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What Your TQ Score Really Says About You

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I’m Kristin Abele, head of Trust Diagnostics at Trusted Advisor Associates.  I want to share some findings with you based on my eight years working with the TQ Trust Quotient Assessment tool.

The TQ (like IQ, and EQ, in case you didn’t catch that already), is based on the Trust Equation. The Trust Equation is a four-factor statement of the components of trustworthiness, first laid out in the book The Trusted Advisor. Here’s a brief video explaining the elements of the equation.

The TQ gives you a chance to self-assess your trustworthiness in a 20-question online format. It takes only a few minutes, and you get instant online feedback.  The basic test is free; there is a paid option for advanced results.

Go ahead, give it a go.  I’ll wait.

The assessment gives you a few key insights and numbers: your TQ score (a numerical score that says where you fall on a graph of trustworthiness), your strongest trust factor, your biggest area for opportunity, and your Trust Temperament (TM).

Let me help you interpret a few of the results.

What’s in a Number?

Your actual TQ score ranges from 0 – 15. The average score from the 70,000+ people who have taken the TQ to date, is  7.1 on the scale. So, what’s that mean? Is 7.1 the basis for deciding if you’re trustworthy? Is any score below that not-trustworthy? Is any score above that ranking among the Gods of Trust?

It’s tempting to be hard on yourself if your score is below 7.1 (or celebrate if it’s above); tempting, but not necessarily right. Your absolute score can be influenced by your tendency to be hard (or easy) on yourself.

But that’s not the end of the story. Breaking down the TQ score tells you quite a bit.

It’s All About the Factors

The big take-aways from your TQ report are your strengths, your areas for opportunity and your Trust Temperament.

Trustworthiness is made up of four key components: Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy, and Self-Orientation. After completing the TQ, you’ll be shown which factor is your greatest strength, which could use more of your attention, and a little bit about your personality when it comes to trust (your Temperament).

These results are what speak volumes about you – and your overall trustworthiness. Are you highly credible but avoid building any intimacy with your colleagues and clients? Does everyone know just how reliable your are but you tend to always put yourself before your peers?

This is what speaks volumes about the ways in which you are trustworthy – and how you are building trust with co-workers and clients.

 

 

 

Can Trust Be Taught?

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Let’s not mince words. The answer, pretty much, is yes.

The exception is what the academics call social trust—a generalized inclination to think well or ill of the intentions of strangers in the aggregate. That kind of trust ends up being inherited from your Scandinavian grandparents (or not, from your Italian grandparents).

The rest, let’s break it down. First, enough talk about “trust.” Trust takes two to tango. One to trust, another to be trusted. They are not the same thing.

So let’s start by asking which we want to teach: to trust, or to be trustworthy?

Trusting someone is, paradoxically, often the fastest way to make that other person trustworthy—thereby creating a relationship of trust.  People tend to live up, or down, to others’ expectations. So if you can muster the ability to trust another, you’re both likely to reap big returns quickly from the resultant trust.

However: trusting can also be a high risk proposition. The vast majority of business people, on hearing “trust,” will say “that’s too risky.” In other words, they hear “trust” as meaning “trusting,” and they turn off.

On the other hand, there is being trustworthy. If you consistently behave in a trustworthy manner, others will come to trust you, and voila, you have that trusting relationship. Being trustworthy tends to take longer than trusting, but the results are just as good. And, it’s very low risk.

Let me say that again: becoming trustworthy is a low risk, high payoff proposition. This is not a hard concept for people to get, if explained right.

What does it mean to be trustworthy? The trust equation explains it: it’s a combination of credibility, reliability, intimacy, and a low level of self-orientation. You can take a self-assessment test of your own TQ, or Trust Quotient, based on the trust equation.

So the question is: can people be taught to become more credible? More reliable? More capable of emotional connectedness? More other-oriented and less self-oriented?

