Can this happen with the social currency of trust? Can we over do trust-building efforts to where trust actually diminishes? I think we can and I think it’s happening.
At a recent dentist appointment my doctor informed me that I will need a crown on a back molar. It appears a faulty filling led to decay and the tooth is too fragile.
Got it. Completely believable, when’s my next appointment?
But he wasn’t done. He prepped for an inter-oral camera and took a series of pictures of my teeth. Then he displayed the detailed, colorful images and showed me what he saw. He’s my Dentist, he’s treated me numerous times, I already trust him due to previous experiences so why all this hoopla? I’ve seen these camera’s used before. In those times I felt like being convinced for less medically necessary actions. I felt like he went into auto-pilot, zombie-like, he pushed some internal play button and it was obvious. I now had some doubt where I didn’t before.
For the record, I don’t believe he was trying to up-sell me, I think it is a misguided practice and his approach is not atypical. There are reasons for this type of preemptive activity happening across many industries today. For starters we do have a global trust issue. Wrong doing at all levels of business and government in recent years has rightfully led people to question every action. This has resulted in many business leaders having a heightened sensitivity to the issue and strive to be more pro-active about building trust. In an effort to get ahead of potential trust problems, business leaders have sought new ideas and examples to leverage; best practices if you will to appear more honest and caring in an effort to build relationships, improve employee retention, put people first, etc.
But too much trust-building can result in the appearance of duplicity.
Businesses are applying a wide range of trust-building tactics and there inlies the problem, they are well-known tactics, often plug-in-play with a little contextual modification. In today’s world, transparency means employees and consumers alike are just as aware of them and too many tactics can appear as tricks. So how do you as a leader know when trust is built? When do you know you are crossing the line? This is tricky, it’s a gut feeling, its found in reading body language or online, it’s seen in the depth and details of conversation responses.
People are individuals and cookie cutter approaches should never be applied even when the intention is sincere. This is hard though. We like formulas and patented approaches but this, trust-building, is different. It’s about being human and being human is just about being honest, flawed, natural. Being human is not a strategy.
