The Trust Edge

How Top Leaders Gain Faster Results, Deeper Relati

David Horsager

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781476711386
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

In The Trust Edge, David Horsager reveals the foundation of genuine success—trust. Based on research but made practical for today's leader, The Trust Edge shows that trust is quantifiable and brings dramatic results to businesses and leaders. In this book, Horsager teaches readers how to build the 8 Pillars of Trust: 1. Clarity: People trust the clear and mistrust the ambiguous. 2. Compassion: People put faith in those who care beyond themselves. 3. Character: People notice those who do what is right over what is easy. 4. Competency: People have confidence in those who stay fresh, relevant, and capable. 5. Commitment: People believe in those who stand through adversity. 6. Connection: People want to follow, buy from, and be around friends. 7. Contribution: People immediately respond to results. 8. Consistency: People love to see the little things done consistently. When leaders learn how to implement these pillars, they enjoy better relationships, reputations, retention, revenue, and results. Fascinating and timely, The Trust Edge unveils how trust has the ability to accelerate or destroy any business, organization, or relationship. The lower the trust, the more time everything takes, the more everything costs, and the lower the loyalty of everyone involved. Conversely, an environment of trust leads to greater innovation, morale, and productivity. The trusted leader is followed. From the trusted salesperson, people will buy. For the trusted brand, people will pay more, come back, and tell others. Trust, not money, is the currency of business and life!

PART I
THE CASE FOR TRUST

Chapter 1

The Trust Edge

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To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.

—George MacDonald, Scottish author, poet, and theologian

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When I come home from work, my kids often greet me at the door. It is my young son who runs up to me and pulls on my pants leg. He has excited eyes and a great big smile. He shouts, “Daddy, Daddy, throw me up in the air really high.” He loves to get tossed up in the air. “Daddy, throw me up in the air really high!” And so I do.

And, most of the time . . . I catch him.

No. He trusts his daddy to catch him every single time—and I do! This is trust in its purest form.

It is similar to the transactions of business and life. Without trust, the transactions cannot occur. Without trust, influence is destroyed. Without trust, leaders lose teams. Without trust, people lose sales. Without trust, organizations lose productivity, relationships, reputation, talented people, customer loyalty, creativity, morale, revenue, and results. They lose in their brand and in their bottom line. John O. Whitney, director of the Deming Center for Quality Management at the Columbia Business School, found, “Mistrust doubles the cost of doing business.”¹

In one of the largest and most extensive surveys of its kind, Watson Wyatt studied 12,750 U.S. workers in all major industries and at all levels. According to the study, “Companies with high trust levels generated total returns to shareholders at almost three times that of companies with low levels of trust.”² Whether you are a student or a CEO, a teacher or a parent, a politician or a nurse, trust multiplies influence and impact. Before we go much further, let’s define the trust edge.

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In my business, there is nothing more important than trust.³

—Harvey Mackay, CEO, Mackay Envelope Company

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Trust Defined

Trust is a confident belief in someone or something. It is the confident belief in an entity:

• To do what is right

• To deliver what is promised

• To be the same every time, whatever the circumstances

Trust implies being reliable, dependable, and capable. Think of the chair you are sitting on as an example. You have a confident belief that it can and will hold you. You don’t need to waste time checking its capacity. You don’t worry that it will take advantage of you or drop you. The trust your chair has earned has affected the speed, consistency, and loyalty of your doing “business” with it.

You are trusted to the degree that people believe in your ability, your consistency, your integrity, and your commitment to deliver. Do people believe in you? To the degree that they do, you are trusted.

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Trust: A confident belief in a person, product, or organization.

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Why the “Edge”

When I was studying top organizations and leaders, I found that some clearly had a competitive edge over others. Those leaders or organizations that could weather storms, charge higher prices, maintain respect with customers and clients, and foster long-term growth were special. The greatest leaders and organizations of all time have had the same competitive edge. They were the most trusted. Robert F. Hurley, the founding director of the Fordham Center for Entrepreneurship, was right when he wrote, “Leaders who understand how trust is built can actively influence its development, resulting in a more supportive and productive work environment and, not incidentally, a competitive advantage.”⁴ The trust edge is the competitive advantage gained when others confidently believe in you.

Like a Forest

Have you seen the magnificent forest at Redwood National Park in northern California? The oldest recorded redwood is over 2,200 years old! Redwoods can be well over a hundred yards high and more than twenty feet in diameter.⁵ A lush and beautiful redwood forest takes many years to deepen roots, grow branches, and flourish. And yet one poor decision with one little match can take it all down in a small fraction of the time it took to mature. Trust is like that. While it may appear to be static, in reality trust is more like a forest—a long time growing, but easily burned down with a touch of carelessness. Trust requires time, effort, diligence, and character. Inspiring trust is not slick or easy to fake. If you were looking for instant gratification or a quick fix, you might be disappointed by the truths in this book. If, however, you are interested in following the only way to genuine, lasting success in relationships, work, or life, this book is for you! The trust edge: build it, protect it, and ultimately enjoy the benefits of a strong trust forest with rooted relationships and high-yield results.

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It took an average of seven months for employees to build their trust in a leader but less than half that time for them to lose it.⁶

—Manchester Consulting

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Dimensions of Trust

There are two dimensions of trust. First, there is the dimension of time. This dimension goes from short to long. As I mentioned in the forest analogy, it generally takes a long time to grow; yet it can be lost in a short time. Another aspect of time is that most trust starts to be established very quickly. It is almost a gut feeling. Most people can talk to someone for two minutes and decide if they are going to start to trust that person or not.

Fig. 1-1 Dimensions of Trust

Another dimension of trust is depth. This dimension goes from shallow to deep. Deep trust is generally established over time. It can withstand adversity and is often born of personal experience. Deep trust often sprouts up quickly if a trusted source testifies that you are trustworthy. I call this transferred trust. Because A trusts B, and B trusts C, then A trusts C. Transferred trust can happen with less effort on your part, but it still depends on the depth of trust gained with the first person.

Fig. 1-2 Transferred Trust

Time and depth interact in several ways. While it might be lost in a moment, once trust is deeply rooted and strong, it can often withstand many storms and challenges. These thoughts are not contradictory, but rather proof of the great scope of this concept we call trust. When trust is deeply established, you will often be given the benefit of the doubt instead of having every action judged with skepticism. So the dimensions of trust, “depth” and “time,” are in constant interplay and have a huge influence on the strength of your trustworthiness.

A musical score provides an analogy to simplify this concept. Have you ever listened to an orchestra and found yours...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: The Case for Trust
• Part II: The Eight Pillars of Trust
• Part III: Transforming Trust
• Part IV: Deep Trust in a Flat World
• Part V: Courageous Trust
• Five Ways to Sharpen Your Trust Edge
• About the Author
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright