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Do You Trust the Taxi-Driver? Or Not?

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I spent last week in Denmark, 40 miles outside of Copenhagen. While nearly every Dane speaks near-perfect English, I of course stand out as an American.

I took a taxi from a resort hotel venue to the local train station. The fare was 70 kroner (about 15 dollars). I gave the driver a 200-kroner note. He gave me back 30 kroner change.

So here’s the question: If it were you in that situation, what would you instantly assume about what is going on?

Trusting vs. Being Trustworthy

Much of what we usually talk about on Trust Matters is trustworthiness, as opposed to trusting. They are not the same thing; in fact they are quite distinct.

The ability to trust strangers (as will be described in this week’s Trust Quotes interview with Eric Uslaner—tune in Wednesday) is instilled in us when we were young, and does not change easily. Trustworthiness, on the other hand, feels less risky and is more teachable.

The taxi driver incident is about trusting, not trustworthiness: and it offers a quick litmus test of your propensity to trust. Which do you instinctively assume:

  1. You assume that obviously the taxi-driver made a mental slip, thinking you had given him a 100-kroner note, rather than a 200-kroner note. It is early in the morning, perhaps he hasn’t had his coffee. You politely point out you had given him 200.
  2. You momentarily think, “What is going on here? Why did he do that?” and then just as quickly assume he probably just had a momentarily lapse. Since the 200-kroner note is still in his hand, you are comfortable pointing at it and smiling, so that he will notice his error.
  3. You are mildly annoyed: you think, “He can’t be pulling this move, can he?” You quickly realize, however, there is no risk here; you simply point out the 200-kroner note still in his hand, somewhat clumsily sitting on his lap. “I gave you 200,” you firmly point out, realizing also he had plausible deniability—if pressed, he’d almost certainly insist it was an honest mistake.
  4. Adrenaline rises in you instantly: you think, “What do you take me for, some naïve foreigner you can hustle? No way, Jose, are you getting away with this crap—not with me, you don’t.” You point directly at his hand, still guiltily holding on the to the 200-note, and say grimly with clenched teeth, “You’re short, buddy; give me the other 100, and you can forget about a tip.”

There is no right or wrong answer here, there are simply degrees of propensity to trust. Whether your answer is ‘smart’ is also situational; you may answer differently in rural Denmark at 9AM than you would in downtown Hamburg or Detroit at 2AM (and if not, you’re naïve).

Given that, if your answer is:

  1. You are very trusting, more so than the average person in the world. Depending on the situation, you may be too trusting, in fact, for your own good.
  2. You make a distinct choice to note your suspicions, but to act as if you do not have them; people read you as responding from trust, though you haven’t given up your objectivity about risk.
  3. You’re a bit suspicious. While most would not take offense at your response, neither are you likely to take advantage of some opportunities presented in life. Your basic response to life is one of caution.
  4. You believe you don’t have much control over your life, and that others know it and are out to get you before you get them. You expect little of others, and are rarely disappointed.

The interesting thing about trusting-ness is that it is catching. The way you behave toward others influences the way they respond back to you.

Whether you expect the worst of people, or the best of people, you’ll pretty much be right.

Act accordingly.

Robert Porter Lynch on Trust, Innovation and Performance (Trust Quotes #2)

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Robert Porter Lynch may be one of the best trust thinkers you haven’t heard of.  A long-time thought leader in strategic alliances, he has written several books on collaboration and innovation. He quotes Robert Frost, has studied how the Greeks created trust, and counter-balances Machiavelli. He is equally at home with high tech companies and with laborers in the trenches.

He’s currently working with Paul R. Lawrence (Professor Emeritus, Organization Behavior at Harvard Business School) on Lawrence’s new book: Driven to Lead, and his own book: Leadership and the Architecture of Trust (to be published)

Excerpts from our Interview:

CHG: Welcome to the Trust Quotes series, Robert. You cover a range of trust-related topics, but let’s start with one. You talk about the strong link between trust and innovation. Can you explain that link to us?

RPL: Absolutely. All innovation comes from people who think differently — that is, one perspective meets another, and something new can be born. If two people in the same room think alike, one is unnecessary when it comes to innovation,. The eminent psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung wrote: The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension between opposites.

But two differing perspectives don’t automatically create something new, and all too often the differences become destructive: like Republicans vs. Democrats, old vs. new, my way or the highway.

So the art becomes: how can you increase the creative aspect of interactions between opposites? And the answer is trust. When this tension exists in a trusting environment, people’s creative juices are aligned, and they become jointly innovative, thus trust is an alignment of human energy. This aligned energy is also referred to as synergy – something that is so often elusive in organizations and relationships.

