Take the test: How much do people trust you as a leader?
In a team setting, trust is obviously a big deal. It’s the very first thing to overcome in the 5 Dysfunctions of a team, but what exactly is trust in the leadership sense when you cut away all the mumbo jumbo. We all want those in the team to trust us, but can you actually measure how much trust you have?
Luckily, there is a simple equation (known as the Trust Equation) which helps leaders identify just how much trust they really have. You can take a simple test, answering 20 questions, to learn your TQ (Trust Quotient) score.
Four variables
There are four objective inputs of measuring trust in relationships. It’s not just relationships with co-workers either. Knowing your TQ score can help you identify how much do your customers trust you?
1. Credibility
All great leaders are credible. They usually have experience in a particular attribute, which is why people seek their council to begin with and why greater opportunities often present themselves to those who are the most credible.
Leaders need to be credible. When they are, they have tremendous amounts of power to inspire and lead teams to performance.
2. Reliability
When you say you’ll do something — do it. People love to work with those who are reliable. When you are constantly second guessing someone will be able to deliver a new project, or even if they will arrive to a meeting on time, you never trust them with the important tasks. If you can’t count on them for the small things — why expect them to come through when it really counts?
3. Intimacy
Intimacy is the attribute that most leaders fall short on. It is the attribute that allows us to drop our guard and put our real emotions on display. To disclose painful truths, air things that emotionally hold us back, and be vulnerable in sensitive moments is very hard for those in leadership positions because we are told that to be a great leader one needs to be strong. Inversely, you can only have that kind of intimate dialogue with those you truly trust, so trust and intimacy go hand in hand.
4. Self-Orientation
Self-orientation is about motives. It talks to the focus of a person. Are they really trying to manipulate me to get something to go their way? We’ve all met sales people who come out of the woodwork only when they need something.
The math
The equation that represents your trust quotient has 3 variables that increase trust (Credibility, Reliability and Intimacy) and one that decreases trust (Self-orientation).
Self-orientation is the most important attribute in the equation. When someone has a very low self-orientation, and have the best interests of the customer (or team member) at heart, they will always be more trusted than those coming from selfish motivations.
This is why sales people tend to build much more rapport when they stop trying to win deals, and instead, put their focus on helping the customer.
Trust Quotient
The Trust Quotient (TQ) is like your EQ (Emotional Quotient) or IQ (Intelligence Quotient). It’s a way to represent just how much trustworthiness someone carries.
To calculate your TQ score, you simply need to fill out a survey of 20 questions (much like an IQ test). The downside to this is that the data is self-reported — and self-reported survey data is notoriously unreliable. It is hard to ask someone a question like “how do others feels about your work reliability?”, and expect a useful answer that’s accurate. Most people have a very high opinion of their performance, and will respond in surveys accordingly.
If you wanted to make it more accurate, you could technically create your own survey, and have others input data and do some kind of calibration — but I suspect nobody will do this.
When you’re done, you’ll end up with a result that looks like this.
Making improvements
Once you have made the initial assessment and have your TQ, you can go a bit further to learn your strengths. Here you can learn how to leverage your strengths as a leader to further develop trust as a team.
For your problem (opportunity) areas, you can discover ways of pushing these in the right directions to further build trust.
Take the assessment
The assessment is free to take, it only takes about 5 minutes to complete, and you can access it here.
