Building Trust

Some of the most successful turn-arounds of failing organisations have been achieved by new management encouraging trust within the organisation. Many companies used to have large books of policies, rules and regulations governing what employees could and couldn't do. In many cases these have been replaced with much simpler statements and principles. These say "use your judgement, and we'll trust you do to the right thing."

Trust takes time to establish, and seconds to destroy. If trust is abused in a high trust organisation, then the impact can be serious. Trust needs to be accompanied by accountability. Whether it is a commercial organisation, or a relationship - abuse of trust has a major impact on people.

The importance of trust for the church, both within a fellowship, and in the perception of those outside the church has often been understated. The traditional model of the stipendiary minister as ministry provider clearly leads to an organisation which is able to operate on a low level of trust. People may come to the church, but their involvement with it is limited to carrying out simple tasks. Even successful churches, with many people engaged in ministry, may be operating with relatively low levels of trust if they have not allowed people to share responsibility and accountability for the life of the church.

Yet God wants us to operate at a high level of trust - in him, and within the church. God is trustworthy. "God has said "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you." So we say with confidence "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid" (Hebrews 13:6) We need to learn to trust completely, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding." (Proverbs 3:5) Our experience of placing our trust in God should increase our capability to trust, and encourage us to build trust within Christian fellowships.

Trust is about relationships - between God and church members, between individuals within the church, and between church members and its leadership team. To trust requires us to be vulnerable, and to take risks, giving away control of a situation. Building relationships that contain a high degree of trust are likely to require servanthood and humility. Larry Reynolds (1) identifies four major components of such relationships : Competence, Openness, Reliability and Equity.

COMPETENCE is the first component of a high trust relationship is the ability of the other person to meet our expectations, to do the job we are asking them to perform. For example, when we take a flight, we are placing our trust in the pilot, on the basis that his competence has been proved by achieving his pilot's licence. When we ask someone to lead a house group, we will not be able to trust them fully in this ministry until we feel confident that they have the necessary skills to lead such a group effectively.

This underlines the need to ensure that we have matched roles in the church to the gifts and skills that people have, and to develop a proper process for matching people's skills and gifts to the ministries they perform within the church. It is not simply a case of whether or not the job will get done well, it will influence the degree of trust within the relationship. Identifying Potential is a Teal module designed to offer a process for systematically identifying and developing people's gifts and skills.

OPENNESS is the second component. We encourage others to trust us when we are willing to take people into our confidence, and share our views, thoughts and plans with them. For some church leaders, this is a challenge, as we may need to overcome a desire to hold back from sharing our personal needs and feelings. We may also need to assess the degree that true fellowship has been built up within the church - are members willing to share openly and honestly with one another?

Openness requires us to talk about things as they are, and in love. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is Christ. (Ephesians 4:15) It requires us to be accessible to one another - if a member of your church needs to see you, how easy is it for them to get time in your diary? Openness also suggests that we would do well to give encouragement and feedback to one another. Professionally, many church members will be expected to undergo some form of feedback gathering exercise as part of a development review. High trust fellowships can usefully adopt some of these practices to provide encouragement and opportunity for personal development.

RELIABILITY and consistency are vital. People will only trust us if they can depend on us to do what we say we will do, that week in, week out. That we will maintain our commitment to a relationship, and not "blow hot and cold."

Note that to maintain trust, we will need to reliably meet the expectations the other person has of the relationship, rather than the things we believe we have committed to. Clarifying these expectations can be important if we are to avoid misunderstanding and a reduction in the trust level. Even simple things like failing to return phone calls or not answering letters can create a perception of unreliability.

It is much easier to maintain our reliability if we aware of our capability and our priorities. Conflicts on our time and energy are reduced by not over-committing ourselves. Having a clear understanding of our priorities allows us to resolve those situations when we do face conflicts on time and energy. The traditional time management grid of classifying things on the basis of their importance and urgency can help. That which is important and urgent takes the highest priority. Investing time on those things which are important but not yet urgent is a way of reducing likely future stress.

EQUITY.  It will be virtually impossible to build trust if we lack integrity in our behaviour, if we favour one person over others, or if we lack fairness in our handling of situations. Within the church, how are decision taken? Do people believe that they are taken fairly, without prejudice, or do some people feel excluded from the decision making process?

Finally we need to remember that, if others are to place their trust in us, we need to be trustworthy and we need to be willing to place our trust in others. By and large, trust needs to be earned. Warren Bennis (2) describes trust as the emotional glue of all institutions. This prompts the thought that in using glue one cannot avoid potentially sticky situations - trust involves personal risk, but by taking these risks, we move to a deeper level of trust.

Now consider key members of the church, and can you identify anything from these four elements that contributes to, or takes away from, the trust you place in them?  Identifying these can help you recognised their strengths and limitations, and place these in context, enabling you to trust them more.