Bizcuits | How much do you trust?

Leanda Lee

I am periodically reminded that there is no such thing as a coincidence. Although I’m yet to determine an alternative name for the phenomenon, it’s only in Macau that I’m presented with coincidences in abundance. I’m convinced that it’s not just the absurd connectivity between us all here (“Macau’s so small!”) and the dynamism of social life, there’s something eerie, almost spiritual, even kismet about the coincidental synchronisation of apparently unrelated events and people.
Prompted to contemplate trust this week, I realised that almost exactly four years ago to the day, I published a column here on trust and betrayal – a discussion on psychological contracts in the work place. Unbeknown to me at the time I wrote it, it foretold of a profound personal lesson I was to learn: we cannot truly control when someone loses trust in us.
Separate from deliberately destroying it or consciously, mindfully building it, there is the other person, their interpretations, their stories, their world view, their will: one word can undermine trust whether in jest, anger or simply in the wrong time or place. That word may add another piece to the sometimes warped and certainly incomplete schemas that people hold about us (and we of them) and the situations that connect us – thus meaning is created. Little can be done to control these moments. We are left to build again from there, if it matters.
So, trust: the importance and strength of it hit home, and periodically continues to do so. Thankfully, when established, it has a forgiving and resilient nature, even if those involved do not.
At the time, I wrote of managers’ and an organisations’ roles in developing trust and the importance of understanding that employees’ perceptions can be distorted. Organisational policies and practices, managers’ behaviours and organisational policy statements all send messages and create meaning (often unintended), just as points of contact in our personal relationships do. If you want people to perform in their roles, even distorted perceptions are legitimate, not to be ignored or invalidated.
The rise of Trump and the Brexit vote should have highlighted to leaders of all persuasions in liberal societies the perils of failing to engage with peoples’ concerns regardless of the value judgements of those concerns or the people having them. Lessons are to be learnt from even the lesser educated, the less experienced, the less knowledgeable, less virtuous, less [fill in the blank]. Failing to legitimise and deal with those concerns merely perpetuates the distortion and a vicious cycle of distrust.
Trust in leadership, and in democracy per se, has been put firmly on the global political agenda but ebbs and flows in business and management dialogue. Articles on trust are scattered through business magazines – Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, etc. – telling us that trust is a necessary precursor to any business transaction. We generally take for granted that institutions are developed to ensure this. Betrayal is managed by exception in the courts, by consumers taking their money elsewhere, labour unrest and investor disinterest.
Inside organisations, inconsistencies between what managers say and what they do, under-delivering on promises, management spin, lack of care and communication, and insufficient knowledge sharing can all lead to employees mistrusting. Status-conscious managers who resolutely refuse to justify their actions may as well resign themselves to constantly putting out fires and dealing with HR problems “yet again”. Unlike power, trust is not commanded, it, like respect, is earned.
Macau – the World Centre of Tourism aspirant – is in the people business more than ever. Where people interact and work together trust is crucial. It determines the quality of relationships upon which job performance and service provision depend but we forget that trust can be fragile. We under-estimate the power of our words, the ready distortion of perceptions and over-estimate the resilience of our friends, our colleagues, our customers and those relationships. It’s the virtuous cycle of trust – the trust-credit in the bank – that buffers those moments. It lessens the impact of the bad and the ugly and positively (re)interprets what we see.