A Recipe for Trust
Brian suggests that a new definition of trust may arise out of the upcoming We Media event in London. Well here’s a recipe for trust, one that admittedly was designed to describe good trusted advisors. And it’s relevant even at the macro level as trust tends to be highly personal.
Here is a simple model for trust that comes mostly from The Trusted Advisor by David Maister. While he speaks about this in regards to the individual, it translates to corporate trust (and media and government) very well.
Trust = Credibility + Reliablity + Intimacy (Openness) divided by Self Orientation
Okay, what does all that add up to?
Elements of trust include credibility, reliability, and intimacy, divided by self-orientation.
Credibility. Do you behave consistently so that the person believes you?
Reliability. Do you deliver, acting on what you say?
Intimacy. (read: Openness/transparency) Do you reveal yourself so that you can reach a level of closeness and understanding?
Self-orientation. If you are focused on your own agenda then trust is diminished. if your self-orientation is low & if you temporarily release your own agenda then you can be weaker on the other elements and still be trusted
Can this last point be translated to be relevant to media, government and business? Sure. Call it benign self-interest – i.e. Car manufacturer makes car, wants to sell car to you, and they have taken the time to understand what type of car you really need.
TAG: wemedia
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I have long believed that there is an “economics of trust” that underlies and in some ways governs the economics of trade and finance. Are we seeing the emergence of “trust economists” here? Specialists in understanding how trust shapes actions and behaviour? What are the basic laws that govern the economics of trust?
The equation you’re forgetting is “Fact x Importance = News”
John heads up the 360° Digital Influence team – Ogilvy PR’s global, digital word of mouth marketing practice designed to manage brands at a time when anyone can be an influencer and we are all influenced in new ways. His team has developed and executed social media strategy for clients as diverse as Intel, Lenovo, Kraft, Unilever all the way to the federal government. The team’s focus is on engaging through conversations, outreach to new influencers and word of mouth marketing.
John is a Web 1.0 graduate. As Creative Director at Discovery Communications, he transformed a single web site into 14 Web communities and services from DiscoveryKids.com to Animalplanet.com and more. In the early nineties, when interactive television was imminent, John headed up the creative studio for the joint ITV venture between Viacom and AT&T.
Currently, John serves on the board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. He teaches graduate studies in Digital Influence at Johns Hopkins University.
His blog is: The Digital Influence Mapping Project – http://johnbell.typepad.com
His twitter name is : jbell99
John, that equation somehow appeals to me, perhaps because adducing explanatory arrays into polynomial expression focuses elegantly on a few related concepts. Yet, I feel that if one were to calculate “trustflow” as was mentionned elsewhere, number crunching and regressions would yield a high statistical residue. As I am not aware of either taking the time or performing such calculation to feel trust, “Dead Poets’ Society” popped to mind, a film where a classbook taught poetry proportional to the integral (the surface below the graph’s curve).
Nevertheless, the term “Self orientation” is peculiar in it’s expression (it’s the only one to use a superior logical operator, as division has priority over sum). So if I get it right and Self orientation is nil, then the quotient grows infinite and so does trust. Conversely, if it is infinite, what are reliability and credibility for ? And besides, shouldn’t one believe it ought to be matched likewise by Openmess? Maths do not know the result of infinite divided by infinite. Calculations to the limits often support or unwarrant rationale for other values.
“Self orientation” is also conspicuous in nature (really not hyphenated ?). What is Self orientation? Does one know oneself thoroughly? The very fact such subjective a criterion is introduced is very interesting: as reability and credibility are subject to one’s own subjectivity, then how objective is trust? At least we now know trust is subject-oriented.
Now, Trust is naturally the most important array, for which Nichelle played with words and titled her post “In Blog We Trust”. The American national motto is more profound that its general religious acceptance, as shows scrutiny of the U.S.’ Forefathers, most certainly spiritual persons, though many not highly religious. In his famous and bewildering book, “The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, the late Princeton professor Julian Jaynes ascribed God to that little voice that sometimes wends its way to conciousness to speak the truth. That part of the Self is even frequent when one listens to oneself, when one is in good spirits, wholly. So in God we Trust; remember Depeche Mode’s song: “reach out and touch faith / Your own Personal Jesus”. If the coincidence is of any relevance, then the above equation should read Trust‚â°Self orientation (directly linked). That is interesting, much as yesterday’s post where Birdie Jaworski spelt Reich’s name as “Brain” (more extolling than the “Bliar” lapsus one could read on the signs last year in London streets).
Either way, To trust or not to trust Janus, thats is the question…