At the NYFBC our last several roundtables with our current leaders of local family businesses the discussion centered around Stephen M.R. Covey's book The Speed of Trust. We read and then discussed the book. Asked each other questions, shared relevant stories and came away with a better understanding of how important trust is in family business, being a business owner, a leader, an employer, employee, a family member. To wrap up the subject I asked The Leading Element to come in. The Leading Element has been sponsoring the NYFBC for three years now and always willing to share some great insight with us. Susan Burgess one of the partners brought us a great presentation on Trust and Leadership. The key components of this presentation centered around three very simple words. Character, Capabilities and Communication. As we went through the morning it was very clear how these three words don't really work without the others when it comes to trust. She had us do a couple excercises involving why someone we work with we might not exactly trust. Then try to express why we don't trust them. All using those three words.
Of course I can't do this topic justice in these couple of paragraphs but next time you think or say you don't trust someone you may want to stop and think about why you don't trust them. Is it a true character flaw that this person has. Could it possibly be their capabilities, are you expecting to much from them and it is something that needs adjusting or needs to be worked on. Or could it even be that there was a communication problem. Somthing misunderstood, something implied, something taken out of context or written an email the wrong way.
Listening to Susan had me reflecting on why there may be people out there I don't trust or maybe reasons on why someone might not trust me. Though I can't imagine the later.