The answer is yes. Big picture, there are two ways to teach these things. One is to recall Aristotle’s maxim: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”

People can be taught truth-telling, reliability, even other-orientation to some extent by showing them the behaviors—particularly the language–of trustworthy people.

But the deeper, more powerful approach to building trustworthy people starts the other way around: by working on thoughts to drive action. As the Burnham Rosen group articulates this point  “thought drives actions which result in outcomes.”

Many disciplines outside of business know the truth and power of this approach: psychology, acting, public speaking, to name a few. Business doesn’t appreciate it enough. But commonsense does.

Trust can be taught: either by teaching trusting, or trustworthiness. The latter is lower risk, hence the most attractive approach for many in business.  And trustworthiness can be taught via a mix of skillsets and mindsets

It makes sense.

Ian Brodie Takes the Trust Quotient Test: Video Interview

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Ian Brodie is a sales and marketing consultant to professionals. Based in Cheshire, England, Ian’s low-key, self-effacing style belies some deep content mastery.

Ian and I crossed paths years ago at Gemini Consulting, and have gotten back in touch in recent years.  As part of our promotion for The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook, Ian agreed to be a guinea pig and take the TQ (Trust Quotient) Self-Assessment test.

Not only that, but he agreed to share the results – on video! – with TrustMatters readers.

If you’ve been curious about the TQ test, have a look at what Ian (and his wife!) gleaned from it in this YouTube video.

Andrea and I thank Ian for his participation. If you’re interested in the TQ test, you can find out more about it here.

And as long as you’re onsite, have a look at The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook.

Trust and the Standard Deviation

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Those of you who regularly read Trust Matters have probably heard something about the Trust Equation, a formula for figuring out your own individual trustworthiness.

It looks like this:

Where:

T = Trustworthiness
C = Credibility (words)
R = Reliability (actions)
I = Intimacy (safety)
S = Self-orientation (whose agenda are you working?)

You can read more about it in this article:

From this equation, Charlie Green developed the Trust Quotient assessment–20 questions which yield powerful information on not only a person’s overall TQ, but also her or his areas of strength and – let’s be forthright – weakness when it comes to creating trust.

And the Trust Quotient Assessment Says…

Over the past two years more than 10,000 people have taken the TQ quiz. And what a rich and delicious trove of aggregated data that has given us – the largest study of its kind ever done on personal trustworthiness.

One of the key findings is this: in building trust, consistency matters.

The data show that the more consistent a person is across all four areas of the TQ (credibility, reliability, intimacy and low self-orientation) the higher that person’s overall TQ score will be.

Put another way, the higher the standard deviation among the four components’ scores, the lower will be the overall Trust Quotient number. Science has now shown what intuition has always told us. We trust people more when they display all four key factors evenly, when they act consistently. In some ways, this is what we mean when we say ‘integrity’—a sense that we are seeing a whole, that this person walks the talk, there are no secrets, what we see is what we get.

In less mathematical terms …

Imagine that you scored very well on credibility (you really know your stuff), on intimacy (you relate to others on a human level, and are open with them), and on self-orientation (you really listen to other people and want to understand how you can help, not just how you can make a sale.)

BUT–with all of this going for you, if you miss deadlines, show up late or not at all for meetings, and fail to get your part of the project done, no one is going to trust you.

Will they tolerate you? Maybe, if you are the super-expert they need on the job, or the total charmer who makes even wacky excuses sound plausible. But trust you? No. You’re a brilliant or charming flake. You can’t be relied upon.

Does the TQ Contradict Strengths-based Management?

On the face of it, this may appear to contradict the strengths-based approach to management championed by Marcus Buckingham, who argues you’re generally better off working from your strengths than fixing your weaknesses. Because if a charming flake can improve her or his score on reliability, she or he can improve their TQ trust score.

In fact, we don’t think it contradicts Buckingham’s basic proposition; if your natural strength lies in intimacy, for example, you’d do well to use it.  But what if people can’t see it for the strength it is?  What is your flakiness obscures it?

