See Guest Column;Trust Is Gold And To be Trusted is Greater than Being Loved.

                           

,Mr Seshadri Satyanarayan has a long distinguished career in Journalism,and Public Relations.He has worked at senior levels in PTI,Tribune and other important national dailies. Currently,he is the Consulting Editor of Afro-Asian Business Chronicle.In his Guest Column,Mr Satyanarayanan highlights the importance of trust, equating it with 'Gold'.He further says that trust deficiency often leads to collapse of relationship,be it friendship or organisation.He can be contacted at satyan02@gmail.com

                        

Trust is one of the most important components in life. Trust deficiency often leads to collapse of relationship, be it friendship or organization.  Lack of trust and sudden trust deficit among board of directors have seen several companies, founded on strong friendship of the promoters, crumbling or the directors parting ways.  Therefore, it is no secret that mutual trust is of paramount importance.  Sometimes trust you enjoy among your fellow members play a big role in bringing out the best in you.

This reminds me of a wrestling bout in the just-concluded Commonwealth Games, where in one of the contest for Gold medal, there was a local wrestler belonging to Scotland and his rival was from Sri Lanka. In this high-scoring bout, the Scotland wrestler suffered a ligament injury during the bout. At that point in time he was way ahead of the Sri Lankan. The injury was quite severe and the athlete wanted to quit.


Even as the medical staff was attending to the athlete, the wrestler writhing in pain repeatedly waved towards his coach to call off the match.  But the trust the coach had in the abilities of the wrestler was so strong that he kept on encouraging him and did not allow him to quit. The coach made him to hit the ring once again with a bandage wrapped around his thigh and knee area.  As the Scotland wrestler was limping during the bout, the Sri Lankan wrestler took advantage of the situation by attacking and grabbing his injured leg.  The Scotland wrestler was repeatedly encouraged by his coach, who shouted “you can do it” and ‘You have it in you”.  Thanks to the repeated prodding from he overcame his pain to win the closely fought match to take the Gold Medal.

To cut short the moral of this anecdote is that the trust the Coach had in the abilities of the wrestler resulted in bringing out the best out of him even as the latter wanted to give up. So, the Scotland wrestler would have definitely realized after the bout that “to be trusted is a greater compliment than winning the Gold medal in front of the

To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved

Evaluate Trustworthiness of Candidates Before Recruiting

Do you want the most trusted candidates in your company? Do you want people who can be trusted in your organisation for a longer period? Do you want people who have strong ethical values in your company? I think when trust-deficit is increasing in organizations, it is a big challenge for companies and organizations to find trust-worthy people. The success of modern organizations is built upon people whom you can trust to deliver the goods.

While recruiting people, we need to give due focus on gauging the trustworthiness of candidates. The qualifications, experience and professional background are no doubt important. But, they are geared towards efficiency, and effectiveness, which do not work beyond a point. In the times of crisis, trustworthy people will give you hope. You will feel that there are committed folks around you, who will not let you down. Trustworthy people, may not be that efficient, as compared to those who are professionally more capable, but are driven by mere passion for money. However, these  group of people will evoke more confidence, then those who will not miss any opportunity to leave the company for greener pastures.

Trustworthy people in organizations are driven by mission in their life. not merely short-time profit-making objective. The missionary zeal of such people can take organisations to new heights. So, it will be a big challenge for you to find such people.

I think we need to develop a scientific approach to find people who can be trusted while recruiting them. A trust-based test  based on effective questionnaire should be devised, which can test the trustworthiness of candidates. Modern statistical  tools must be used to formulate such test. The measurement of this must be done through a software, which can give measurable outputs. Then, only we can evaluate  trustworthiness of the candidates. I think trust-based test, will definitely be useful in gauging the aptitude, and behaviour of the candidates when they start working.

Organisational dynamics today is built upon trust, which is so difficult to find in the volatile times today. The stark reality is that we need to think, and act differently. So, when next time you are hiring people, try your best to gauge the trustworthiness of the candidates.  

