What’s the Fuss About Trust?

Competency: Competence is about the ability to deliver. Competence alone cannot make you a good leader or a trusted individual, but lack of competence can indeed undo your standing as a trusted leader. Professional competence is vital to trust. Being competent does not mean you are the Super Man who knows and can do everything. No! It means you know what to do and how to get things done. You need to know your strengths are and build your team with a complementary skill set. To put it in a nutshell, competence engenders confidence in a leader. 

Integrity: A healthy relationship stands on the foundation of Integrity and Honesty. Integrity is always doing the right thing. Honesty and integrity cannot be like slip on and slip off like clothing; it is you and the consistency in every action you do. As we all know, Integrity and honesty are most revealed during times of fear, insecurity, and greed. The choices we make during these intense moments expose the depth of our character. A good question to ask yourself is: “Do I uphold my honesty and integrity when it’s convenient or when I think others are watching, or do I hold on to these even when no one is noticing?”

Vulnerability: The most ignored component of Trust is Vulnerability. In essence, it means that your coworkers are comfortable being vulnerable with each other. As easy as all of this might sound, team members can begin to function without concern for protecting themselves, only when they are truly comfortable being exposed to one another.

Vulnerability includes weaknesses, skill deficiencies, interpersonal shortcomings, mistakes, and also requests for help. It is the team members’ confidence that their peer intentions are good, and there isn’t any reason to be protective or careful around the group.

To conclude, I’d like to quote Deb Mills–Scofield, an author and strategic planner for organizations helping them achieve actionable and profitable innovative plane, “Trust trumps everything. And everything flows from trust — learning, credibility, accountability, a sense of purpose, and a mission that makes ‘work’ bigger than oneself.”