As is true so often, trust may be a bit of a special case. If the appearance of dis-integrity (flakiness, perhaps) is keeping people from seeing your natural strength in intimacy, then improving reliability is a way of enhancing your strength, rather than just shoring up your weakness.

This is just a peek into the tent of our findings from the survey data. Stay tuned to read more in future blogposts.
 

Trust Lessons from Independence Day in Small Town USA, 2009

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In Ludington, Michigan, on July 3 at 9:30PM, it was still light outdoors (Ludington is at the far western end of the Eastern Standard Time Zone).  So it was easy to see the ten blocks of Ludington Avenue, ending at Lake Michigan, where the next day’s parade would be held. 

Two things stood out.  One was that the street had been planted with edgings of red, white and blue petunias, especially for the fourth.

The other was that virtually the length of the parade route, at 9:30PM, was already blanketed (literally, with blankets) and personal lawn chairs (some of them rather expensive) by way of reserving those particular spots for the 1PM parade beginning on the 4th.  

No one had any doubt that every one of those chairs would be there the next day.  No locks, police patrols or citizen brigades needed, thank you very much.

Nor would that be surprising to Ludington’s citizens.  By a (very) unscientific poll, well over 50% of Ludington households don’t lock their house doors at night.  Of course, Ludington is only 20% the size of the Big City of Muskegon, 50 miles away.  But I suspect it’s not all that different in Muskegon. 

The July 4th parade in small towns in America’s Midwest is a distinctive event.  Having been to parades in my youth in towns like Seward, Nebraska and Pompey, New York, I can personally relate, despite having been citified for a few decades since.

The Fourth happens at a glorious time in the calendar, when summer is just hitting full stride.  It is unabashedly patriotic, small-d-democratic, self-congratulatory, and wildly upbeat.  Half the town marches in the parade (fire trucks, beauty queens, conservation groups, HVAC companies, mayors, school bands, veterans and—in Ludington’s case—the Scotville Clown Band, since 1903), and the other half applauds enthusiastically.  All generations are represented, all consuming copious quantities of ice cream and pop (‘soda’ to you ‘coasters). OK maybe a few beers too.  And it’s curious that the celebration of independence is such a community, collaborative affair.

You can get all fancy with trust—and I do, the rest of the year—but it bears noting that there is one simple, in your face, no-BS version of trust in towns like this. 

You can leave your car and house doors unlocked.  ‘Nuff said.

You just don’t do that in South Orange, New Jersey; which is a small town, by the way.  Nor do you do it in most cities I know of.  Fuggedaboutit. 

For those (including me) who live in lock-the-door areas, it has a faint whiff of the naïve about it.  But not to those who live in no-lock towns.  It’s real.  I know, because I remember what it was like, and I got reminded of it again this 4th.

To be fair, there are some social reasons for this.  No-lock towns usually rank very low in diversity, which means everyone feels like they understand everyone else, and they pretty much do — people most easily trust those whom they most resemble.  In small towns, the degrees of separation are very small.  And I suspect (though without data) that the population is fairly stable.  This all makes it pretty easy to trust, to preach trustworthiness, and to enforce both.

I personally resent Governor Palin and others attempting to politically hijack small town values for their own divisive purposes.  I equally resent big city people who look down on small town folk as unsophisticated; they are sadly misinformed. 

But all that’s talk for another time.  On the Fourth of July, in a small midwestern town in the US of A, the glory of what it is like to live in a trusting, interconnected community is on full display.

And along with the sunburn and too many hot dogs, it makes you feel real good.   
 
 

Trust Reader Volume 2

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Greetings.

This is the second in a series of ebooks I’m releasing called The Trust Reader. Each issue will feature a full-length article on trust-related issues, plus synopses and links to two other articles.

The Trust Reader will be published roughly every few months. Articles introduced here will be available thereafter on the trustedadvisor.com website, but you’ll see them here first.