CHG: That’s fascinating. Earlier in this series, Ross Smith of Microsoft said very much the same thing. Are you two in cahoots?

RPL: Nope, never heard of him, but that’s how memes work. That and he’s obviously an insightful man!

The Trust-Innovation Link

CHG: Well, how does creating greater trust enable greater innovation?

RPL: Turns out that’s a great question. Let me re-tweak it a bit, if I may. The question is: how can teams act at the highest level of performance? And the reason I phrase it that way is that there’s solid evidence to show that the highest team performance comes from trust. So high performance teams ought to know something about trust.
CHG: Where did you look, and what did you find?

RPL: I spent 2 years looking over the worst-to-first instances in sports: such as Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers of 1960 going from the bottom of the league to the Superbowl, or Pat Riley taking the L.A. Lakers to the NBA championship, or the most exciting of them all — arguably the greatest worst-to- first performance of all time, the 1980 American hockey team that won Olympic Gold against all odds, culminating in a win over the monstrously dominant Russian team.

One thing people forget is that Coach Ross Brooks — a man who had himself had been turned down from an earlier Olympic team — turned down a player who himself had more talent and better credentials than probably any other player on the team.

Why would a coach refuse a superior player as you’re heading into the Olympics? Well, the player was asked to practice with the team, and the team confronted the coach unanimously, saying ‘you can’t hire him.’

‘Why not?’ asked the coach.

“Because he doesn’t give 100%,” the team said.

“But he’s more talented than anyone else, even at less-than-full effort, he’s arguably the best player on the ice,” the coach protested.”

“But coach,” the players said, “if you never know what effort he’s going to give, you can’t trust what he’ll do. You never know how much game he’s bringing. You cannot depend on him to be reliable.  He wasn’t a collaborative kind of guy, he’d rather try to score himself than pass the puck to someone better positioned.”

That’s why in hockey they still call Wayne Gretzky the “Great One:” because he not only scored more goals than any other player, he also had more assists – he was the ultimate team player.

And it is this sense that permeates all great teams. They trust each other; they trust each other to give the utmost to the team. Which means, everyone can rely on everyone else’s motives, and everyone can trust the results. Unqualified commitment by each member of the team drives trust, and trust enables high performance.

That’s the link.

CHG: I get it. So, where are some lessons for business?

RPL: Well, you’d think way more businesses would grasp the obvious economics of collaborating — cross functional teams, innovative supply chains, alliances and joint ventures, for example. But very few companies do them right—because they don’t trust, because they don’t know how trust is created or destroyed.

CHG: How does that play out?

RPL: Todd Welch and I researched this; and the one thing we found was that unless there is trust at the top of the organization, collaborations don’t work. When trust is lacking, legal agreements are erroneously expected to fill the gap. And, of course, the longer the legal agreement, the stronger the distrust, because nearly all legal agreements actually generate more distrust, exacerbating fears and thus making it less likely the venture would succeed. You could make book on it.

CHG: You told me a story of a client who does major huge deals on a handshake basis. What’s the real story behind that one?

RPL: That is the real story. The only thing surprising is that the rest of us consider it surprising. The company is Daymon Worldwide, which provides private label brands to the grocery industry. I’ve seen Du Pont and Merck put a billion-dollar joint venture together on a handshake, and the legal agreements followed a year later. I witnessed Fleet bank enter a multi-million construction of their headquarters on a handshake with Gilbane Construction company. Handshake deals are far more common than many think.

CHG: You have developed a couple of models for thinking about trust; can you tell us briefly about them?

RPL: One of the primary reasons trust has been an elusive mystery is because we have either ambiguous or complicated understanding about why humans act the way they do. Recently Paul Lawrence has cracked the code on human behavior and provided a very elegant way of explaining what others have made so convoluted. Anyone from senior execs to high-school students grasps it in about five minutes: Here’s a brief explanation.

Trust and Ethics

CHG: What’s your view of the connection between trust and ethics? And what’s the state of ethics in business these days?

RPL: It goes without saying that ethics are in an abominable state of affairs, but I’m not sure that’s really different. Washington is better now than it was in the 1870’s, and business is probably no worse than it’s ever been. That’s an empty compliment because poor trust is very, very expensive. The biggest problem with ethics is the illusion we all have that good ethics would cure the problems of distrust.

Ethics actually creates a dilemma for building trust. While the lack of ethics will definitely destroy trust, the presence of ethics may only bring trust to a neutral point. Good ethics implies “I won’t do something wrong;” it takes the fear out of the picture. But it doesn’t mean “I’ll be effective,” nor “use sound judgment,” nor “be collaborative,” nor “compassionate,” nor “spontaneous.” Other things are necessary.

