Trust Saves Time. Try It.

“Assume good intentions. Your deeply held beliefs about someone will create the tone for any interactions you have” Stephen Covey

Following on from yesterday’s article, where I addressed your being proactive and taking responsibility for the quality of your relationships as an ethical means of saving time lost through misunderstandings, part of that proactivity means being willing to be vulnerable and to trust the others in the relationship have the same or related intent towards the achievement of the outcomes you are looking to achieve.

How much time have you spent judging someone’s capabilities, intent, motivations and character based on a third party’s tittle tattle?

In the early 1980s, future World F1 Champion Nigel Mansell was contracted to drive for the Williams GP team, to partner ex-World Champion and Williams’ stalwart driver Keke Rosberg. Rosberg was clearly unhappy about the situation, but by the middle of their first season together Rosberg apologised to Mansell for listening to the bad-mouthing about Nigel that he had initially believed to be true. He found Nigel to be a brilliant team-mate, not the arrogant Englishman that others had professed him to be.

For many years – and I can relate the examples if called upon to do so – I suffered from such character assassination. I know this because the people I worked with and who actually witnessed what I was capable of, eventually told me the same thing. “We were told you were…… and now I know that you aren’t.” This went on when I was a ‘boy’ on a pop delivery round, when I was a uniformed police constable, and later again when I was first a divisional CID Detective and later a fraud specialist. I kept having to correct others’ misconceptions about me. And I did it by – just being me.

Now, imagine if that happened to you.

How would you feel about that?

And now ask yourself if you believe what other people are saying about someone you’ve yet to meet. How would that affect your first interaction?

And more to the point, could you start that relationship by saying to yourself, “I’m giving this person the same blank slate, respectful opportunity that I would like them to give me.”

Yes, sometimes that approach will kick you in the butt. But I am willing to bet that more often than not, the relationship will grow rather than diminish, just because you assumed positive intent and capability on the part of that new colleague.

Trust saves time. Try it.