Get the Trust Reader volume 2 here

In this issue, the featured article addresses a key question: Does Trust Really Take Time? Here’s why it’s key.

Purportedly, one of the great economic advantages of trust is the time it saves in the conduct of business. I make that claim, as does Steven H.R. Covey, Jr. Yet, the phrase "trust takes time" is routinely asserted by most businesspeople—including those who agree that trust takes time.

Well, does it or doesn’t it? The lead article answers that question, and is contained in its entirety in this issue.

The other two articles are:

Discounting, Price, Value and Psychology — a look at how buyers really think about money in buying. Worried about price cutting? Read this one.

Client Focus vs. Client Focus Lite — are you really client-focused? Or just faking it. Take a hard look in the mirror before you answer, and read this one.

Both these articles are abstracted in this issue, with links provided. All three articles will now join the permanent collection of trust-related articles on Trustedadvisor.com.

The Trust Reader series joins the Trust Matters Primer series—an occasional selection of the best from from the blog Trust Matters.Download the first edition of the Trust Reader here

Trusted Advisor Associates ebook Series on Trust

You can also find previous issues of the Trust Reader here, as well as copies of The Trust Matters Primer here:

Trust Reader Volume 1

Trust Matters Primer Volume 1

Trust Matters Primer Volume 2

Trust Matters Primer Volume 3

If you would like to receive email updates for the Trust Reader and Trust Matters Primer, please subscribe here.

You can find previous articles published by Charles H. Green at http://trustedadvisor.com/cgreen.articles/

As always, if you prefer not to receive our series, simply email me or click the unsubscribe link below to let us know.

The Trust Reader Volume 2

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Greetings.

This is the second in a series of ebooks I’m releasing called The Trust Reader. Each issue will feature a full-length article on trust-related issues, plus synopses and links to two other articles.

The Trust Reader will be published roughly every few months. Articles introduced here will be available thereafter on the trustedadvisor.com website, but you’ll see them here first.

Get the Trust Reader volume 2 here

In this issue, the featured article addresses a key question: Does Trust Really Take Time? Here’s why it’s key.

Purportedly, one of the great economic advantages of trust is the time it saves in the conduct of business. I make that claim, as does Steven H.R. Covey, Jr. Yet, the phrase "trust takes time" is routinely asserted by most businesspeople—including those who agree that trust takes time.

Well, does it or doesn’t it? The lead article answers that question, and is contained in its entirety in this issue.

The other two articles are:

Discounting, Price, Value and Psychology — a look at how buyers really think about money in buying. Worried about price cutting? Read this one.

Client Focus vs. Client Focus Lite — are you really client-focused? Or just faking it. Take a hard look in the mirror before you answer, and read this one.

Both these articles are abstracted in this issue, with links provided. All three articles will now join the permanent collection of trust-related articles on Trustedadvisor.com.

The Trust Reader series joins the Trust Matters Primer series—an occasional selection of the best from from the blog Trust Matters.Download the first edition of the Trust Reader here

Trusted Advisor Associates ebook Series on Trust

You can also find previous issues of the Trust Reader here, as well as copies of The Trust Matters Primer here:

Trust Reader Volume 1

Trust Matters Primer Volume 1

Trust Matters Primer Volume 2

Trust Matters Primer Volume 3

If you would like to receive email updates for the Trust Reader and Trust Matters Primer, please subscribe here.

You can find previous articles published by Charles H. Green at http://trustedadvisor.com/cgreen.articles/

As always, if you prefer not to receive our series, simply email me or click the unsubscribe link below to let us know.

 

Why Trust Improves Your Bottom Line

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Let’s just face it head on.  Many of you think all the recent hoo-ra about trust is lefty-liberal, softy, wishful thinking. Nice to have, but not the stuff of serious bottom line impact.   

