Last week’s tip on creating a high-trust culture reminded me of a compelling story about one global CEO’s take on how to resolve the disconnect that can exist between the trust principles we all aspire to and the ways we’re incented to do business.

We shared this story in The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook. It came about when my co-author, Charlie Green, had the opportunity to watch Bill Green, then-Chairman and CEO of Accenture (and no relation). Bill was addressing a very senior leadership group at the end of a two-day offsite.

I’ve been having a lot of conversations with clients lately about how to create a culture of trust. Here’s a four-part “test” to see how well you’re doing on that front.

In The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook, Charlie Green and I asserted that there are two basic dimensions of trust-based organizations: virtues and values. Virtues are the personal qualities that high-trust people embody—tools like the trust equation help here. Values are what guide the decisions and day-to-day actions in the organizations people work in. We said that in high-trust cultures, virtues and values are consistent and mutually reinforcing.

Old and unchallenged ways of thinking lead to ineffective ways of being. Consider three common myths about trust-building that could be standing in your way.

Myth #1: Trust takes time. You know the saying, “Trust takes a long time to build, but only a moment to destroy.”

Masterful listening is one of the fastest ways to build intimacy in any relationship. It’s also an essential (albeit unexpected) driver of influence. To help the cause, there’s another new eBook on the street—a hand-picked collection of simple and underused listening best practices.

2018 ended on a humbling note for me in some important ways, including a couple of screw-ups on my part. Nothing earth-shattering or life-threatening, just lesson-inducing. I’m sharing the most recent screw-up—and the learning it recalled—because, as usual, I think we can all benefit.

The screw-up: I got triggered by a question that someone (innocently) asked me via email and indulged in my reactive state by sending a lengthy and negative reply. What’s worse, it was relatively late in the evening and I prefaced it with, “I don’t really have the bandwidth to talk about this right now” … yet I continued on. I next admitted to being triggered in a self-congratulatory way (‘Look how insightful I am!’) And then I proceeded to dump all over her in writing. Class act LOL.