Building trust | James Davis | TEDxUSU

about 20 years ago some colleagues and I were sitting in an office or business professors and we're talking about what it takes to be a successful business we were talking about the essence of success and what causes success and the more we talked about it the more we realize the thing that causes business success more than anything else are relationships relationships between businesses between employees and bosses between companies and blend and customers between suppliers and companies it was relationships that happened to be the essence that drives company performance efficiency effectiveness and we more we talked we decided we've got to understand what these relationships are and what really drives these relationships we talked about the relationships we came to the conclusion that the essence of relationships is trust it's trust we got quite exciting without all man that's the essence of all relationships we got to find out what this trust thing is we started reading literature we started looking up what is trust and what we found was a mess there was no clear definition of trust it was used in a myriad of different ways and defined and in a myriad of different ways we didn't understand trust now as researchers that God is kind of excited there's an area that we can really research but we found that people said I trust you I trust you what does that mean we didn't know we didn't know so we began to to investigate what Trust really is and we thought it would start by looking at world leaders so the most influential leaders in world history obviously if you're influential world leader you must be trusted Rankine calm on the internet ranked world leaders the most influential leaders of all time Alexander the Great was ranked as number one it's amazing that Napoleon is ranked number three ahead of George Washington Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill amazingly Adolf Hitler is ranked number 17 ahead of Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Franklin how does that reflect on trust what does that mean for trust does that mean that Hitler is more trusted than Abraham Lincoln what is trust and what drives Trust in fact we started looking at companies and an entrepreneur com lists the most trusted brands the most trusted companies and these are some of the most trusted brands and many of these we use this means we trust Nike we trust coca-cola we trust Southwest Airlines how do you know when you trust Southwest Airlines with your luggage they're not going to lose it how do you know when you pick up that NYX can of coke it's not going to make you sick how do you know when you open up a license agreement from Apple this is amazing I give I talk about trust all over the world and I've asked over and over again how many of you read the License Agreement before you agree this is a license agreement for iTunes it's 229 pages I'm not gonna even ask how many have read it because most of us just agree to it we don't know what we've agreed to but we've agreed to it why because we can trust Apple we can trust art we can trust them so what is trust trust is a willingness to be vulnerable you choose to take risk and be vulnerable to the other party that means if I say I trust you it means I'm willing to be vulnerable to you I'm willing to take that risk its vulnerability and risk that drive trust so how does this work let me start with a story my fiance and I were driving in Wyoming in Jackson Jackson City Jackson Hole Wyoming and we looked up on the mountain and there was a ski resort and people were jumping off the mountain and paragliding off the mountain these are the Tetons these are little guys these are real mountains and we looked up there and thought should we should we and rad we we thought let's give it a shot and we drove over there all right and we go up to the business and say all right tell us about paragliding first person we saw was this guy right here John John comes up and basically says I'm going to take you we're gonna jump off the mountain together now you don't have any time you've got to make a snap judgment and there were my fiancee and I were looking we looked at this guy says we really want to take that risk do we really want to be vulnerable to this guy I got a little little sidebar here when I prepared this TED talk I had to get him his image get his permission to use the image in the in this TED talk he had to take a risk in me it was it was fun I turned the tables not a lot not a lot different than jumping off a mountain so and so the bottom line is is here we are and we had to look at John do we trust him we're trusting him with our lives we're gonna jump off a mountain with this guy am I willing to be vulnerable to him what drives my willingness to take a risk in John well the first thing that drives trust is something called propensity a propensity to take to trust a propensity to take on that vulnerability and risk everybody everybody is born with a propensity to take risk it's driven by geography is driven by family is survive upbringing is driven by society Adelman Trust Barometer is on the internet and they went around the world and they found different levels of trust throughout the world the red areas on the map or areas that don't have as good trust as the blue areas and so is it all driven by our upbringing is it all driven by our family I can tell you know because the family came up while my fiancee and I were talking to John it was amazing here they were from the same town from the same home the same family and some members of the family said no way I'm not going to jump off that mountain other members of the family said let's do this thing so I know it we know it's more than propensity we know it's more than propensity it's more than just that innate willingness to trust and take risks that we're born with what we found in our research are there are three major drivers to trust three drivers three reasons we trust and the amazing thing is it's our perception of that company it's our perception of that other person that that drives these drivers the first of the three drivers is ability does that person can that person do what they say they can do are they able to perform what they say they can perform do they have that ability alright there's John all right there he is does he have the ability well he comes out and he's wearing that black helmet got unshaven he's got that jump off the mountain look