See First Guest Column on Trust; An Indian Leadership Perspective from IIRD

                                                                                   

                    GUEST COLUMN ON TRUST

  In  the First Guest  Column  Dr L.C.Sharma, Director, Institute For Integrated Rural Development, Shimla [http://www.iirdshimla.org/,  comes up  with frank, forthright and honest views on multi-demensional questions related to Trust, Dr Sharma,Director, IIRD can be contacted at director@iirdshimla.org

The cosmological phenomenon interprets that the kind of vibrations we emit from our mind either in ideas or in feelings, those respond back to us with their multiple effects. If we emit positive, rational and trustful vibrations, we get the trust with multiple effects and vice-versa. Here the intensity of the vibrations in shape of will at the transmitter end and matching wavelength  at the the receiver end are two crucial factors.  In the corporate world trust is more or less the regulated delegations of responsibilities within defined limits. This is regulated trust based on supervision. Can we imagine a person working sincerely without any supervision and consistently striving for achieving the organisational goals without even being caring for rewards or appreciations? When this process begins; the process of trust building starts.  But in today’s world, it is hard to find out the people who do not require supervision. The concept of supervision starts from the feeling of distrust. 

 Trust cannot be unilateral as it has multi-dimensions viz. mental evolution of the trusting person, the nature & worthiness of the person to be trusted, external factors like circumstances & environment, limits or extent of trust, etc.The ever increasing self-centric nature of people has created trust – deficit in all walks of life. Parents are losing trust on their children; employers are losing trust on the employees; the public is losing the trust in the government; and many a times husband and wife are losing trust in each other. This has happened majorly due to the absence of thrust on character building process within the individual.

 No organisation can sustain if weakening in terms of trust on the management, employees, clients and other stakeholders. The relationship among all these is very delicate and crucial. But the trust in an organisational perspective is always calculated and within defined limits. Trust building amongst the employees and stakeholders is very important. Employees and stakeholders can take the organisation to the heights and also bring it down to the bottom. If employees lose trust on the management, they will simply become unproductive which finally paves the passage for their discontinuation. If the management loses trust in the employees, it tries to find the exclusion path. If stakeholders lose trust, this hampers the growth of the organisation drastically and contracts the horizon of the organisation.

As per our experiences in IIRD, we have noticed that as long as any employee trusts himself / herself, the association continuous and the moment one loses trust on one’s capacity in given role, the sufficient ground gets created automatically for departure. Without introspection, people start justifying themselves. There must be the lack of trust somewhere perhaps otherwise the people should have come up with the true feelings, introspection, request for getting mentoring support, capacity building, nurturing etc. This normally happens when people don’t get aligned with the organisational spirit and feel being alienated. We could not find even a single person approaching the management with the proposal to sacrifice part of the compensation because of non-achievement of defined targets when the management is ready to incentivise for good performance. The people having faith on themselves, not only contributed meaningfully to the organisation; but got multiple elevations within shortest time period also. 

This is the major challenge with every organisation to find the people of strong character & trustworthy. In fact, people first lose trust on themselves to have the courage to convert the environment conducive to them. Non-competence and non-compliance amongst employees are two major challenges nowadays.In order to get rid of the employees losing trust in themselves and thereby losing trust in the organisation, there is need of continuous mentoring and nurturing the people down the line. The routine workload sometimes causes neglect in mentoring. And the recruitment process sometimes brings untrustworthy people inside which causes multiple problems. The major challenges are to bring right people within the organisation and mentor them continuously.

: Social trust is very important for a vibrant democracy. The trust in social set up may help in identifying and selecting right people for giving leadership to the nation. People should have trust in the representative democracy and the representatives should also care sensitively for the aspirations of the people. Unfortunately in the party politics system, the representatives represent their political ethos rather than the aspirations of the electorates. No representative has been found taking ownership with accountability for the overall development of his / her constituency.

Trust is extremely important in relationships as every relation remain dry and formal without trust. The distrust in relationship sometimes diminishes the whole life of the people. Hence trust has always to be regarded as the pillar of relationships.Spirituality is the only means for creating culture of trust. India being the Guru of spirituality for the entire world since the time immemorial is the ideal nation to revive and promote culture of trust. The true spiritual person always cares for others selflessly recognising the spark of spirit in every one.