We all know ethical people who are ornery, dispassionate, inconsiderate, self-righteous, or uncooperative; thus while “trustworthy,” they are still not able to generate a trusting relationship. Trust embraces far more than ethics.

Real trust comes from people who are willing to be highly cooperative as well as ethical. Trust manifests when three things are boldly present: good character, good competence, and good collaboration. When we see great trust, we see people who know that their self-interest must always be put into a bigger picture: what’s in the mutual interest of the relationship itself.

Just yesterday I was asked to help rebuild a relationship between two business partners where the trust had broken down. The older of the two partners said it so well:

“For me at this stage of my life, I find it very difficult to separate friendship from business. The qualities of a great friend are quite similar to those of a great partner. Frankly, I don’t know where the dividing line is any more. The qualities of trust, integrity, mutuality, loyalty, and commitment to a larger mission are inherent in both a friendship and business partnership. As we embark on the threshold of a noble destiny together, I want these qualities to be present between us. In fact, this is more than a “want,” it is an “essential ingredient.”

This is the second installment of Trust Quotes, our new series featuring interviews with leading thinkers and practitioners in the world of trust: people who apply trust in powerful ways in business and society.

Previous Issues:

Trust Quotes #1: Ross Smith of Microsoft on trust and innovation

What a Trust-based Company Looks Like

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The tone of this blog is frequently critical. That’s probably because I believe we all learn much better from negative examples than from positive.
But if you don’t have any positive examples with which to contrast, we can easily forget why negative is negative. So the occasional positive blogpost is especially important. And this one is a real upper.

PSA: Pediatric Services of America

Last week I had the privilege of working with a very fine small company, PSA Healthcare. They deliver home health care for medically fragile people, mostly children. They have about 3,500 private duty nurses, operating from 50 locations in 17 states. What they do can make an enormous difference to families, allowing them to lead normalized lives under difficult conditions.

But having a great mission alone doesn’t make for a fine company. A lot of what makes PSA fine is that they are intentionally and consciously using trust principles to run the business. They are not only making a lot of people very happy and proud, they are doing very well by classic business measures. A fine case of doing well by doing good.

Let’s start with the metrics, go on to the principles, and end up with the real punch lines.

The Numbers. Jim McCurry started as CEO a little over a year ago, when PSA had been declining in revenue, market share, and profitability. Previous management was a classic top-down, measure-by-the-numbers team that had, simply put, failed.

The old style was that each month the bottom-performing offices were required to ‘justify’ themselves on a conference call to the top management. At the annual meeting, office heads were required to double-up on hotel rooms. Orders were given, decisions had to be approved up the line, and the style was management by FIN—fear, intimidation and numbers.

By the end of McCurry’s first year—at the tail end of a recession—revenue steadily increased, reaching a 20% annual rate of growth by year-end, all of it volume-based. The company increased profitability, more than doubled total profits, and turned the market share decline into market share gain. Staff morale is up enormously. Expenses are down.

Bottom line: really solid business results.

The Principles. How did McCurry do it? It was not the classic MBA turnaround medicine of tightening up, taking control, and cutting expenses. Instead, Jim told the staff the following:

“From now on, this company is run for the customer. The office heads work for the customer, and the rest of leadership works for them. Make your own decisions, and we’ll help you make them. Don’t wait for us to tell you what to do, you figure out what to do and do it—we trust you. No more intimidation, no more review boards.

“Our new mission has three parts: Action-oriented, Care-giving, and Trust-based.” (It spells ACT: coincidence? Of course not).

The annual meeting I was privileged to be part of was full of hokey-yet-fun skits, honesty, mutual helping, and positive energy.

The Punch Lines.  McCurry is an MBA. A Harvard MBA, actually, from a year after Dubya’s vintage.

The company’s owners are two private equity firms; the head of one of these is dedicated to the business in large part because his mother had been born so prematurely that she likely would have died were it not for the in-home nursing care she received in the first weeks of life.

This is a profitable business, not a charity. It is being run like a real business; like a real business ought to be, I should say, because too many businesses are being run the way PSA used to be run.

It’s refreshing to see an example of the much maligned du jour—MBAs and private equity—using modern, “squishy” leadership and management principles to improve life and the bottom line in parallel.

Collaboration, ethics, trust, openness, honesty, integrity—these are not fuzzy phrases, uttered by bureaucrats, wealthy Hollywood stars, or mega-rich Googlish do-gooders. These are utterly workable principles that deliver the best results around. They give capitalism a good name. Collaborative capitalism, I like to call it.

