Trust

“Trust is a hard thing to come by these days”

We’ve all been there before.  It’s lunchtime and you’re hungry.  You’ve already decided that you want to go to your favorite restaurant, but as you’re walking past a different restaurant, a person outside is offering free food samples.  They get your attention and offer you a sample.  You’re hungry, so you plop one in your mouth.  And it tastes great.  The person who gave you the free sample mentions that there’s no waiting for a table at the restaurant.  In a split second, you do some quick math in your head — your favorite restaurant is still a few blocks away, and it’s always busy.  This other restaurant has no wait, and because it’s right here, you’ll get your food faster.  And since you have an early afternoon appointment, choosing this restaurant will probably mean that you’ll have more slack in your schedule to get to that appointment.  You decide to go with the restaurant that gave you the free sample.

Let’s deconstruct what happened in this example.  You were asked to make a change — but the request came with one extremely critical piece of information.  You got a literal taste of what change might be like.  That taste of change engendered trust in you that going through with the full blown change — deciding to eat at this restaurant — would be beneficial.

This example shows just how correlated trust is to change.

I’ve been an agent of change in companies for over a decade.  Every day, I coach people to change, and through change.  Some of the changes are small; some are big.  But they’re still changes.   

I’ve learned that if people don’t trust you, and why you’re asking them to change, they won’t change.

Trust is a prerequisite to change.

Gravenhurst — “Trust”