# The Otherside of Trust By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2022-12-14 I often advocate that analytics professionals need to gain the trust of stakeholders. This pivots the analysis from strictly answering questions to a conversation resulting in meaningful action and coherence. While important, I've learned that this is too one-sided to be effective. The analyst can't be the only one doing all the work. As with all relationships, it must be a two-way street. Stakeholders must also work to trust the analyst. I suppose that I intuitively knew this but chose to ignore it because I cannot control the actions of others. However, ignoring the reciprocal nature of the trust problem means you become blind to at least 50% of the possible failures. As such, when a failure occurs, you may place disproportional blame on yourself versus the system or the stakeholder. Here we get to the heart of the matter: managers are not paid to trust their employees. Quite the opposite. Most organizations incentivize managers to not trust their workers or each other. They establish competitive metrics marketed as performance-boosting but are actually clear indications that people and teams cannot be trusted. Why have quarterly performance reviews if you trust that a person is doing their job to the best of their ability? Do you have quarterly performance reviews with your friends? Clearly, you do not, yet you trust your friends, and over time you may decide to no longer be their friend. There is an argument that quarterly performance reviews are for the employees to improve themselves. Fair enough, but what right does the organization have to declare what an individual should focus on improving? If you go to your friend and say show up on time for coffee, or I'll stop being your friend, do you think you ever trusted or valued that friend? While the dynamics here are more complex than this, I believe you will find a foundational truth upon further analysis that organizations and managers advocate trust as a virtue as a means to an end - real trust is not part of their working operating system. It doesn't mean you can't find it in a personal relationship, but do not ignore this innate dynamic when assessing your situation and [[Focusing|focus]]. #### Related Items [[Analytics]] [[Trust]] [[Performance]] [[Focus]] [[Management]] [[Business]]