McCurry and PSA Healthcare deserve their success.

 

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.
 

The Vocabulary of Trust on Twitter

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iStock Texting in meetingTrying to define the word “trust” is a bit like defining obscenity. As former Chief Justice Potter Stewart said about the latter, you can’t define it, but you know it when you see it.

My favorite example of this is, “I trust my dog with my life—but not with my ham sandwich.” It’s a joke we all get; but it does wreak havoc with a straightforward definition of the word.

To put it another way, the meaning of the word is contextual.  A dictionary is not a book of symbolic logic; it is an anthropological document. It tracks how real people in the real world use real words.  And the more contextual the word’s meaning, the more we have to rely on straightforward anthropology.

One of the real worlds of today is Twitter land. For about two months now, I have been tracking the use of the word "trust" as it is used in various conversations on twitter. It is interesting to see how the language used by real people and unconscious conversation tracks very neatly with the usages of "trust" identified previously in articles and blog posts on this website.

The Several Meanings of "Trust"

I have suggested elsewhere that we sometimes talk about trusting, and other times we talk about being trusted, or trustworthy. There are other times when we talk about trust per se, meaning the state that exists on both trusting and being trusted are present. Following are some examples of each (typos left in for authenticity).

Examples of trust meaning "trusting"

  • what i learn from @utterperfect : Never trust anyone a 100%. You’ll never know what the people around you are capable off.
  • Posted my favorite butternut squash ravioli recipe. Trust me, it’s worth the effort.
  • Better of with just friends with benefits. Bc I don’t trust no1 anymore!
  • @Antoniogreen Yeah I trust in God & I’m not scared to die, I’m just scared to die in pain you know.
  • damn. people suck. no wonder its hard for me to trust people. Now i can’t tell if there telling the truth or not.
  • i have trust issues
  • Preview: Luke 17:3-4; When I have forgiven I will trust ..
  • Have Rules But Trust People you can’t have a rule for every situation.

Examples of trust meaning “trustworthiness”

  • RT @amlibraries: Top 100 health websites you can trust
  • @craigbutcher @paulums never trust french hosting
  • @NICELOOKNINA girl never trust annnyone who’s nice to everyone.
  • @sydsouthworth The externals work great for storage just don’t trust it only. Use other media as well like DVDs
  • Some trust in silver and some in gold some in chariots and horses but ill put my trust in the LORD for in HIM is safety and security.
  • @Mister_Magister Did I or did I not make you tofu you actually liked? Always trust a foodie 😀
  • Never trust anybody who says ‘trust me.’ Except just this once, of course. – from Steel Beach
  • @BillyTheBrime Trust me, I’m an expert ma’am.
  • And it backs up my view that you should never trust the moral right;)
  • Ok, we’ve had booby-trapped shoes and undies. Which piece of clothing will imperil lives next? I don’t trust cufflinks.
  • "Man made alcohol, God mad marijuana, who do you trust?"

Examples of trust meaning “a state of trust”

  • Talk it out. Come to a compromise. Don’t just keep someone around and then cheat on them. You risk your reputation as a person. No trust.
  • RT @DIJONES82: In my world trust is more important than love.
  • Another thing lacking in the Black American relationship is communication which breeds trust
  • Sugar Mtns 7 brand tenets: Trust, Clarity, Experimental, Intelligent, Remarkable, Consistently Good, Full Flavored.
  • It takes years to earn trust, and just moments to break it.
  • Is trust as important as commitment in marriage? After all, marriage is a covenant, right?

What Meaning do Trust Measures Assume?

When you think about trust patterns or read statistics about trust, ask yourself: what meaning is being measured?

• Is it the trustworthiness of someone or some institution? (Typical question: how much do you trust banks to do the right thing?)
• Is it the ability of someone to trust? (Typical question: do you think people are generally trustworthy?)
• Is it the state of trust in general? (Typical question: Is this a high-trust environment around here?)

Are you measuring changes over time (longitudinal)? Or are you thinking of contrasting levels (used car dealers vs. lawyers vs. nurses)?

Patterns of Trust on Twitter

I have not yet systematically analyzed the data, but I can make a couple of generalizations.

  • The word "trust" gets used very frequently; at 11PM (US EST) on a weeknight, about 100 tweets every 7 minutes employ the English word “trust.”
  • On Twitter, as compared to business, the meaning “trusting” is probably more common, and the meaning “trustworthiness” is probably less common.
  • The most common usage is probably the imperative “trust me,” closely followed by the imperative “don’t trust ___.”
  • There is an emerging meaning: the word by itself, as in “it’ll all work out: trust,” or “keep the faith, baby: trust.” It has a combined sense of “trust me” and “don’t worry.”

