyer or a seller won’t look the other in the eye, I just don’t trust him.  Kiss of death and all that.  So I says to him, ‘hey, I’m over here—who you talking to?’  He just said he was a distracted kind of guy, nothing to worry about.”

“But that’s exactly what I worry about.  So I went back to his boss, Doc 4, and I said no offense at all, I just think I’ll look for someone with a little more experience.”

I asked, “Sam, you told me you didn’t trust the guy; why didn’t you tell his boss?”

“Well,” Sam said, “I don’t want to be ruining some kid’s medical career, so I just made a plausible excuse.”

And there you have it.  Sam—a highly experienced and successful salesman, basically says people buy on trust, including him.  And yet, when asked by the seller (Doctor #4) why he didn’t buy, he lied—he said it was lack of experience.  He didn’t tell the truth–which is that he didn’t trust the young doctor.

How Buyers Really Buy–From Trust

So it always is.  Sellers think buyers buy on expertise; they don’t.  They buy on trust.  And when they ask buyers why they didn’t buy, the buyers claim it was on expertise.  And since that’s the answer sellers want to hear, they believe it. 

The truth is otherwise.  As Jeffrey Gitomer puts it, people buy with the heart, and rationalize it with their brain.  We overrate the importance of processes–and underrate the importance of connection. 

The irony is that young doc was right.  Sam underwent arthroscopic knee surgery with a high-reputation doctor in South Florida, and the result was nothing but more pain. 

A year later, Sam visited a hip specialist in NY who diagnosed hip troubles just by watching Sam walk.  He got a hip replacement two months later, and shot a 47 on the front nine a few weeks ago–pain free.

The young doc was right.  Unfortunately–So What.  He treated the patient like a case study, not a human being.

Sam would be the first to tell you: being right is vastly overrated.  Earning the right to have people believe you’re right—that’s where the trust comes in. 

That’s trust.  That’s how people buy.  That’s good selling.  
 

The Shortest Route to Sales is Not the Direct Route

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I’m told that the old tale of the frog in boiling water is false.  Supposedly, a frog placed in a pot of cold water will stay put, even when the water is gradually heated—all the way up to the point that the frog itself boils along with the water.

Even if it isn’t true, it ought to be.  Because it’s a wonderful metaphor for the biggest single thing wrong with sales.
 

The Single Biggest Mistake Made in Selling

Business in general, but particularly sales, has fallen into the trip of “more is more.”  More detail is better.  Greater frequency is better.  More measurement is better.  But gradually, like the mythical frog, the system can produce the opposite of what was intended.

The implicit assumption—increasingly explicit in large systems, projects and sales management tools like Salesforce.com—is that if you can break things down into constituent parts, then you can manage the whole just by micro-managing all the parts. 

This is not a dumb idea.  It’s the concept of division of labor; it’s what makes massive projects possible.  There’s a lot to like about it.

But there’s one huge thing wrong with it—the belief that the goal of the process is the sale itself.

Suppose you’re a customer.  Suppose the person selling to you is entirely driven by a system, process, and mindset that their goal is to get you to buy.  Now, if that is their over-riding goal, then by definition, your goals must take second place if there is ever a conflict. 

And oh, yes, there will be conflicts.  With sellers managing zillions of bytes, items, events, meetings, decisions, calls, qualifications, they frequently have to decide–shall we do what the customer wants?  Or what we want?  It’s a no-brainer for the system; make the decision that objectively maximizes the chance of us getting the sale.

By this view—the dominant view of selling—you the customer are an object, a poker chip in a competitive game.  No matter how good sellers are at interpersonal skills or consultative selling, the inescapable point of this approach is that the customer is a means to the seller’s ends. 

You may be thinking, ‘well, duh, that’s the nature of selling!”  Well, no, it isn’t.  It isn’t even the most effective approach to selling. Breaking down the process into innumerable smaller pieces doesn’t fool the customer–but, froglike, it allows the seller to believe he is effectively selling.
 

