The domino effect of broken promises

I was meeting up with some friends for breakfast the other day. We’d agreed to meet at 8.30am in the restaurant in the Hotel Cosmos we were all staying at in Moscow. It started as ‘Let’s meet at 8.00’ and turned into 8.30, which is late for me for breakfast, but I thought the later the better for them – at least I’d know they would be there on time.

8.30am sharp, I was in the restaurant with my husband, Peter. We sat at a table for 4 people, spreading our bags and coats over the chairs to reserve them. This was a busy restaurant and people would just lob up and sit at your table if it looked like it was available.

By 8.40am Peter decided to go an get his breakfast (it was buffet – self service). I decided to wait.

Two ladies came by and asked if the seats next to us were taken. ‘Sorry, we’re minding them for friends who are joining us soon.’ I said with a smile. The ladies wandered around the restaurant and eventually found somewhere else to sit.

By 8.50am I decided to get myself a cup of tea and something light, but I’d wait till our friends joined us before I would serve up a hot breakfast.

At 8.52am, while watching the door and looking at my watch, wondering where our friends were, a young girl came over and attempted to sit at out table. ‘I’m sorry, that seat’s taken’, I said and waved my hand in her direction. She picked up her things and moved on. Now I was feeling guilty.

The young girl wandered back over. ‘Truly, they are meeting us here. They are just running late.’ I said, shrugging my shoulders. She wandered off again, finding a seat just behind us.

‘How can they be this late?’ Peter and I were wondering. They were staying in the same hotel, so we knew they weren’t caught in traffic or anything like that.

At 9.00am I got myself some more breakfast. The two ladies who I first rejected kept looking over at our table and whispering something to each other. I could only assume they were saying dreadful things about us and how we wouldn’t let anyone sit near us.

At 9.15am we had finished our breakfast. No sign of our friends. As we had only just met them a few days before, we didn’t have their mobile numbers, and didn’t know what room they were in, or we would have tracked them down.

Then it happened. One of the two ladies came over to our table, stared at me and said ‘Hmm. minding seats for your friends, hey? I don’t trust you!’

I gasped. ‘But I’m the trust lady!’, I thought. That hurts! Two weeks later and I can still see her face and hear her words ringing in my ears. ‘But it wasn’t my fault!!’ I wanted to tell her. If I knew who she was, I’d find her just to tell her.

But it got me thinking (as many of life’s events do). There’s a domino effect to broken promises. We were taking action as a direct result of a promise made to us. When that promise was broken, it had a flow on effect to others that we were encountering and dealing with.

How often does this happen in business? In families? In communities?

How often does it happen in yours?

Epidemic of Global Anger

I read Caroline Myss's Blog post on an Epidemic of Global Anger http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-myss/an-epidemic-of-global-ang_b_310209.html where she so eloquently says "Our deeper truth is that we are in the midst of a collective faith crisis but it isn't with God; it's with humanity itself. We can no longer trust our common sense or humanity to keep our species alive much less safe and healthy."

Sharing her views, we continue to work at ways to bring about a new awareness to the importance, power and fragile nature of trust. To remind people that we, as humans, must trust each other. It is how we function on a day to day basis. We have simply forgotten that as we go about our daily business, there are a string of people relying on us, trusting us to do certain things in certain ways, to say things, to provide, support, love,encourage and empower those around us.

I believe we have to go right back to the basics. To teach our children how to trust, and how important it is to be trustworthy. It is that message that I take to Russia in just over a week, to a school system that is, hopefully, open to teaching their children tolerance and trust through a program we are rolling out across the world through the Entente Foundation, starting in Australia and Russia.

I can only hope that if we can catch the next generation on a new wave of trust and caring for humanity, we may still have the bright future we all wished for our children.

Trust shattered - picking up the pieces.

Below is a letter which I wrote to Financial Review Magazine in relation to one of their articles posted on 2nd October.

I'm responding to a couple of pieces in Friday 2nd October's paper, namely 'A matter of complete trust shattered' and 'Compliance focus can stunt value', both of which are all about trust. On one hand we have a number of people who have blindly trusted and have had that trust betrayed, and on the other we have corporate boards who are blind to the fact that trust is the ultimate power source, and a loss of it their ultimate risk.

To those poor people who trusted Bradfield, my heart goes out to you. One of the things that you need to understand is the difference between liking someone and trusting them. Too many times we confuse the two and end up trusting someone we shouldn't have - they might be a nice person, but they were the wrong person to trust. You need to recognise that trusting someone is all about your ability to rely on them to deliver on your Expectations, your Needs and keep the Promises they made to you (what I call ENPs®). There are always warning signs when trust starts to break down, just as many of you reported (eg. information not to hand when they asked for it, Promised returns a little too good to be true). Sadly, you failed to listen to the warning signs until it's too late and your trust has been broken.

To directors on corporate boards, your focus right now should be on making sure your stakeholders can trust your organisation. What we have seen through the recent financial crisis is a lot of people being drawn to organisations that Promise big returns and big bonuses, but when the Expectations and Needs are not met, and when the Promises are not kept, everyone jumps. The financial crisis is, in fact, a TRUST crisis. It's not a debate about whether compliance is in or out, or a focus on business performance is in or out - the organisations that come out of this stronger and with a sustainable business model to move forward are those who focus on restoring trust with those shareholders, employees and customers who are right now feeling betrayed and broken.

