The term trust is overused; trust means too many things to different people. In the global workplace. The term trust is thus rendered useless, for all intents and purposes.

For example, here is a dynamic between Germans and others with whom they work:  Follow the process and I will trust you; when I trust you, I will follow the process.

Or another example seen between Chinese and Americans: Mr. Wu and Mr. Smith sign a 40 million dollar deal. Then Mr Wu asks Mr Smith to hire his son for a year so that the son  can get a visa to the US. Smith does not trust Wu because he is corrupt. Wu does not trust Smith because “I just did him a favour, and he won’t even help me with my son”.

There are of course many more examples of words which lose their meaning in the global workplace; in a previous post I elaborated on the term  respect.

I have spoken over the years I have been consulting with thousands of people who do trust one another, and I have developed ten statements which operationalize what trust is. Here in the public domain, I will share 3 of the ten.

1) We represent one anothers’ views when the other party is absent.

2) We implement what we decide upon.

3) We assume positive intent.