I categorized this as nostalgia since there is not a humor section. Perhaps this should be filed as making a difference.
I would say someone is not familiar with Schofield’s Definition of Discipline; however, this comes from a ‘91 Citadel grad…
I started a discussion in LinkedIn: How Do You Establish Trust?
I got the reply below. I am not sure replying to this person will make a difference; however, I think a lot of us would have fun replying. Feel free to reply here or in my leadership blog or directly within the LinkedIn discussion. I will copy appropriate comments over to the LinkedIn discussion. You can opt out of this option. Of course rants and other types of innapropriate responses should be kept here.
Reply to “How do you establish trust?”:
Thank you for posting this interesting topic. First to answer your question, in my opinion there is only one successful way to establishing trust. You speak honestly, say what you are going to do and carry out what you said. Anything else just falls short and will always be remembered.
Second my opinoin on the points you use to introduce the topic. Trust is a strange thing and in all but the best circumstances a fleeting one. I would agree in principle that in order to get trust you must give it however the necessity to give it “first” before you receive it is likely to bring up a chicken and the egg paradox. Someone has to trust someone else without getting any in return to start the game.
So two comments. First, the notion that you must “give in order to receive” is incorrect on the same basis I just discussed. Secondly regarding your comment, “People cannot lead unless others trust them.” I absolutely disagree. Your trust is not a requirement for your superior to make a decision and instruct you to carry it out; only your obedience is.
In my opinion there seem to be alot of discussion topics in this group and others where the “ideals” of leadership and management are summarily posted and used as a basis for the real question; in this case “How do you establish or recommend establishing trust?”. Where we all falter is the establishment of these assumptions and following, using those faulty assumptions to prove a point.
We’d all like things to be just the way we want them. Our leaders should be nice, they should be trustworthy, they should be experts in their field, they should be social, flexible, fiscally concious, have a heart, and on and on and on. The reality is that our leaders only need to be able to do one thing and one thing extremely well … that is to be able to make a decision.
Everything else we secretly wish for in our leadership is nothing more than that, a wish. Your CEO decides, his board manages the filtering of the resources and information to the proper channels where those decisions are implemented. This doesn’t necessitate your trust, respect or anything except obedience. Having said that, I would also argue that in order to sustain a business, the issues of trust, respect and so on become much more important as time goes by. None of us wants to get stuck listening to a dictator for the rest of our careers so turn over will likely become an issue.
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