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Truth 6. Recognizing Whom to Trust Keeps You From Getting
Burned
When you start a new job, as with any new relationship,
there is a period of trust building. Your colleagues need to
develop trust in you, as you do in them, if your working
relationships are to be effective. This reciprocity is
essential in the workplace; however efficient you are
personally, you will not be able to do your job in
isolation. If you can’t trust your colleagues to be there
for you, you could end up big trouble.
There is no formula for generating trust. Trust is above all
a feeling, something that gradually evolves through shared
experiences. However, it can be helpful, in building
effective working relationships, to carefully consider what
kind of trust you need in whom. You require a very different
kind of trust, for example, in a clerk or assistant to that
needed in a colleague with whom you are working on a
controversial new idea.
There are four major types of trust to think about as you
work with others:
Get-it-done trust involves knowing that others will meet
commitments on time and within budget, and alert you of any
potential delay. It is particularly vital with assistants,
or with anyone to whom you delegate tasks. You test it by
making small requests and noting how and when people get
them done. Then you’ll know whom you can trust when a
crucial project with an inflexible deadline comes along. You
can nurture a climate of get-it-done trust by making it
clear that people should come to you with any concerns about
meeting deadlines as soon as they have them.
Expertise trust is about believing in someone’s special
knowledge or ability, and vital with any experts with whom
you work. You must be certain that their advice is sound and
their knowledge current. For example, when hiring a
consultant to advise on a Hong Kong joint venture, you
should check that his or her experience post-dates the
colony’s handover to China, or it will be of limited use.
You need to know that experts will give you the real scoop
and the whole scoop whenever you ask or, ideally, even
before. You test expertise trust by double-checking with
others the information you are given until you feel fully
confident in someone.
Political savvy trust comes from knowing that your
colleagues understand workplace norms, and how to play the
organizational game. It is bound up with confidentiality and
discretion, and is important in any colleague with whom you
work strategically. Being great at getting things done, or
being experts in their field, is no guarantee that
colleagues deserve political savvy trust. Your brainstorming
colleague with great off-the-wall ideas may not realize the
importance of keeping these low profile until you have
warmed up your boss, and may let something slip that halts
your plans. Political savvy trust gradually builds with
time, as you observe the way in which colleagues behave in
others’ company.
Structural trust is needed whenever you work with someone
from elsewhere in your company. Ideally, it comes from
knowing that the other person is able to put the
organization’s interests before his or her own, and give
credit to other departments rather taking total ownership.
Given that resources are usually stretched, and that
different departmental interests often don’t coincide,
developing total structural trust is tricky. However, you
can generate a good working trust by establishing clear
frameworks in advance, rather than taking blind leaps of
faith. If you have to split a commission with someone in
another team, for example, you should agree on the
percentage split before you team up to approach a customer.
Every occasion for dealing with others, however low-key, is
a chance to test their trustworthiness. If someone breaks
your trust once, you should certainly be wary of asking for
his or her support with anything important in the future.
There’s not much time and space in organizational life for
second chances. |
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