If only the world could be freed of terrorists and Madoffs and Wall Street’s relentless pressure for quarterly performance, then maybe we could afford some trust; but right now, with this economy?  Gwanwidja, Charlie, it ain’t happening.

Or, the most common variation: Hey Charlie, I’m down with the program, but the problem is my boss.  Or the Executive Committee.  Fix them first, then come talk to me.

Well, this is the blog to forward to your boss and the Executive Committee.  Because whoever doesn’t “get” the raw economic power of trust isn’t acting in the best economic interests of the organization.

Let’s break it down into the economic benefits of

•  trusting
•  being trusted (not the same thing)
•  building an organization along trust principles.

How Trusting Adds to the Bottom Line

If you trust someone, you greatly increase the odds of their behaving reciprocally—that is, they become trustworthy.  Don’t trust me on that, read Robert Cialdini, who posits reciprocity as the number one factor driving influence.

If you trust, and the other party behaves reciprocally, all kinds of time and cost can be cut out—mostly time and cost that was engineered in to protect against untrustworthy people.

Specifics?

Trust your suppliers: with advance order information, with cost information, with pricing, with materials requirements, with new design information.  (Don’t, by contrast, create enemies of them by using purchasing as a blunt instrument). 

Trust your customers: develop price and product quotes together with them, share your advance product information, make a point of listening to them, allow them to spend time with you at your offices, get your people to theirs.  (Don’t, by contrast, create enemies of them by surprising them or trying to squeeze the last nickel out of each contract).

What you gain by trusting:  Less due diligence time and cost, shorter elapsed time-to-market, better design quality, higher sales hit rates, lower sales investment cost, more forgiveness of errors, better pricing, higher customer retention.  (Steven HR Covey Jr.in Speed of Trust focuses heavily on the trusting part of trust).

That all adds up to real money.

How Being Trustworthy Adds to the Bottom Line

Take a look at the Trust Equation; take the Trust Quotient self-assessment test yourself.   Being trustworthy means being credible, reliable, safe to be with, and focused more on others than yourself.

Trusting people may be the fastest route to being trusted, though it’s also higher risk.  Being trustworthy also produces reciprocal trustworthiness—it may take a little longer, but it’s lower risk.

Specifics?

Tell the whole truth, don’t just don’t lie.  Don’t over-perform, or under-perform—just do what you said.  Be prepared to recommend a competitor if it’s the right thing.  Don’t manage your earnings, just be transparent about your accounting policies.  Don’t try to control others.  Comment on feelings—yours and others’. Do your level best to actually care—don’t fake it.  Don’t Always Be Closing.  If you don’t know something, say so.  (There are a raft of specific things to do in response to your Trust Quotient, free).

What you gain by being trustworthy: Higher sales closing rates; shorter sales time, more repeat business.  Higher employee retention.  Customer loyalty.  Fewer lawsuits.  More honesty from others.  Fewer competitive bids, more likelihood of your advice being taken.  Higher confidence in your quarterly earnings statements.  Higher customer sat ratings. 

That all adds up to real money too.
 

How Building a Trust-Fostering Company Adds to the Bottom Line

I have suggested  four Trust Principles: these work at the individual as well as the organizational level. The principles are:

1.    Other-focus for the sake of the other
2.    Collaboration
3.    Relationship, not transaction, focus
4.    Transparency

These are not new concepts. If your company conducts all its affairs with these principles in mind, then you live in an organization that creates trusting and trustworthy people, processes and relationships.  And makes a ton of money.

Unless you have brute monopoly pricing power, and don’t care about your reputation or your legacy in the world, then trusting and being trusted at the personal and institutional level is about the best profit guarantee you can get.

It may sound like a Buddhist mantra or a Beatle song, but it’s also an economic model.  Trust pays—as long as you treat profit as a byproduct, not the goal itself.  

Great All-Time Trust-based Selling Insights, #17

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I’m going to hand over the space today to a guest-blogger: Walt Shill at Accenture.  Walt does a weekly internal blog for ACC, and was kind enough to grant us permission to slavishly “re-tweet” his recent blogpost.

