What is this Entente ‘Trust in Business’ Newsletter about?

This newsletter is the start of a new, in depth, exploration of trust in the business world.

With new insights, case studies from CEOs and senior executives, and drawing from the hundreds of articles, books and papers we have sourced, our aim is to get you thinking differently about trust – to understand the importance of trust in your business, and to know what you need to do to actively build trust.

Why trust?

Trust is one of those things that we think we know about, but when explored, is not what we expected.

When Entente conducted a survey across Australia in 2006, we found that 74% of people surveyed said trust is ‘very important in personal relationships, but only 40% said it was ‘very important’ in business relationships.

I would say there’s a fair bet that this has a direct connection to morale issues, levels of disengagement, breakdowns of communication, customer complaints, slow conversion rates in sales, and unhappy shareholders, to name a few.

Why Entente?

I tell this story every time I talk about where the interest in trust came from for me personally, and everyone loves it!

My son, Lachlan, who was 9 at the time, brought home a one page description of ‘My Mum’ that he had done at school. It was beautifully decorated with flowers down the side and laminated. This is what it said: My Mum
My Mum is loving and caring
She likes to buy lots of clothes
She always writes and reads
Sometimes she can keep promises
But the best thing about my Mum is she is always there for me
Immediately after the ‘Awww, that’s lovely. Thank you’, I then said ‘What do you mean I sometimes keep promises?’ I was quite indignant. ‘That’s not me!’, I thought.
‘Well, sometimes you don’t keep your promises’, Lachlan said, very matter of fact.
‘Can you give me an example?’ I was a bit confused at this point. I wanted dates, times!
‘Like the other week, you said we might go and see a movie on the weekend and then we didn’t go’, he said, almost with a pout.
‘Oh,’ I thought with relief. I remembered the day and I think some other things came up. I said ‘Yeah, but that wasn’t really a promise, was it?’
Lachlan looked at me and said ‘I thought it was.’
Oops. I started thinking about the number of times I had said something like that to him. The I started thinking about how many times I do that at work, with friends. My head was spinning. I brought myself back to the discussion.
‘Let me ask another question. How do you feel when I do that?’
He looked me squarely in the eyes and said ‘I just don’t know when I can trust you’.
I felt like someone reached in and ripped my heart out.
What I started thinking about was how often this happens, and how often we probably all do this. I thought about promises, I thought about how people interpret what we say and the impact that has on their ability to trust us.

What I realised was I need to know more. I need to understand this – this is BIG.

So, in my quest to find out more, I started interviewing people – CEOs, Senior Managers, employees, psychologists, counsellors, professors – to find out what role trust plays in their business and in their relationships.

When I asked the question ‘How important is trust in your business?’ I got the same response 99% of the time – ‘It’s critical.’

When I asked ‘What do you do then, to measure where you have trust and where you don’t. What do you do to build trust?’ I also got the same response 90% of the time – ‘Nothing, but we should be!’

It was from this that the Entente Trust Survey, the Entente Trust Model and a series of other models and tools were born!

We now have some great insights and stories to tell about the role of trust in business, which we will share with you over time through this newsletter.

Your next Trust in Business newsletter will look at ‘What is trust?’, including some interesting responses from our 2006 Entente Trust Index.

Did you know?

In a study of 23,000 employees, managers and executives only 15% said they worked in a high trust environment
Only 13% have high trust, highly cooperative working relationships with other groups or departments

Source: Franklin Covey & Harris Interactive

Books you should read

The Speed of Trust by Stephen M R Covey

Filled with great case studies and an exploration of the importance of trust in business and personal relationships, the essence of this book shows that trusted leaders and organisations do things better, faster and at lower cost.

Buy it now at leading bookstores, or online here.

Something to do

Take some time to have a serious think about:

what the word ‘trust’ means to you
who you trust and why
how you would know if you had high levels of trust in your business
what low levels of trust might be doing in your business
how you might go about building trust

If you’d like to know more, call Vanessa Hall, Founder and Director of Entente on 02 9290 8592, or visit our website at www.entente.com.au.

Like to become accredited?

Call our Relationship Manager, Linda Thackray, or Vanessa Hall on 02 8889 0888 to arrange a time to meet. Find out more about accreditation at www.entente.com.au/become-accredited.html

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