Will Sach-in prevail? The trust issue.

Trust is unidimensional. In this case, dimension should be interpreted as a characteristic most relevant to the trustor for trust to be conferred on a trustee. For a doctor this may be the ability to provide a good diagnosis, for a pilot it may be her flying skills and for an artist, his flair with the brush. Uni implies that the trustor will usually place trust for one or a few closely related aspects in a familiar range. For example, while you may trust your boss to give you career guidance, you may not trust him to cook you a good dinner. In related aspects, that the trustor has grown to know or can infer, trust builds automatically – for instance, you may trust the same boss to give a good speech at the local club due to his inferred ability. The unidimensional aspect puts limits on how far you can push trust – and if the relevance seems too out-of-context, unidimensionality would be violated, resulting in trust erosion. 

Sachin endorsing 'Sach' and
Bipasha endorsing 'Real activ'

The subtlety of the unidimensional aspect gets elaborated in this incident. A cricket-loving friend and I were at a grocery store and she reacted strongly on seeing a new juice brand promoted by Sachin Tendulkar (the world’s leading cricketer) called ‘Sach’ (meaning Truth). It was surprising to me at first since Sachin is an overachiever in his game, completely non-controversial and universally loved. Like many other celebrities, Sachin has a host of endorsements - Pepsi, Visa, Philips to name a few. In fact, he even put his signature on a limited edition car.

As long as Sachin was only endorsing brands, there was no problem. But Sachin had moved from endorser to 'owner' status. He had ‘allowed’ the juice carton to carry his name, and my friend’s reaction conveyed betrayal. Sachin’s endorsement had stretched relevance a little too far and violated the principle of unidimensionality.  In fact when I later got to know that he even has a 10% stake in the company that promoted the juice brand - Sachin's trust loss seemed completely justified as well.

Keep unidimensionality in trust intact, and you'll always gain. Stretch it too far and it can turn counter-productive. 

(some parts of this blog have been extracted from my book, Decoding Communication)

How to listen

To understand your audience better, one must follow the first step of communication - observation, or the art of ‘intricate listening’.

We all intuitively know how important listening is to communication, but how many of us know how to listen.  Listening, is naturally not limited to the auditory function and comprises of combined 'listening' of all senses put together, including cognitive and the extra-sensory. When all this is fused, one becomes far more aware of the communication environment, giving rise to a highly ‘intuitive’ awareness. 

With koan-like wisdom, the Chinese symbol ‘to listen’ is a self-explanatory amalgamation of five sub-parts which include symbols for ‘ear’, ‘you’, ‘eyes’, ‘undivided attention’ and ‘heart’, shown here.

Lets look at the four stages of listening. First and foremost, listen with your eyes - what do you see. Trust your eyes before your ears. Secondly, give the communicator your undivided attention without any visible distractions or mind distractions. This will help you absorb without any dilution. Thirdly, listen with your heart - implying that you must empathize and 'feel' for what is being communicated. This will help you interpret underlying messages. And last of all, listen with your ear - into what is being said. 

If you combine these four forces into listening, you will have an enriching experience with the world. 

(some parts of this blog piece have been extracted from the author's recent book, Decoding Communication)