Leading Across Boundaries: Creating Collaborative Agencies in a Networked World

Forming and Sustaining Trusting Relationships

Exhibit 4.2 offers nine approaches for building trusting relationships. These approaches reflect an important insight described well in The Speed of Trust: credibility lies at the foundation of all trust. Covey (2006) suggests that our credibility is a function of two factors:

Credibility = character + competence.

First, when we judge another’s trustworthiness, we try to determine if he is a person of character: Does he have integrity? Are his intentions positive or harmful? And second, we assess the person’s competence: Will she follow through? Can we count on her? The approaches summarized in Exhibit 4.2 help build trust through demonstrations of character and competence. This is, of course, ...