Performance Management Blog

Trust is the Residue of Promises Fulfilled.
Trust is the residue of promises fulfilled image with butterfly

Some Statistics on Trust, and some thoughts on solutions.

My good friend Frank Navran told me that 20+ years ago and it was certainly a great way to remember a really important factor in human relations.

Trust is the promises fulfilled.

So hard to build, so easy to damage. Hard to repair.

In the workplace, it is one of the really key factors in engagement and overall morale. If the workers do not trust their manager, and that can happen at any level, it is really hard to do those things that make an organization successful. People will avoid risk, bond together against leadership, etc.

The word “sabotage” comes from the French word for wooden shoe. Those were often found in the machinery during the French industrial revolution (and elsewhere) as managements tried to implement change and process improvement. If you have a valuable employee, why simply generate distrust and antagonism when you can find some way to use the positive energies and enthusiasm for business improvement?

Gallup posted up some research results recently. They asked,

“Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields – from very high, high, average, low, or very low? How about X, where X was randomized across different surveys.

Statistics on trust by profession

Nurses were highest, followed by pharmacists and medical doctors. Healthcare came out pretty good, and we hope that it should. Dentists did well, too.

Not so good? The predictable “Car salespeople.” Okay, that was not unexpected, right? And “Members of Congress?” With what has happened in the House in 2023, one wonders what that number would be now. Note that Members of Congress (54% rated Very Low and Low) and Senators (45% VL and L) and this was back in 2012 when they were actually governing, before all the indictments we can probably expect this year (updated Jan, 2023).

Car salespeople CAN do things to build trust over time, like fairly representing their products and prices and all that. I would go back to Wendy again and even got my daughter a used car from her at the car dealership where she worked.

But what about “our elected representatives?” Is it too late for democracy? CAN they actually do some things to rebuild trust? One would hope.

Interesting, is that line for “Business executives.” They actually rank lower than Bankers. While 50% rate them Average, fully 27% rated them VL or L. (I sure would have liked to see them add in “your supervisor” and “your boss’ boss” but what the heck, there are plenty of other stats out there that indicate that improvements in that are possible…)

Yeah, Trust is the residue of promises fulfilled. And they should and can do some things differently to generate more alignment and congruence in their behavior, which would have significant impacts on the perceptions of their people. We have some really strong and ethical leaders out there (and we did not need former GE CEO Jack Welch embarrassing us on the accuracy of the job numbers just before the election — he did himself and all CEOs a great disfavor, IMHO, for political reasons.)

Trust is the residue of promises fulfilled image with butterfly

We have a great need to re-engage people in our organizations and even in our countries.

When surveys show that engagement is so terrible both in organizational productivity and even in our elections of the people who will take our tax money and provide government services, there are some real impacts for making improvements. We need to do some dis-un-engagement and engagimentation, we need to so some team building and leadership development. We need to get more people believing in more positive things about the corporations that are critical component of the success of our country (and any country).

 

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools.
Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant who is trying to retire!! He now lives in Cuenca, Ecuador.

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Learn more about Scott at his LinkedIn site.


Here is a 2-minute overview of our new online, virtual team building game: https://youtu.be/6sFUOTjdUVg

The exercise has many links to the themes of trust (within and between teams) with a strong focus on trust in the leadership and on collaboration between the teams. This is THE world-class exercise anchored to these elements, based on three decades of client feedback.

logo for Lost Dutchman Virtual online edition

And here is a link to a press release about The Lost Dutchman exercise and its 30 years of impacting people and performance.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Company
The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine is a trademark of Performance Management Company
Square Wheels images © Performance Management Company, 1993 – 2023. All rights reserved.

 

Dr. Scott Simmerman

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of the amazing Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine team building game and the Square Wheels facilitation and engagement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced global presenter. -- You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com and a detailed profile is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottsimmerman/ -- Scott is the original designer of The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine teambuilding game and the Square Wheels® images for organizational development.

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1 Comment

  1. frank navran

    Looking good, Scott!
    Just finishing an article on the topic. Will shoot you a copy when its done – appreciate any feedback,
    FJN

    Reply

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