yeah and I gotta tell you I looked at him and I thought you know if he were wearing a pink helmet or a yellow helmet I wouldn't believe it but he's wearing a black helmet he's got the swagger he looks like he's jumped off a mountain before and I said to him I said John have you done this before he says yeah he says I've done it for 20 years and he said Isis he deaths in that time any broken bones and he said no 20 years safe Oh John's got the ability he's got the ability I began to believe in John now here's something funny about a it's situation-specific what I trust John to fix the engine in my car John doesn't look like a guy that could fix my engine I wouldn't trust John to fix the engine in my car he could jump off a mountain he had that ability so it's true ability is not generalizable it's specific to the thing that you're trusting them to do I would trust John to jump off a mountain not fix my car okay ability I will trust them if they can do what they say they will do okay if they're able to do it the second driver is benevolence do they care about me now here's John I know he can jump off the mountain but man I'm telling you what I saw those paragliders coming down and they were corkscrewing down and I saw some pretty dang green people after they got off the mountain and I knew John could cause me a lot of discomfort you know we'd survive but I might not wish I'd survived I and so does John care about me does John care and it was interesting because we talked to him and I got I began to feel like yeah we began to connect a little bit I think we began to connect and and John I felt like cared about me now here's the interesting thing here if they care about me it's not driven by their Eagle okay they don't care about me for their own gratification they really care about me and if they really care about me I'm more apt to trust a couple examples here of people it that were known for their caring Abraham Lincoln once said to ease another's heartache is to forget one's own he cared about people a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln was Walt Whitman they and in their writings they kind of blended each other's names very often in their writings and Walt Whitman once said you know Abraham Lincoln is my man but more importantly I am Abraham Lincoln's man he believed in the benevolence of Abraham Lincoln and people have followed Abraham Lincoln did so yeah he had ability but they they care to heat they sense that Abraham Lincoln cared about them the amazing thing is if it's all I have his ability and nobody evelyn s-- i'm i I'm an assassin assassins have loss of ability and they don't really care Abraham Lincoln cared one example of an assassin Caligula Caligula raised by his uncle he's uncle wanted two people to share the emperor role role in Rome the first thing Clegg he did it was killing his cousin killers kill the competition so that he was the sole leader he drained the National Treasury one time he was in the Coliseum and they ran out of criminals to put put with the Lions so he just grabbed some spectators and put them down there as well he was not a man with a lot of benevolence people feared him as a result you couldn't trust him you couldn't trust him ability and benevolence drive your willingness to take risk but there's one more factor that factor is integrity integrity is having a set of values that other people agree with you live by those values and other people agree with those values now let's go back to Adolf Hitler if you know the history of Adolf Hitler a of Hitler in the 1930s served a little time in jail and while he was in jail he wrote a book called mine Kampf my struggle in that book Adolf Hitler laid out his values his belief system now most of us wouldn't agree with those values in that belief system believe me that book was a best-seller in in Nazi Germany and there were people that believed in his values they believed he had integrity and believe me Adolph he lived his values we wouldn't believed in his values and so we wouldn't trust Hitler but there were people it did integrity means I have a set of values I live those values and you trust me because of those values and you believe in those values in other words if you say you're going to be there you're going to be there if you say you're going to be honest you're honest if you say you're going to be trustworthy courteous you you will be and you agree with it not driven by ego it's real three factors then drive trust Thomas Moore was known for his integrity he was known for his integrity he once said we speak of principles but if the weather turns nasty you up your anchor and move to where the weather is more calm and the fishing is better Thomas Moore lived his principles if you go to the Tower of London there's a small church in the back corner and Thomas Moore's body is in the floor of that church somewhere he stood up against the King of England cuz he didn't agree with the King of England and while everybody else changed their values to match the King Thomas More did not he stood by his values he gave his life for his values and his principles Thomas Moore was a guy you could believe he lived his values Thomas Moore could be trusted because he lived his values the bottom line three factors three factors drive trust yeah there's John again I'm not finished with him three factors drive trust ability benevolence and integrity and it's your perception it's your perception and there's John and there I am am I going to jump from the mountain am I gonna jump from the mountain unconsciously I'm thinking ability benevolence and integrity did I jump yeah I jumped I jumped yeah it was great I survived I don't know that I'd have jumped if I couldn't believe him if I wouldn't believe him if I wouldn't trust me I don't know if I could have jumped as importantly my fiancee jumped we jumped together and it was phenomenal if you want to improve your relationships if you want to reduce your friction if you want to improve people's perception of your trustworthiness build their perception of your ability benevolence and integrity and you will build trust and believe me we will have a happier Society thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 231,789

Rating: 4.8482103 out of 5

Keywords: ted x, TEDxTalks, tedx talks, English, tedx talk, United States, ted talk, tedx, ted, ted talks, Career/Life Development, Business

Id: s9FBK4eprmA

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 06 2014