The Goal of Great Sellers is Not to Get the Sale

The whole problem arises from the beginning assumption that the goal of sales is to sell.   The really successful salespeople—whether in professional services or jet engines or new cars—realize the paradox at the heart of sales:

The true goal of sales is to help the customer.  The sale is a byproduct of helping the customer—not the goal itself.

The distinction is not trivial; it makes all the difference in the world.  If I as a customer learn that you are willing to put my needs ahead of your own, then—paradoxically—I trust you. 

And if I trust you, I will buy from you. 

That simple logic–you put my needs before yours, I trust you, I buy from you–turns out to yield more powerful sales results than the most elaborate of methodologies all aimed at achieving my needs first. 

The best sales systems/processes in the world are based on breaking down the process of getting a sale.  But in so doing, they break down the one critical element—trust—that drives the most, and the biggest, and the most profitable sales. 

It’s truly a paradox.  The best sales come from consciously not trying to get the sale, but in being willing to subordinate your interests to the customer’s. 

You get the most by trying not to get the most.  The best sales come from not trying to sell. 

Buddhism?   A Beatle song?  Maybe, but also a powerful business model.  And every great salesman knows the truth of it.

The problem is, all those pretty good salespeople are slowly boiling–and not noticing.
 

25 Behaviors that Foster Mistrust

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Please welcome Peter Vajda, a frequent commenter on this blog, and a respected thought leader, coach, writer, and co-founder of SpiritHeart.  I’m delighted to yield the floor to him for one of his many fine articles.

“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.” —
Ralph Waldo Emerson  

All of life is relationship – even life at work. And the most critical, foundational building block of a team is trust. Without trust most teams are really disparate collections of individuals called groups. The element that creates or erodes trust is your individual behavior.

Trust can support teams to go the extra mile, work for the greater good of the team and the organization, foster open and honest communication and engender mutual respect and support.

Distrust, on the other hand, often stems from a “me first” mind-set that leads to destructive conflict, egoism, and a “going through the motions” attitude.

Trite and worn it may be, but “There is no ‘I’ in team”  is a fact of life at work.   When trust is lacking among team members, they spend inordinate amounts of time and energy resisting others’ inappropriate behaviors, reacting to others’ disingenuousness, playing politics, resisting meetings, and feeling reluctant to ask for, or to give, support.  In a culture characterized by mistrust, relationships suffer.  And when relationships suffer, performance, production and profits suffer.

How might you be contributing to mistrust on your team?

Here are 25 behaviors that contribute to creating team mistrust:

1. You fail to keep your promises, agreements and commitments.
2. You serve your self first and others only when it is convenient.
3. You micromanage and resist delegating.
4. You demonstrate an inconsistency between what you say and how you behave.
5. You fail to share critical information with your colleagues.
6. You choose to not tell the truth.
7. You resort to blaming and scapegoating others rather than own your mistakes.
8. You judge, and criticize rather than offer constructive feedback.
9. You betray confidences, gossip and talk about others behind their backs.
10. You choose to not allow others to contribute or make decisions.
11. You downplay others’ talents, knowledge and skills.
12. You refuse to support others with their professional development.
13. You resist creating shared values, expectations and intentions in favor of your own agenda; you refuse to compromise and foster win-lose arguments.
14. You refuse to be held accountable by your colleagues.
15. You resist discussing your personal life, allowing your vulnerability, disclosing your weaknesses and admitting your relationship challenges.
16. You rationalize sarcasm, put-down humor and off-putting remarks as “good for the group”.
17. You fail to admit you need support and don’t ask colleagues for help.
18. You take others’ suggestions and critiques as personal attacks.
19. You fail to speak up in team meetings and avoid contributing constructively.
20. You refuse to consider the idea of constructive conflict and avoid conflict at all costs.
21. You consistently hijack team meetings and move them off topic.
22. You refuse to follow through on decisions agreed upon at team meetings.
23. You secretly engage in back-door negotiations with other team members to create your own alliances.
24. You refuse to give others the benefit of the doubt and prefer to judge them without asking them to explain their position or actions.
25. You refuse to apologize for mistakes, misunderstandings and inappropriate behavior and dig your heels in to defend yourself and protect your reputation.