 

Making a Referral By Transferring Trust

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I provide a lot of referrals to clients and colleagues and have built my own business development and executive coaching business through referrals from others to me. What makes those referrals so powerful?

Here’s an example of a referral I made. A few years ago, in my in-house legal role, I had a working relationship with a lawyer I liked and trusted. I introduced that lawyer to a colleague in another company who I thought could benefit from working with this lawyer as well. As a result of my introduction, the colleague retained the lawyer, and that relationship is still going strong after several years.

The Trust Transfer Process

Referring someone we know to another person we know happens all the time. On the personal side, think blind dates or babysitters or doctors. It’s part of the networking process. What makes it work? Something I call “Transferred Trust.” The Trust Equation gives us the formula to enhance our own trustworthiness. But what happens when we make or receive a referral? How do we transfer that trust to another, and if we’re on the receiving end, for what do we look or listen?

Here are the steps from my example, simplified:

  1. I trust a lawyer.
  2. I have a colleague who trusts me.
  3. My colleague needs a lawyer.
  4. I describe the lawyer I trust to my colleague, and shared why I trusted him and made the referral.
  5. My colleague trusts the lawyer I trust, enough to engage him based on my introduction.

Trust Transfer and the Trust Equation

Let’s dissect this referral in terms of the Trust Equation (from The Trusted Advisor by Charles H. Green, David H. Maister, and Robert M. Galford, Free Press, 2000):

Trustworthiness = Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy
Self-Orientation

The quality and degree of trust transferred will directly depend on:

  • The depth of the referrer’s trustworthiness
  • The trustworthiness factors shared with the person receiving the referral

If I shared that the lawyer always got back to me quickly, I transferred reliability. If I gave an example of how the lawyer showed that he cared more about doing the right thing for me as his client than getting more work for himself, I transferred that he had low self orientation. If I described something the lawyer did that helped my company save money and time, I transferred credibility.

And while it’s up to the referrer to transfer trustworthiness, it’s up to the person referred to retain that trustworthiness through his/her own interactions.

How Transparency Works with Referrals

Be careful. You put your own trustworthiness on the line when you transfer trust. How often do we get referrals with transferred trust and are disappointed? If you think there is a good match, but you don’t know much about the person you are referring, be sure to be transparent. It’s ok to say “I know this person to be honest and forthright, and she’s really smart but I’ve never worked with her, so you’ll probably want to talk to her yourself.”

This models transparency, together with low self-orientation, while transferring some intimacy (safety) and some general credibility.

Try this out yourself in a business or social setting. Think of how you refer doctors or contractors, business colleagues and professionals. Pay attention to both referrals shared with you, and to those you give. And practice transferring trust.

Buyers are Liars. Wait, What?

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Want to do an interesting online search? Fire up your favorite browser and go looking for “Buyers are Liars.”

It’s a common phrase in several industries—car sales and real estate, for example. In each of those industries, you can find two related-but-different versions of that phrase.

In version one, it is usually spoken by a resentful salesperson, as in, “Can you believe that guy? He told me he would be right back within the hour, but, well, you know—they walk out the door, they’re gone. Buyers are liars.”

In version two, a more seasoned seller, often in conversation with a young trainee, speaks it. It goes, “If they say they want a cul de sac, brick construction, east-facing kitchen—don’t believe it. Maybe one of those is key—the others they’ll compromise on, because you know, buyers are liars. You have to find out what they really want, they don’t know themselves. They don’t mean to lie; that’s just how they think.”

Both views are right. And both are reflections of businesses in which the seller holds a lot of power by virtue of expertise and a potentially menacing and arcane sales process. Not surprisingly, buyers respond with their own attempt to control the situation—withholding or otherwise manipulating the truth.

This is precisely the dynamic I’ve observed over the years in watching clients buy professional services. Clients have not been to buyers’ school. They don’t know what to ask, but are afraid of being flim-flammed. So they resort to what feels low-risk—asking the seller to recite their qualifications and testimonials.

The weaker salespeople take the potential client at face value, and actually believe they want to hear the selling firm’s resumes and past client history. Then follows the sleep-inducing recitation and powerpoint avalanche.

Do client buyers lie? Yes, and mainly it’s the services firms’ fault. The trick is to get to that place of mutual admission that there’s something each can bring to the party.

What about a very different industry?

