Speed of Trust

Over the weekend several of my co-workers took to the skies to jump out of a perfectly fine airplane.  Even after hearing from Dan Williams how he and Blaine Knight, Brandon Lee and others came to this bold decision, I still don't understand why they did it.  But their action tied into a book I finished over the weekend.  As you might remember I posted an article about the book "Speed of Trust" by Stephen M. Covey a few weeks ago. 

It is hard to communicate the message with drawing a chart and I don't know how to put a chart into this blog.  But don't worry you don't have to jump out of an airplane to get the point.

Imagine a chart that measures your propensity to trust going vertical on one side and the level of analysis you put into a situation before you extend trust going horizontally on the bottom.  Now divide that chart into four zones.

Zone 1 is the upper left corner.  High Propensity to trust combined with a low level of Analysis.
Zone 2 is the upper right corner.  High Propensity to trust combined with a high level of Analysis.
Zone 3 is the lower left corner.  Low Propensity to trust combined with a low level of Analysis.
Zone 4 is the lower rightt corner.  Low Propensity to trust combined with a high level of Analysis.

People that live in Zone 1 are gullible.
People that live in Zone 2 are using sound judgement.
People that live in Zone 3 are indecisive.
People that live in Zone 4 are suspicious.

It is obvious to everybody that the people in zone 3 aren't the kind of people you want to deal with and nobody wants to be considered gullible (Zone 1). 

You might be thinking "isn't it good to have (or be a) suspicious person (Zone 3) from time to time?"  I would contend that being overly suspicious has a high cost.  If you withhold trust too often you miss out on too many opportunities.

Even though to some of us jumping out of an airplane mid flight might seem foolish, my guess is my coworkers were operating in zone 2 when they came to the decision.  Clearly jumping out of the plane involves a high propensity to trust!!!  But in the months leading up to the jump Dan, Blaine and Brandon carefully weighed the opportunity, risk and credibility of the trainer and pilot before they more forward and strapped on the parachutes and went up in the air.  My guess is they continued to analyze the decision up to and until they hit the ground.  (From the sounds of it they are going to do it again!!!)

Having a world where everybody has a high propensity to trust others but at the same time they are carefully analyzing the situation would be the optimum.  Imagine everybody tending to trust people after carefully weighing the opportunity, risk and credibility of the people involved before they move forward.

Not overly suspicious but always using sound judgement.