Trust in education is very very important. The students should have trust in what they are studying apart from the trust between teacher & students. More the trust between the teacher and the students, more the receptability amongst the students will be.The professional approach to be adopted in the life should start from creating faith in ourselves with positiveness, rational self analysis and benevolence. Selfless service to others gives internal strength. The fragrance of roses comes only from the hands which distribute roses. Understanding the real essence of Bhagvadgita, the philosophy of life beyond all religions, can also be helpful.
  

Can We Build Up Team Without Trust?

Please see my comment in a good write-up on trust in the following link,and author's response.

http://empoweredbypierce.com/no-trust-no-team

    I find organisations lack team-spirit because trust is absent.But,what needs to be done?I recommend following;

1]  Every person in an organisation should learn to respect other.

2] Team is built when people identify with a common goal.Organisations must help people identify that common goal.
3] Team leaders must generate trust by setting an example.They have to become role models.

4] Values-based training based on organisation's thrust areas should be given emphasis.Values must blend well with organisations'thrust areas

5] Trust is built when people are emotionally attached with each other,which helps in building team-spirit.Organisations have a big challenge here.

The World is Driven by Innovation Built Upon Trust

Recently, when I went through the link http://thedx.druckerinstitute.com/2013/12/how-trust-leads-to-innovation/, I felt reflecting upon this well-crafted piece, through my comment[See the comment below the article].It was a good learning experience going through this piece.

       I think the world is driven by innovation, which is built upon trust. Every nation, every sector, and every organization is craving for innovation. Innovations are a growth indicator, driven by the impulse to see change all around. However, the foundation of innovation is trust. The group dynamics helps in problem-solving, based on innovative solutions.

 The organizations which innovate are successful, and here the level of trust is noteworthy. Can we motivate every one in the organisations to innovate by building up their self-trust, and helping them to trust the people around. This may be one of the major issues in organizational dynamics.

Doing Activity Together Helps Build Up Trust

Recently. when I went through this link http://solutiondesign.com/food-and-trust/, I got new insights on how  to build up trust through eating together. The author comes up with refreshing insights on what needs to be done to build-up team spirit through eating together.  In organisational growth, this is a factor which is grossly neglected. When people in organisations don't trust each other, they try their best to avoid each other. They just do their job, without caring to find an opportunity to intermingle with others, or do some activity in leisure time together.

     Some of the people in the organisations show a lonely approach when they don't feel the inner urge to share lunch  with their team-mates. As a result, they feel stress. which affects their work productivity. Eating together provides a wonderful opportunity to build up informal relationships, which go beyond the work domain. All this helps in building up trust, which helps in the work performance too. The organisations which encourage people going out for meals together, or picnics, etc are bound to create a culture which is open, and which allows people working in the organisations bond together. I find that encouraging workers to indulge in some sports /cultural activity in a group manner can also be a good way to bust out their stress. Many of the organisations are doing this, but the fact remains that many of them neglect this vital factor,is  a worrisome trend.

Organisations can build up trust when employees are given opportunities to trust each other through creating non-official channels of communication which are not based on professional relationship. I think this can be a difficult process, and may lead to people comparing with each other on personal front too. But, the benefits are more in this approach, simply because this provides an opportunity for each employee to know the personal side of each other. A compassionate outlook thus can be created, which helps remove the ill-will amongst the employees.

A futuristic vision for robust organisational growth rests on formulating effective trust devices which are based on encouraging group activity amongst the employees. At a time when team-building is given much emphasis in organisations for  achieving the targets, informal group activities can help in building up an open and transparent work culture, which  can uplift the morale of an organisation.

Even in other fields too, doing an activity together has good results. Researchers from University of Buffalo recently studies 634 couples through their first nine years of marriage, finding that divorce rate was higher only when one person was a heavy drinker. Surprisingly, if both partners drank equally heavy then their choice of splitting  up were no longer high. When I read this interesting statistics through a news-item, I got convinced that the power of doing an activity together is immense.

With our society becoming individualistic, community ties are becoming weaker. Group activities, whether informal, or formal are needed to build up community ties. Bonding of couples through mutual involvement of partners is much needed to strengthen families which tend to break due to the inflated egos of the partners.