A University of Texas study explores the “buyers are liars” theme in the market for entrepreneurial firms, often by private equity buyers. As the study’s author, Melissa Graebner, puts it:

… buyers were not only less trusting than sellers, they were more likely to be dishonest. Beyond price bluffing, several buyers engaged in what Graebner calls "material deception" with regard to their plans for post-integration "layoffs, changes in strategic direction or diminished roles for senior managers."

Sellers—generally smaller firms owned by the person who created them—appeared far more trusting of suitors. Little surprise, perhaps, given the passionate, conquering nature of entrepreneurs: "Me big geek," one seller told Graebner. "I’m a technologist. I want to build something that I want everyone to use. I want my ego boost! I’m not here for a quick buck, I’m here to do my big thing."

Another reason for the trust gap between buyers and sellers, notes Graebner, is the perceived transfer of power. "In the course of an acquisition, sellers lose power while buyers gain power," she says. "Given their prospects of heightened power, buyers viewed a seller’s trustworthiness as nonessential."

In car and real estate sales, I would say the seller has most of the power, and customers lie out of fear, recognizing that fact.

In professional services, it is the clients/buyers who often hold more power, yet don’t know it; so they also act from fear—with a result that is often harmful to both parties. The advertising industry may be an extreme example lately.

In Graebner’s study, I think the buyer has the most power again; but here the ego weakness is on the part of the seller, not the buyer. And it’s not fear that’s afoot, it’s a desire for ego stroking.

Sellers want to believe they can trust the buyer. And so many buyers, who truly do have the power, choose to lie.

Are buyers liars? Yes, but as a current movie says: it’s complicated.

Was It Something I Said? The Trap of High Self-Orientation

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It happened again yesterday. It happens about once a week, though I don’t generally notice it until later.

I had a proposal phone call with a potential client. It went well, but they came back a few days later with a concern. I responded at length in an email. The day ended. Another day passed. By then, it had begun to happen.

I started thinking, “Was it something I said? I’ve probably blown it. I knew I should have done X, I shouldn’t have done Y. On the other hand, maybe I should have…” and so on. You probably know how it goes.

I once kept track of these episodes for a month. There were ten of them in that month. And in 9 out of the 10 cases, the result was: the other person was just busy, that’s all. They weren’t thinking those negative things about me, in fact quite the contrary.

9 out of 10 times I was wrong. And not just about what they were thinking, but about how much time they spent on it.

Self-Orientation in Trust

The denominator in the Trust Equation is self-orientation (the numerator factors are credibility, reliability and intimacy). The higher your self-orientation, the lower your trustworthiness. The logic is simple: if you’re paying attention to the other person (client, customer, friend, spouse, whatever), then you’re probably interested in them, care about them, and have some positive intent toward them.

By contrast, if your attention is devoted inward, you will not be trusted. Why should you be? You’re obsessed with yourself. We trust people who appear to care, and who demonstrate that caring by paying attention. He who pays attention largely to himself is not the stuff of trusted advisors. (Note: you can take your own Trust Quotient quiz at the upper right of this page.)

Get Off Your S

For those of us who need catch-phrases to remember (count me in), here’s one: Get Off Your S. That is, stop being so self-oriented.

Here’s the psychology of it. You’re not as good as you think you are, you’re not as bad as you think you are–you just think more about yourself than others think about you. To live between your ears is to live in enemy territory. You empower what you fear. If you have a foot in yesterday and one in tomorrow, you’re set to pee on today. Blame is captivity. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.

Here’s the spirituality of it. To give is more blessed than to receive. To get what you want, focus on getting others what they want. Treat others as you’d wish they’d treat you. Pay it forward. Put change in a stranger’s parking meter. Do a good deed a day. Humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself, it means thinking of yourself less. Fear is lack of faith.

Here’s the business of it. Never Eat Alone. Listen before making recommendations. To get tweets, give tweets. Inbound marketing not outbound marketing. Customer focus. Customer service. Samples selling.

———

Oh, and my potential client? They were just busy. They’re going to buy, they always were.

It’s not about you. It never is.

 

Trust Lessons from a Turkish Rug Dealer

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Turkish RugIn November 2000 we traveled with another couple to Turkey.

We stayed at the Pera Palace in Istanbul and cruised the Bosphorous River. We visited the seaside town of Bodrum where we learned NOT to try and party like a British sailor. But no trip to Turkey would be complete without a shopping spree at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. We set out to find the perfect stall.

