I wish all of you reading this post a happy new year. I have been mulling over this happiness wish and find it unsatisfying. We could not possible be happy all the time. The wishes I have for myself and others are not about happiness but about the caring and candor that is needed to ensure trust, in our teams, in our families, in our organizations and simply in our transactions with others. When there is trust a whole host of other things become possible. Trust is the great facilitator.

I would therefore like to make this year the year of Trust. I would like us all to think about what makes or break trust and do whatever we can to heal what is broken and strengthen what is weak. And so I wish you a trusting new year.

I have come across a practical way to address trust in a program on Conversational Intelligence™ I am about to complete this month. I learned that one can look at trust as consisting of five elements: T for Transparency, R for Relationships, U for Understanding, S for Shared Success and the last T for Truth telling, or, if this makes you nervous, you can replace this with: Testing assumptions.

The practical implications of looking at trust this way lead straight into five New Year’s resolutions:

How transparent am I in my work, my interactions with others, my decisions?
What is the quality of my relationships, both at work and in my private life? What am I doing or not doing to enhance those relationships that could be better?
How well do I understand others? How well do I listen to them? Am I fully present when listening or am I formulating my point of view and simply pretending to listen?
Have I created a shared vision with my team (your family can also be your team)? Do we have the same understanding of what success looks like?
Am I telling the truth? Or, if you prefer, am I testing my assumptions when I draw conclusions about others, judge them? Is my judgment simply an opinion or is it based on facts that others can verify?

Imagine the possibilities! May 2019 be full of trust.