Trust and Truth

COACHINGLEADERSHIP

Feb 7

I believe that our relationships are built on the connection between trust, authenticity and truth.

The more truth and authenticity there is, the stronger the trust— But also, the stronger the trust the easier it is to be authentic and truthful.

Truth and Authenticity

Authenticity is often talked about as a solo pursuit, being in touch with yourself and able to express yourself fully. But our confidence and ability to be our authentic self can be strongly tied to the environment we are in, and the people who are around us.

It is easier to be authentic in an environment where there is trust. I can be authentic when…

I trust that people have my best interests at heart
I feel safe to be more fully myself
I have the culture and environment to be myself
When I am myself I feel rewarded and good
I have seen others like me, who have been able to safely be authentic

Trust is built from small moments of truth

I recently shared an inner doubt and hesitation I was having with my team of associates. Talking to them with openness and vulnerability allowed me to process the feelings behind my hesitations and those doubts evolved into a new courage and an approach to the situation.

I could have pretended to be confident, the strong, assured leader that we read about, but in sharing these real feelings, I made space for truth and honesty, and a closer mutual bond to my team. One of my associates sent me this…

“What’s special about you as a leader is that you create deep connection and credibility with the team simply by being human.” - Uzma Mohamedali

You can’t have trust without truth.

Learn about you- Do you know the truth of who you are?

Something I know for sure, is that I am never done learning about myself.

What I am good at? What gives me energy? What I am afraid of? What triggers my irritation? And one constant battle… The stories I tell myself. The story of who I am.

What I will or won’t do, what I can or can’t do. What the world is like.

Authenticity starts with noticing, sometimes the people closest to us have insights about our thinking and behaviour that can help us to understand more about who we are.

Being authentic is often an exploration to learn what it means to be our authentic self in different settings because that is how we learn about boundaries.

TRUST AND TRUTH IN THE BUSINESS WORLD

For more than 20 years Edelman have been studying trust and in 2022 they found that distrust is now society’s default emotion.

Here is how Edelman define trust:

“Trust defines an organization’s license to operate, lead and succeed. Trust is the foundation that allows an organization to take responsible risk, and, if it makes mistakes, to rebound from them. For a business, especially, lasting trust is the strongest insurance against competitive disruption, the antidote to consumer indifference, and the best path to continued growth. Without trust, credibility is lost and reputation can be threatened.”- Edelman

That is why reputation and trust are critical to a business to survive. This explains why I spent most of my time, energy and budget in communications on work to build trusted relationships between an organisation and its stakeholders, internal and external.

But I lrealise that the organisation is not the logo, the building, assets, projects and products. The organisation is a collection of people.

Trust usually comes down to some simple human factors. Trust is built up and torn down by everything the people in the organisation say and do, the way in which they do it, and why. If organisations are essentially a bunch on humans gathered around a common goal, that humanly constructed goal drives decisions, the culture drives how we interact with each other. If you are trying to build trust with your stakeholders? I ask… What is the truth of who your organisation is? One of the ways that trust is broken is when the story an organisation tells us about who they are doesn’t match their actions. One of the reasons that breaks our trust is that we see their motives and dishonesty that conflict with their corporate voice.