Wendy and I ventured behind the curtain into a cozy shop owned by Mehmet. He welcomed us with a warmth and carpet dealer smile …Wendy and I were both suspicious and told Mehmet we were “just looking.” Anyone who has been to a carpet shop in Istanbul knows you don’t just look. It is nearly impossible. The carpets are piled, one on top of the other, several feet high. Hence the young, muscle-bound assistants lingering around, ready to “flip” carpets for would-be shoppers to assess.

Mehmet invited us to accept help in looking through the carpets. He said, “just pretend – like Monopoly.” We accepted his invitation and the next thing we knew we were hooked, enticed by his charm, fluency in many languages, and the offer of mint tea. “But our husbands…we don’t know where they are,” we protested. “Oh, it is no problem…we will find them and bring them here.” And his assistant did just that.

After several hours of looking through carpets two piles emerged: the “no” pile and the “maybe” pile. Our “yes” pile hadn’t yet emerged. This was “no problem” for Mehmet, the Turkish carpet dealer. He says, “we are just pretending, like Monopoly.” In the evening, after several glasses of tea and many rounds of negotiating, we exited Mehmet’s shop with our carpets. We were beyond satisfied with our perfect day of rug buying; and the rugs, while beautiful, were not as memorable as our experience with Mehmet.

Ten months later—9/11. We were on the email Mehmet sent to his American customers expressing his sympathy. Mehmet’s carpet business came to a screeching halt–80% of it had been from American buyers. Without his American customers he couldn’t provide for his special needs son.

So he brought his lovely carpets to the US. We hosted a show for him, and put him in touch with interior designers and people we knew would appreciate his carpets. He was and to this day is grateful for this.

A few years ago, Mehmet and his assistant, stopped at our home for a visit. I said, “Mehmet, can we pretend, play Monopoly?” And so we began the ritual of looking at the spot in our home where we wanted a carpet and then venturing to his truck to search through the piles of neatly folded rugs. After many hours of collaborating to haul rugs in, move furniture, look at the carpet in different light and from different angles we settled on one. Then the negotiating began.

He says, “Sarah, you are my sister.” And I say, “yes, Mehmet, you are my brother, and now we negotiate.” The business of negotiating wasn’t easy; there were tense moments when I thought we’d not reach agreement. But all business is easier from a foundation of trust – which there was and is with Mehmet. We reached agreement. We got another beautiful carpet; Mehmet made another sale. We then sat down to a lovely meal which Mehmet prepared for us in our home.

To this day, after a dozen trips to the US, Mehmet still calls us. The days of helping him find customers have long passed but the relationship endures. Mehmet drives across the US. He seeks no guarantee of a sale, only the possibility that someone might love one of his carpets as much he does.

He goes to his customers. He spends whatever time is needed with them. Sometimes they buy; sometimes they don’t. He knows that one day they might buy; that they might know someone who might want one of his rugs. He establishes friendships along the way, building relationships one home and one rug at a time.

He begins with the customer’s perspective by going to their home, looking at where they want a rug, and collaborating with the customer, to search through his piles of rugs. He then moves furniture and places the rug, just so, in his customer’s home. When they cannot decide he says “live with it for a while, I will come back before I fly home – then you decide.”

Without a deposit, without signing a contract about what happens if the rug is damaged, and without any assurance that leaving the rug with the customer for a few days will result in a sale, he continues on to his next customer. Mehmet takes the risk to trust by leaving his rugs–in return, his customers trust him.

He knows many will never buy. He also knows that by focusing on the long-term he will build a network of people who will first think of him when they need, or know someone who needs, a rug.

A carpet dealer may not be the profession we think of first when it comes to trust. Yet in many ways Mehmet embodies what it means to start from the customer’s perspective and to focus on the long-term. And, who doesn’t love to play a round of Monopoly every now and then?

Collaboration: Trust Matters Interview with Brandon Klein

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I first met Brandon Klein when we were swamped processing people at the outset of the Trust Summit in NYC October 23. Some very nice guy came over and, simply, offered to pitch in and help. Which he then proceeded to do, and most ably.

That was Brandon, and it turns out, that was characteristic of him. He doesn’t just collaborate, he does collaboration. In particular, he’s something of an expert in the practical ways of organizing gatherings of human beings in ways that maximize output. That includes social dynamics, ergonomics, technology and psychology.

Since collaboration is one of the four Trust Principles, it’s of interest to us both.

CHG: Let’s start big: how do you define collaboration?

BK: Collaboration is repeating the assumed and then stating the unspoken. It is envisioning what success can be and then understanding how to work together to make it happen. It is sometimes best understood by stating what it’s NOT: It is not about latest social media software (chasing the shiny new thing), it’s not more meetings about meetings or guessing games/”strategizing” about what the boss might be thinking. Collaboration is defining and aligning on a common objective as a group of stakeholders and then openly, selflessly, working towards achieving it in a fun, social, interactive, barrier-less way.

