More Articles on Trust

Since I blogged about a couple books on this subject I wanted to give a few other resources as well. First off, the reason I came across these resources is because back in January I participated in a discussion with Jim Coplien, Diana Larsen, and Doug Shimp about sharing, trust-loops, and team interaction.

Aside from each of us sharing our own thoughts we also shared some resources. I already mentioned the books. There were also some online articles/materials that were discussed and I wanted to share those here.

• One recent article is Creating Trust by Rick Brenner -- Rick has a lot of good articles at his site, and I'm a regular subscriber to his free PointLookout newsletters


• I also read some interesting things in "Trust and Trust Building" by Roy J. Lewicki and Edward C. Tomlinson, particularly the definitions of "calculus-based trust" and "identification-based trust" (which I admit were new terms to me)


• Fear, trust and Truth in IT Project Teams


• Building Trust in Emergency Response Teams
  


• The Meanings of Trust, by some folks at the University of Minnesota (not sure if this is a research project/report or someone's in-progress thesis)


• Diana Larsen has a presentation entitled "The First Thing to Build": Leveraging Trust on Agile Teams, which builds upon something I said several years back ("The first thing to build is TRUST!" -- which Alistair Cockburn liked a lot and started using it in the signature of his email & forum posts)
  

Diana Larsen mentioned the following:

Another useful book is Dennis & Michelle Reina's Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace. They've developed an interesting model they call Transactional Trust which is a further explanation of the behaviors involved in "you've got to give it to get it?". They include three kinds;

• Contractual trust - managing explicit and implicit expectations, establish boundaries, delegate appropriately, encourage mutually serving intentions, be consistent, keep agreements (do what you say you'll do)
• Communication trust share information, tell the truth, admit mistakes, give & receive effective feedback, maintain confidentiality, speak to good purpose (avoid gossip, a.k.a "be impeccable with your word")
• Competence trust - acknowledge people's skills and abilities, allow people to make decisions, involve others & seek their input, help people learn new skills

Robert Hurley wrote an article for Harvard Business Review, Winning Your Employee's Trust. It's more about the relationship between leaders and staff. The interesting part, to me, is a model he developed out of his research. It links back to that idea that people's capacity for trust comes both from within themselves and from situational context, in a sophisticated (and unconscious) calculation of numerous elements. Fascinating, I thought.

Another article you might find interesting is called, Promises, Lies and Apologies: Is it Possible to Restore Trust? and is about what circumstances contribute to whether trust can be rebuilt. Particularly apt here in Portland as we deal with the lies our newly elected Mayor got caught in.

If you have some links to some other good resources on trust, please add your comment and share them with me!