Trust: super brand

I keep noticing lately that many of the careerists that reach out to me for career care, suffer at work because “they can trust noone”. Research has proven that we all are extremely subjective when it comes to assessing ourselves. For example* when 1.000.000 students were asked how they would rate themsleves in terms of how good they were at getting along with others 85% rated themselves above the median and 25% rated themselves at top score, which was just impossible.

This is exactly what happens with trust: trust is one of those brand attributes we all believe we possess (we are trustworthy) but so few of us believe that there are trustworthy people out there: this is irrational.
So what is going on?

What is going on is that “Actions speak louder than words”. And trust is built on actions. We might say that we are trustworthy and that we deserve to be trusted and to work with trustworthy people but our actions do not provide any proof of that.Just to confirm how much we really deserved to be trusted, let”s just observe our everyday routine at work.

Is it that:

1. Our thoughts, our words and our actions are not consise?
2. We spend a lot of time and energy gossiping about our collegues, friends, supervisors or even competitors?
3. We give away secrets we have been trusted with?
4. We bend the rules when we feel we won”t get caught?
5. We cut corners at work?
6. We do not give trust, we are very cautious and we see a hidden agenda behind all actions?

Everything we experience is in effect a reflection of how we see the world. Trust is one of the most valuable brand attributes we can have and if we are really careful and we “know ourselves”, we can act in a trustworthy manner first and then expect to enjoy trust.

*http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/06/how-to-get-senior-leaders-to-c/