CHG: How did you come to be involved in this sort of thing?

BK: Like most, I was incredibly frustrated by the amount of time that was wasted at work. Though most workplace environments boasted a team approach, I couldn’t accept that collaboration meant spending 95% of my day sitting in a cubicle and/or conference room. In searching for a better way, I was lucky enough to be one of the original people to learn the collaborative process known as a DesignShop™- in my opinion, the best off-line collaborative methodology in existence today.

CHG: Why do you think collaboration is ‘hot’ these days?

BK: The proliferation of web-based tools has definitely made the concept of collaboration more top-of-mind. Everyone can now be “collaborative” with a couple clicks of the mouse (or cell phone). It’s similar to the effect of television on sports. Once upon a time, you either had to play the sport or plan in advance to make the journey to the stadium to cheer for your team and interact with the fans. Now, you simply need to press a button on your TV’s remote. Fan bases have increased dramatically, but so has their average weight!

We’ve managed to make online collaboration hot and successful, but we have quickly forgotten what it means to collaborate in person. We can comment anonymously online, but can’t say why we are so ineffective at work. We can “Reply All” to make it look like we are involved, but can’t cut a meeting short that isn’t going anywhere.

CHG: Your focus is primarily on people getting together, isn’t it? Is technology changing that?

BK: Even with using Cisco’s Telepresence (which is awesome) it is very difficult to say that technology has changed ‘getting together’ yet. Yes, online conversations are fantastic and improving everyday. However, I focus on meetings with 12 to 120 people in the same room. Technology has little effect on face-to-face meetings, and in most cases makes them worse. This is because although we have created new tools and ways of working online, we haven’t developed ways of interacting better in person. It is commonplace and therefore acceptable to sit behind a conference table and read your blackberry, while calling the meeting successful and collaborative. It is crazy!

CHG: Let’s talk about conventional meetings; what’s the biggest mistake people make?

BK: Agendas, PowerPoint and WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Distraction ie phones/crackberry’s) are the 3 most unproductive tools on the planet when it comes to meetings. Additionally things most people don’t even consider such as tables, tardiness and tight-lips, are pretty bad too. Here are the quick reasons:

  • Agendas mean people know when to check out or worry/dread what comes next. Don’t publish agendas to more than 3-4 of the key people responsible for the output of the entire project/strategy etc.
  • PowerPoint puts people to sleep. Unless you are good enough to speak at TED, just don’t use it. Tell a story. Have a discussion about the main points instead. Put the bullet points in large all caps letters on a flip chart. Or better yet, create a visual to represent everything.
  • Technology in the pocket. Humans can’t multi-task. Seen the statistics on text messaging and driving? 23 times more dangerous than being drunk. You don’t want your meeting attendees drunk do you?
  • Tables. If people don’t need to eat lunch or take incredibly copious notes and have stacks of paper in front of them, why put a barrier between every person?
  • Tardiness. This could be replaced with excuses. If you show up late, everyone has to catch you up… wasting everyone’s time.
  • Tight-lips. Water cooler talk is the essence of a company and the harbinger for the success of the project. Bring it out into the open and every meeting and project will succeed.

CHG: How about big-group seminars and shows and conventions; do you see a few big things happening there?

BK: Unfortunately, there hasn’t been enough change. The ‘sit and get’ model is SAFE and so it is almost always what you see. Large-scale collaborative events of any kind are really quite rare. People are afraid to foster interactivity, or to relinquish control. A giant PowerPoint screen is a sense of comfort and power.

CHG: What’s the role of technology? Are twitter feeds good or bad? Is cloud computing affecting things?

BK: I love all of this technology. Twitter Feeds, Google Waves, Live-Blogging, etc, they are all great additions to any group gathering. Their popularity means they are being included by default right now, which can often be more distracting then useful. Their incorporation needs to be strategically designed. Unfortunately, just throwing out features doesn’t produce collaborative, successful output.

CHG: What’s your view of collaboration and how it fosters trust? Or do you see it the other way ‘round?

BK: Perhaps this is the classic case of the chicken and the egg. People must trust in order to collaborate better. And true collaboration will lead to stronger trust. But collaboration only works when people share openly and honestly. In the end, companies, managers, employees need to be willing to change the status quo in order for foster true collaboration… they need to trust each other.

CHG: Many thanks, Brandon, and let’s pursue some of this further another time.

 

For more information on Brandon Klein and the collaboration information he and his colleagues provide, check out his website at CollaborationKing.com