See First Guest Column on Trust; An Indian Leadership Perspective from IIRD

                                                                                   

                    GUEST COLUMN ON TRUST

  In  the First Guest  Column  Dr L.C.Sharma, Director, Institute For Integrated Rural Development, Shimla [http://www.iirdshimla.org/,  comes up  with frank, forthright and honest views on multi-demensional questions related to Trust, Dr Sharma,Director, IIRD can be contacted at director@iirdshimla.org

The cosmological phenomenon interprets that the kind of vibrations we emit from our mind either in ideas or in feelings, those respond back to us with their multiple effects. If we emit positive, rational and trustful vibrations, we get the trust with multiple effects and vice-versa. Here the intensity of the vibrations in shape of will at the transmitter end and matching wavelength  at the the receiver end are two crucial factors.  In the corporate world trust is more or less the regulated delegations of responsibilities within defined limits. This is regulated trust based on supervision. Can we imagine a person working sincerely without any supervision and consistently striving for achieving the organisational goals without even being caring for rewards or appreciations? When this process begins; the process of trust building starts.  But in today’s world, it is hard to find out the people who do not require supervision. The concept of supervision starts from the feeling of distrust. 

 Trust cannot be unilateral as it has multi-dimensions viz. mental evolution of the trusting person, the nature & worthiness of the person to be trusted, external factors like circumstances & environment, limits or extent of trust, etc.The ever increasing self-centric nature of people has created trust – deficit in all walks of life. Parents are losing trust on their children; employers are losing trust on the employees; the public is losing the trust in the government; and many a times husband and wife are losing trust in each other. This has happened majorly due to the absence of thrust on character building process within the individual.

 No organisation can sustain if weakening in terms of trust on the management, employees, clients and other stakeholders. The relationship among all these is very delicate and crucial. But the trust in an organisational perspective is always calculated and within defined limits. Trust building amongst the employees and stakeholders is very important. Employees and stakeholders can take the organisation to the heights and also bring it down to the bottom. If employees lose trust on the management, they will simply become unproductive which finally paves the passage for their discontinuation. If the management loses trust in the employees, it tries to find the exclusion path. If stakeholders lose trust, this hampers the growth of the organisation drastically and contracts the horizon of the organisation.

As per our experiences in IIRD, we have noticed that as long as any employee trusts himself / herself, the association continuous and the moment one loses trust on one’s capacity in given role, the sufficient ground gets created automatically for departure. Without introspection, people start justifying themselves. There must be the lack of trust somewhere perhaps otherwise the people should have come up with the true feelings, introspection, request for getting mentoring support, capacity building, nurturing etc. This normally happens when people don’t get aligned with the organisational spirit and feel being alienated. We could not find even a single person approaching the management with the proposal to sacrifice part of the compensation because of non-achievement of defined targets when the management is ready to incentivise for good performance. The people having faith on themselves, not only contributed meaningfully to the organisation; but got multiple elevations within shortest time period also. 

This is the major challenge with every organisation to find the people of strong character & trustworthy. In fact, people first lose trust on themselves to have the courage to convert the environment conducive to them. Non-competence and non-compliance amongst employees are two major challenges nowadays.In order to get rid of the employees losing trust in themselves and thereby losing trust in the organisation, there is need of continuous mentoring and nurturing the people down the line. The routine workload sometimes causes neglect in mentoring. And the recruitment process sometimes brings untrustworthy people inside which causes multiple problems. The major challenges are to bring right people within the organisation and mentor them continuously.

: Social trust is very important for a vibrant democracy. The trust in social set up may help in identifying and selecting right people for giving leadership to the nation. People should have trust in the representative democracy and the representatives should also care sensitively for the aspirations of the people. Unfortunately in the party politics system, the representatives represent their political ethos rather than the aspirations of the electorates. No representative has been found taking ownership with accountability for the overall development of his / her constituency.

Trust is extremely important in relationships as every relation remain dry and formal without trust. The distrust in relationship sometimes diminishes the whole life of the people. Hence trust has always to be regarded as the pillar of relationships.Spirituality is the only means for creating culture of trust. India being the Guru of spirituality for the entire world since the time immemorial is the ideal nation to revive and promote culture of trust. The true spiritual person always cares for others selflessly recognising the spark of spirit in every one.

Trust in education is very very important. The students should have trust in what they are studying apart from the trust between teacher & students. More the trust between the teacher and the students, more the receptability amongst the students will be.The professional approach to be adopted in the life should start from creating faith in ourselves with positiveness, rational self analysis and benevolence. Selfless service to others gives internal strength. The fragrance of roses comes only from the hands which distribute roses. Understanding the real essence of Bhagvadgita, the philosophy of life beyond all religions, can also be helpful.