Thursday, February 27, 2014

Management Tip of the Day: How to Encourage Trustworthiness

  HBR Management Tip of the Day - Harvard Business Review

February 27, 2014

How to Encourage Trustworthiness


Success in business requires some willingness to trust people. When your company's money and resources are on the line, how can you do a better job of gauging trustworthiness and thereby improve your likelihood of success? Try these tips to prompt trustworthiness in new or potential partners' behavior:
  • Be generous. Feelings of gratitude foster trustworthy behavior. 
Giving new partners a reason to feel grateful to you is a win-win: They benefit in the short term from your generosity, and you reap the rewards of their loyalty.
  • Find commonality. Emphasizing common ground increases the likelihood that your counterpart will see you as someone with whom it's possible to build a lasting and beneficial relationship.
  • Don't punish. Threats of punishment can prevent untrustworthy behavior in the moment but can be counterproductive in the long term: new partners may be less likely to take risks to support one another.


Adapted from "Who Can You Trust?" by David DeSteno.

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