Vanessa Hall - 'The Trust Lady'
Sydney NSW

What is Fear? An abscence of trust

This is a question that I found from the LinkedIn Group 'The Philosophy Network'

What is Fear? What causes fear and how do we overcome it?

Fear is an abscence of trust.

That is, if trust is our ability to rely on a person (or people), an organisation, or a product or service to deliver a specific outcome (my definition of trust), and that specific outcome for all of us is that we want our Expectations met or managed, our Needs met and the Promises made to us kept (what I call ENPs in my books and work), then fear is an INABILITY to rely on the same.

Where there is fear, there is a sense that my Expectations will not be met (or I don't know what to Expect), my Needs will not be met, and the Promises made to me will not be kept.

Because our trust is fragile, and I represent it as an egg (it can break that easily), we fear placing our fragile trust in something that may, or is likely, to cause it to break.

It is actually a very good warning sign that either the person, organisation or product/service is not right for you to trust, or that you have negative Expectations or are seeking to have too many Needs satisfied from one source.

University studies say employers can break promises - I don't think so!

Below is an article I came accross on LinkedIn, ofcourse with the article being about trust and not agreeing with what it said I commented back.

Break promises if you like but treat your workers well..
Promises are made to be broken – especially if you're the boss. Workers don't care so much about whether their employers deliver on specific promises, according to the latest research in organisational psychology. What matters most are the rewards and opportunities they end up getting, even if they were initially promised more.
Most psychologists have assumed that broken promises in the workplace spell serious discontent. But previous studies have tended to record workers' perceptions about such breaches, without determining what promises were actually made.
To disentangle perception from reality, Samantha Montes and David Zweig of the University of Toronto in Canada began by asking students to put themselves in the shoes of hypothetical job candidates.
Half the students were informed that the recruiter made seven specific promises – about bonuses, training, support with personal problems, and so on – while half were not. Then the students read about what had happened to the imaginary employees three years down the line, when the employer had delivered all seven inducements, five or them, or just three.
More than 550 students clearly understood the scenarios described, yet their perceptions of the situations were influenced more by the number of inducements given than by whether any specific promises had been made.

My Response
I read this article with interest, which quickly turned into concern. I believe these kinds of studies and their results have the potential to continue down the spiral of broken trust in a workforce that is already suffering. We are already seeing some of the lowest levels of trust in business around the world, so we certainly don’t need people believing it’s OK to break promises and contribute to that downward spiral.

Let me explain why I disagree with these findings and the subsequent statements:

1. Promises only matter to people if they match the Expectations and the Needs of the individual. We are all drawn to people who actually make Promises that meet our Expectations and Needs, and it is on the combination of those 3 things, what I call ENPs®, that we place our trust in others. Employers will often make general Promises in job ads and interviews that may not matter to some employees but will extremely matter to others. Some specific Promises made to one employee will absolutely matter and they will be drawn to them, other Promises will not matter at all and will frankly just go straight over their heads.

Example: If an employee is Expecting regular ‘on the job’ and external training, which fulfils a strong Need for Self Actualisation and constant learning, and they are Promised regular training, they will be very much drawn to that job, and will react negatively if that training is not delivered. It will be one broken Promise that could completely destroy that employees’ trust in their manager and the organisation.

However, if that same Employee was Promised a bonus, and they are not motivated by Safety and Security and money is not a major driver for them, they will still Expect it because it was Promised, but they do not Need it to any great degree. Therefore a broken Promise about a specific bonus will not bother them, they’ll be happy with whatever they receive – as long as they still get their training!

2. Most people will adjust their Expectations based on what they see going on inside or outside an organisation – difficult times, a downturn, a frugal manager, will all impact employees’ Expectations about the likelihood of initial Promises actually being met. We all adjust our Expectations subconsciously to protect our trust. This is, in fact, how most of us cope with politicians. We Expect that many of the things they Promise will not be delivered to the extent that they Promised, so we still maintain a sense of trust, provided our basic Needs are met.

3. If half-Promises are delivered and meet the lowered Expectations, employees will generally accept those if, and ONLY if, they still feel their Needs have been met.

What does this mean for employers? All employers must:

1. Understand the Expectations and Needs of their employees
2. Only make Promises that they are confident they can deliver
3. If Promises are made in good faith and things change, communicate the changes to employees – ie manage their Expectations
4. Be aware that those Promises made to employees where there is a distinct link between the Promise, the Expectation and the Need must be met, and if not, the trust will break down
5. Understand that you cannot make assumptions about what employees want
6. Know that only Promising and delivering ‘good conditions and rewards’ as Montes suggests will satisfy some employees, but definitely not all, and is a dangerous position to take for an employer that wants good performance and aims to be an employer of choice
7. Decide if they want to be a trusted organisation or not. There is no middle ground, and if organisations are not aware of how trust is being built or broken down, chances are they are breaking it down on a daily basis and are, right now, suffering the consequences of that breakdown.

If you agree with me, please feel free to follow this link and voice your oppinion:
http://www.linkedin.com/newsArticle?viewDiscussion=&articleID=69598386&anetScope=2139318&report%2Esuccess=PdmtybENV2mnc3t3p8JpWuFiB1ZhaD9OnKUphCsu7LRNRYTOK1wrHHO_rcDN0rVBb1wuxUyPL-SZ