If you’re wondering just how to make sense of Trust-based Selling, or to see the power of low self-orientation in the Trust Quotient, I can’t think of a better story than the one Walt shares here.   (Look for the ZZ Top reference).

Take it away, Walt.

Bob and his Two Simple Questions

Years ago I was assigned to work with Bob – a senior Director. I was a struggling manager. People whispered about Bob and many avoided working with him … You see, he had an unusual style that was reminiscent of Columbo – the brilliant TV homicide detective from the 70s played by Peter Falk.

Bob was never accused of being a sharp dressed man …. He always seemed a bit disorganized and seemingly slow to pick up key points …. Bob was unfailingly polite, but he had a way of asking clients odd questions at awkward times… I must admit, as I started I was a little embarrassed to be with him.

I did most of the grunt work of analysis and preparing decks for Bob, but I also accompanied him to many meetings in the C Suites of half a dozen companies…. And just like Columbo’s (and Steve Jobs’) famous line, “Just one more thing”, Bob somehow managed to always ask some version of two simple questions in every meeting……

How’s business? As a meeting started Bob would casually ask “So… How’s business ?” The client would start with a basic answer, but Bob cleverly teased out evermore detail by mumbling: “uh huh”, “yea”, and innocently asking over and over again – “hmmm, so why is that?”

He never, never, never responded that we could help…. in fact he hardly spoke at all… he was just listening very, very intently… and asking gentle questions with such childlike curiosity that the clients could not resist telling him more.

Sometimes the entire hour would pass with Bob’s wandering questions and we would have to reschedule. …Frequently I had been up all night preparing a document for the meeting –and I would get angry that he was wasting valuable time that I could use to impress the client with my brilliant charts and precise data and blinding insights…..

Weeks or even months later, we would follow up on the key issues. …. And our proposals were always spot on – Bob had an incredible insight to the core issues facing the company…..

I began to realize that Bob’s simple question – “How’s business?” had been creating a massive pipeline for us.

How are YOU doing??  As we were wrapping up a meeting, Bob would innocently ask, “So, how are you doing ?” If the client started talking about the company or business, Bob would gently interrupt them and say, “no, I meant how are YOU personally doing ?” ….followed by his usual “why is that ?” ..his odd style conveyed genuine interest and caring … After just 2 or 3 meetings Bob had started a deep personal relationship because of how much the client had revealed about their aspirations, frustrations and personal lives… all of which were filed somewhere in the recesses of Bob’s complex but powerful brain.

My respect for Bob grew ……and today I marvel at how he faithfully served senior leaders on their most critical issues, grew a very big practice and built his career (and helped mine!) … all by simply asking and then intently listening and genuinely caring about the answers to two simple questions:

“So, how’s business?”

“So, how are YOU doing?”

———

What Walt said. 

 

Carnival of Trust for June is Up

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Carnival of Trust

The Carnival of Trust is up for the month of June, hosted by Dave Stein, and it provides a wealth of perspective on the state of trust at the midpoint of 2009.

For those who don’t know him, Dave Stein  is a consummate student of sales. A former sales consultant, trainer and author, he now runs ES Research Group http://www.davesteinsblog.com/esr/ from the hardship environs of Martha’s Vineyard. Think of ESR as the JD Powers or Consumer Reports of the sales training field.
I have gotten to know Dave over the past year and found him to be ethical, smart, insightful, sober (thinking-wise anyway), and possessed of fine judgment.
Just the person to host the Carnival of Trust.

Dave has selected a tasty sampler of things trust-related. Just a few:

And that’s just five. Check the full Carnival of Trust to read those items and the other five, and Dave’s commentary on all of them.

Many thanks to Dave Stein for hosting a solid, content-rich and thought-provoking Carnival. Drop on by and treat your brain to a feast.