By contrast, when you authentically show up in integrity, and allow your vulnerability to show, others see you as genuine, warts and all.  As such, your teammates will begin to trust you and gravitate towards you as you have created a personal container of safety in which others feel they can relate to you in an equally genuine fashion.

Communication and true teamwork are functions of trust, not technique. When trust is high, communication is easy and effortless. Communicating and relating are instantaneous. But, when trust is low, communicating and relating take effort, and are exhausting, and time and energy consuming.

Are you guilty of contributing to mistrust?

“The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.”
–Henry L. Stimson

Trust at O’Hare Airport

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I flew Friday night from DC to Kansas City, by way of O’Hare.  That’s redundant, everything is by way of O’Hare.

We left from Gate B8.  I got to my seat, put my MacBook Air in the seatpocket ahead of me, and settled in.  After a few minutes, the pilot announced the equipment had a problem, and would we all please deplane to board another aircraft at Gate B7.

We grumbled but got up to go.  As it happened, I was last out of the plane.  I talked with another passenger for 20 minutes until we boarded the new plane.  I reached into my briefcase to put my computer in the seatpocket and—heart-drop.  I had left it in the other plane at B8.

Why You Can’t Trust Strangers

I ran out the door, back to B8.  The gate agent said the cleaning crew had not been in the plane, and it was empty, but he couldn’t allow me in—he would go look for me.   He did, and after a bit too long, returned—empty-handed.

I ran back to the plane at 7B, whereupon the pilot—same pilot, same crew—came back with me and went in himself.  No computer.

We had to leave for KC .  I filed a baggage report when I got there.  I was cautiously optimistic.  I was 98% confident I had left it in the plane, and 100% sure the only other possibility was the gate area.  I gave it 50% odds I’d see it again.

By end of Saturday, I dropped the odds to 25%.  I emailed O’Hare baggage too.  By Sunday evening, I made plans to replace the computer.  Monday afternoon, 10 minutes before walking into the computer store, I got a phone call. 

It was from Francisco Q., of West Shakespeare Street, Chicago.  He asked for me by name, and told me he had found a computer.  He said he was an employee not of United, but of an O’Hare catering service. 

He hadn’t found it in the plane or the gate area.  It was in an O’Hare parking lot, in a plastic bag.  He said a friend bought a charger (the battery was depleted), and knew how to find my name from the Mac Address Book function. 

Francisco wanted to know how I wanted him to send it to me. I said “fast,” and he agreed to do so.  I was beside myself with relief, and offered him several hundred dollars as a reward.  He said little about that.  I planned to send a check by FedEx to him the next day.

The next day he called to ask, apologetically, if I could send the money before he sent the computer, as it was going to cost him a lot to ship, and he was out the cost of the power cord too.  He asked if he could pick up the money at Western Union–the same day.

Once Burned–Do You Give Up Trusting Strangers?

I can hear what you’re thinking.  But I could hear his voice, and I had no trouble believing him.   I sent him the reward, plus reimbursement for the power cord, and gave him my FedEx account number.  (Do you know how much poor people pay in fees to use Western Union?  No wonder they stay poor).

You can draw your own conclusions about United Airlines ground employees (myself, I still don’t know)–and about Francisco Q.  In fact, you probably already have. 

So tomorrow morning, when FedEx arrives, we’ll know whether or not I was right to trust Francisco.  If I was wrong, I’m not out of pocket just a computer, but a few hundred dollars as well, and will publicly feel stupid.

If I was right, I’ll have my computer a bit faster, and feel better about the human race.  And so will Francisco.  And I think you will too.

I’ll let you know. 

Meanwhile—place your bets in the comments section below.  I’m giving heavy odds on Francisco.