Trust and Your Reputation

While chapter 11 of Measure What Matters discusses threats to your reputation. Katie Paine devotes a large portion of this chapter to trust. One major factor of your reputation is trust. It can help build or destroy your reputation. The idea of trust has been studied by itself and as an aspect of the quality of relationships. Paine shares that you can measure three parts of trust, competence, integrity and dependability, with the Grunig Relationship Survey. Next, she explains five characteristics of trust between an organization and its publics.

The first characteristic is trust that it is multilevel. It comes from various interactions that can be as close as coworkers, and as far as different organizations. These interactions can include two people or a lot of people. So, there has to be a huge net when you survey your publics. It cannot be a small group that is surveyed, because you will be likely to forget people.

Trust is also culturally rooted. It is tied to the beliefs of the organization's culture. It is important to know your publics' self-image and definitions if you want an accurate measurement of trust. Also, trust is based on communication. The outcome of communication behaviors is trust. You want to give information that is accurate and explanations for your decisions. In addition, you want to have an appropriate, sincere openness.  Communication is a main aspect in trust measurement.

The fourth characteristic is that it is dynamic. Trust goes through building phases, destabilization phases and rebuilding phases. It has to consistently be measured. Finally, trust is multidimensional. There are multiple factors of trust at the cognitive, emotional and behavioral levels. All of these can affect a person's idea of trust.

It was interesting to learn about these characteristics of trust. The main characteristic I agreed with was that it is communication-based. You want to give the public accurate information and be open to what they have to say. I agreed with these characteristics and realized how important it is to measure trust.