Take the test - https://trustsuite.trustedadvisor.com/ - 20 questions, very thought provoking, the results might hurt your brain.
I attended a virtual training program on "Building trust" for leaders where we were asked to take an online test that calculated one's Trust Quotient (TQ). This session was on a Friday evening and I heard a collective moan from my cohort as everyone was looking forward to the weekend and did not want to sit through a diagnostics test and answer twenty questions. I'm being dramatic, there was no audible sigh of disagreement given that we were on mute but there was a spike in WhatsApp group chat activity. Nevertheless, we obliged and I had a lot of fun doing it and got a rather high score but what did it mean and what can we learn from it?
I know that self-reported data is notoriously unreliable. One cannot expect someone to answer a hard question like "how do others feel about your work reliability?" with accuracy. Anyone who designs surveys will tell you that people have a very high opinion of themselves and will respond to questions accordingly.
It's best to think of the TQ Questionnaire as a self-diagnostics test that prompts you to open your mind and ponder over the four variables that form the quotient. TQ, IQ, EQ - that's a lot.
The Trust Quotient allows you to put a value on trustworthiness—but even more importantly, to understand the variables that impact trustworthiness
CREDIBILITY has to do with the words we speak. In a sentence, we might say, “I can trust what she says about intellectual property; she’s very credible on the subject.”
RELIABILITY has to do with actions. We might say, “If he says he’ll deliver the product tomorrow, I trust him, because he’s dependable.”
INTIMACY refers to the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something. We might say, “I can trust her with that information; she’s never violated my confidentiality before, and she would never embarrass me.”
SELF-ORIENTATION refers to a person’s focus. In particular, whether the person’s focus is primarily on him or herself, or on the other person. We might say, “I can’t trust him on this deal — I don’t think he cares enough about me, he’s focused on what he gets out of it.” Or more commonly, “I don’t trust him — I think he’s too concerned about how he’s appearing, so he’s not really paying attention.”
After everyone had done the test, the speaker asked us for some feedback and I noticed that most folks in the cohort received scores between 4-8 with the highest score (reported) of 10 point something. My heart sank when I observed how seriously people took their scores and I stopped talking about it in the session as it had clearly upset a few. I took some time a few days later to study my results (free) and dug a little deeper into the science behind this test (more on this in another post).
I retook the test a week later and received the same score.
Do I think I am trust-worthy? Yes.
Can I validate this via a test? No.
Can I learn from a test like this to improve as a colleague/leader? YES.
I hope this helped you in some way. What do you think? Did you like the questions? Do you agree with the score?
Further reading -