What is Trust

At Entente, we define trust as:

The ability to rely on a:

• Person
• Company
• Product or Service

to deliver an outcome

When you really start thinking about what trust is, you gain a much greater appreciation for why it is so critical in all our relationships and interactions.

In 2006, we asked 600 people across Australia this very question – What is trust?. Here are some of the varied responses:

Knowing that you can depend on somebody so that they would do what they say they would do and they are reliable

It is just being honest with somebody / that you feel safe with them and what they say is honest

I suppose having absolute confidence in a person to keep me safe and to keep any confidence that i might have in them/ it would be a two way thing, they would have trust in me

It’s a corner stone of human civilization. It’s your bond between one human being and another. It’s a value.

It means you can depend on someone

It takes a long time to find a person you can trust. Other people only try to get something out of you. People you trust generally will do anything for you. I would find it hard to trust someone who I have not known for a while

Trust is a close correlation between what an individual says and what they actually do, i would trust someone if what they and what they do actually matches up/

Having confidence in the situation or the person you are dealing with that you won't be deceive or mislead Trust believes that somebody that makes a commitment will deliver on that commitment

The most amazing thing to start to explore, and we will look at this in more detail through this newsletter series is this – how do people choose to rely on a:

• Person
• Company
• Product or Service

and what outcome is it that they want?

In some of the examples above, the ability to rely on someone is based on how dependable they are, do they do what they say they are going to do, do they deliver on commitments, will they be safe, will they be told the truth, will they be misled?

Every employee in your business, every manager, every customer, every potential customer, every shareholder is going through a process of assessing if they can trust in the:

• Person
• Company
• Product or Service

The question you need to ask yourself is – how do you stack up?