By Andrew Sobel

One of President Ronald Reagan’s favorite expressions, which he often used in his negotiations with the old Soviet Union, was “Trust—But Verify.” Today, that expression may very well need to be turned on its head. Since World War II, general levels of trust—in each other, in business, and in government institutions—have steadily declined. Today, trust has reached a low ebb due to the near-collapse of the banking system, the self-interested behavior on the part of some corporate executives, and a host of other scandals such as the forced resignations of the governors of two major states.
A recent survey, the Edelman Trust Barometer, found that only 38% of Americans trust corporations to “do the right thing,” down from 58% last year. Lack of trust has in fact become pervasive. It used to be that you could trust personal recommendations from friends, but the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, which was founded on recommendations from trusted friends and advisors, has put even that type of referral in doubt. The assurance of a friend who says a broker, lawyer, or doctor is outstanding may no longer be enough in the post-Madoff world. On a different level, a recent Wall Street Journal article about bank overdraft fees (which average $26/item) quoted one customer as saying, “I don’t trust my bank to resist the temptation to rip me off.”
Despite its vast transparency, the Internet presents its own trust-related issues. The New York Times, for example, recently highlighted a well-known health web site that asks visitors to fill out a personal health survey. Unknown to the participants, however, their personal information is then shared with pharmaceutical companies, who target them with tailored marketing pitches for drugs.
Finally, our ability to trust has also been undermined by puffery—by the equivalent of grade inflation in public life. Everyone is “the world’s leading authority,” a best selling author, or the inventor of a new product “based on a Nobel prize winner’s theories”—as touted by one recent TV advertisement.
Nothing is as it seems—or so it seems. The problem is that, as the 4th century monk and religious philosopher St. Augustine wrote in his essay On Lying, “When regard for the truth is even slightly weakened, all things remain in doubt.”
So how do you rebuild and strengthen trust in your professional relationships with colleagues, clients, and other constituencies? And as individuals, how can we know when to trust? Let’s look at these two separate but related issues that have been brought into relief by the calamitous events of the last 18 months.
The Heart of Trust
What is trust based on? Author Robert Shaw proposes that trust is “A belief that those on whom we depend will meet our expectations of them.” There are several core ingredients of trust:
1. Integrity: Is the person honest, reliable, and consistent? Can they discern between right and wrong? Is their behavior “integral” and consistently aligned with a set of core values and beliefs?
2. Competence: Is the other party competent to do the job at hand? I might trust my family doctor to treat the flu, for example, but certainly not to operate on my knee. In the business world, competence and credibility are important elements of our willingness to trust.
3. Agenda Orientation: Is the person focused on my agenda or on his agenda? Will they act consistently in my interests or in their own interests?
One of the CEOs I interviewed for my new book, All for One, expressed this to me in slightly different words. He said, “I wish all of my advisors were independently wealthy. Then, I would know that they would be objective, put my interests first, and always tell me what they honestly thought.
What enables us to judge integrity, competence, and agenda orientation is transparency. “What you see is what you get” summarizes this simple idea. When things are hidden (like bank overdraft fees that are only explained in too-small-to-read print), or only partially revealed (such as the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction before the US invasion of Iraq), it becomes difficult to trust. When vested interests and conflicts of interest are not properly disclosed—for example when a pharmaceutical company has paid a doctor for her research on the effectiveness of their drug—trust is undermined.
Increasing Trust in Your Relationships
To build trust in today’s environment, you have to exemplify behaviors that reinforce the foundations of trust. For example, you can:
· Do things that are clearly in the other person’s interest and not yours. You might turn down a piece of business with a customer, for example, because you are not the absolute best person for the job.
· Demonstrate your competence not through smooth proclamations (“trust us!”) but rather multiple testimonials from past clients and customers and specific examples of your successes. I call this showing rather than telling.
· Strengthen trust—or rebuild it if it has been damaged—through small, specific, confidence-building measures. Say you’re going to do something next week, do it, and then move on to the next step.
· Be available and present for your clients even when there aren’t a lot of fees coming in. Everyone talks about becoming a “trusted advisor”—real ones are not just mercenaries, they are helpful to others through thick and thin.
· Be extraordinarily transparent in your business relationships. Create a collaborative process to develop a proposal rather than writing it at your office and then “pitching” the client. Invite clients to see your operations and the processes your use to develop and deliver your solutions. Use collaboration technology and Web 2.0 platforms to create links with your clients and business partners and promote idea exchanges (this is what IBM does through its “Innovation Jams” which can involve over 100,000 employees, customers, and other partners).
Verifying Whom You Can Trust
Building trust in a low-trust environment is one challenge; verifying whom you can trust is also important. Because of hidden conflicts of interest, a lack of transparency, and the heightened risks of trusting in areas such as financial management, verification has taken on a heightened importance. “Trusting your gut” about someone is no longer the litmus test—and in any event, your gut can often be wrong because of the way some people (like sociopaths) can compartmentalize their personalities and appear credible.
Using the elements of trust described earlier, you need to ask a lot of hard questions before throwing your hat in the ring with someone. For example, you need to:
1. Verify Integrity. Do they have an unblemished track record of honesty and ethical behavior? These things can be verified using everything from multiple references (not one) to criminal background checks. Are their any inconsistencies in the information presented by this person and in their behavior? Even small things can be a tip-off—for example, an excellent job candidate once told me he had an MBA from a top Business School. However, it turned out it was an executive MBA, which was a very different kettle of fish from the school’s highly competitive two-year program (the executive MBA was far less competitive and took a fraction of the time to complete). Not a huge red flag, but a red flag nonetheless. In the case of Bernie Madoff, some investors turned down the opportunity to invest in his fund when very basic research showed that his trading system couldn’t possibly function the way he said it did.
2. Verify Competence. Can you objectively verify if the person or their company is really as good as they say they are? You could gain this insight by have in-depth discussions with at least several existing clients or customers. What is the quality of their business base? What level are they actually working at in the companies they list as references? People throw a lot of names around, but it’s one thing to work with a Senior Vice President at GE, and quite another to have a mid-level training manager at that company as your top client.
3. Verify their Agenda Orientation. Whose interests they are focused on? This is a judgment call you have to make based on having several in-depth conversations with the person. Are they sincerely focused on understanding your issues, or do they try to “close the sale” as fast as possible? Is their approach generic, or tailored based on having invested time to get to know you? Are they “pitching you” or trying to educate you about what they do and how they do it? You can also understand this by asking other clients or business associates about their relationship after the sale. Was the same level of enthusiasm present a year later? Did this person come through in a crisis or during a rough patch in the relationship?
Finally, how transparent are they? Is this person free and open with information about themselves and their organization? Do they advertise anonymous testimonials, or are their testimonials from real people with names and titles? Are they willing to give you three or four references? If you sense a cloak of secrecy, or an unwillingness to open up, then caveat emptor.
Another CEO that I interviewed for my research told me, “When someone says ‘trust me’ I usually reach for my wallet to make sure it is still there.” When it comes to trust, watch their feet, not their mouths. Look for inconsistencies, and carefully verify.

**************
Andrew Sobel is a leading authority on client relationships and the skills and strategies required to earn enduring client loyalty. Andrew is the author of the newly published All for One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships (John Wiley & Sons) as well as the business bestsellers Clients for Life and Making Rain. He has also written over 75 articles on building long-term relationships, and contributed chapters to four books on leadership, strategy, and marketing. He spent 15 years at Gemini Consulting, where he was a Senior Vice President and Country Head, and for 13 years he has headed his own consulting firm, Andrew Sobel Advisors. He can be reached at www.andrewsobel.com.