Trust
"If we are to address the challenges of
speed in today's marketplace,
we must strengthen the trust in our relationships with our people,
customers, shareholders and other partners." |
| — William Shaw, President, Marriott International |
The economics of trust are staggering. The harsh reality is that
lack of trust continues to be the norm in today's business environment.
According to The Deming Center for Quality Management at least 50%
of wasted time is due to a lack of trust. And yet, despite other
key business performance measures, improving trust is seldom if
ever targeted as a cost-reduction opportunity.
In his national best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People, Stephen R. Covey suggests a simple metaphor, an Emotional
Bank Account or EBA, for measuring the amount of trust in relationships.
The EBA accumulates positive balances by deposits and negative balances
by withdrawals. It is a simple, yet effective metaphor for how we
establish and sustain trust or erode and diminish trust in our personal
and professional relationships.
Interestingly, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was
published in 1989, approximately five years' prior to Daniel Goleman's
bestseller entitled Emotional Intelligence. Goleman's landmark
book on emotional intelligence was the first compelling evidence
of the relationship between trust and emotional intelligence.
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