Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Mistrust causes everything to be more complicated, slower, and far more
fragmented. In addition, distrust puts a major limitation on collaborative inno-
vation, internal teamwork, and external relationships with suppliers, custom-
ers, stockholders, and our community.
Few scientists ever spend the time to create powerful trust-enabled innova-
tion cultures. Often building trust is elusive, fi lled with platitudes, slogans, and
aphorisms such as “ trust must be earned, ” “ be skeptical before you trust, ” “ be
sure to have an exit strategy,” “trust but verify,” and so on. Unfortunately none
of these approaches really produce any trust.
Highly legalistic attempts to ensure against breaches in trust usually back-
fi re and poison the well before any alliance or collaboration gets started.
Often, by trying to protect against distrust, we actually create the conditions
we are trying to avoid, which manifests as enormous legal agreements and
protracted negotiations that may result in no agreement at all. Trust enables
everything to move faster, more effortlessly, and with less confl ict. In spite of
its importance, trust is too often taken for granted.
It is imperative that innovators today know how to establish a “trust system”
that enables collaborators to act honorably with each other, that makes intel-
lectual property safe from incursions, that establishes joint principles of
engagement, and that honors the differentials in thinking that stimulates the
creative energy so fundamental to all innovation.
To have trust, at a minimum, one must sense that there is a level of
safety
and
security
in the relationship, knowing that I will not be worse off for having
this interaction.
Trust, like all disciplines, has an internal “architecture” that can propel the
honorable scientist to great heights and weed out the small percentage of
“sharks” who would abuse collaborative relationships for their own selfi sh
ends. To understand the nature of trust, it is fi rst important to know the nature
of its opposite—distrust.
2.3.2.1 Cause of Distrust
What causes distrust? In a word — fear — fear of
being taken advantage of, fear of being put in a disadvantageous position, fear
of not receiving proper credit, fear of being manipulated or discredited, or fear
of one's beliefs and knowledge being subjected to attack.
2.3.2.2 Building Trust
Just as the elimination of a disease does not cause
health and happiness, neither will the elimination of distrust create solid
trust—it just brings everything to “neutral.” The lack of ethics will cause dis-
trust, but the presence of honesty and ethics does not necessarily cause trust.
Good ethics implies “I won't do something wrong”; it takes the fear out of the
picture. But it does not mean “I'll be effective,” or “use sound judgment,” or
“ be collaborative, ” or “ be compassionate, ” or “ be spontaneous. ” Other things
are necessary.
The basis for trusting someone is not simply ethics and honesty; it is also
how they deal with self-interest. We trust people we can count on to look out
Search WWH ::
Custom Search