Invitation to join the group “The Trusted HR Practice” on LinkedIn

In serving an entrée for the new members of The Trusted HR Practices Group, I found inspiration in the kitchen, of all places:

The literal interpretation of the old saying “Never trust a skinny cook” is that if a cook is skinny, his food is probably not good enough even for himself to eat. Thus, it is not a good idea to buy food from him. More abstractly, the saying also means that you should not trust someone who does not use the skills that they supposedly have in the course of their everyday life.

Is this right? A Google search on the phrase “Never trust a skinny cook” yields 2,240,000 results. It is amazing that there are so many approaches and opinions to this thought. One of my favourite is from Marcus Samuelsson (the skinny head chef of Red Rooster, NY), who said “They say never trust a skinny chef, but the fact is, to stay healthy when you are a chef means you have to work twice as hard.”

Trust is always situational. You trust your general practitioner to discuss your medical status, but will you trust the same doctor to perform your heart bypass surgery? I think not.

Thus, why do we trust one cook and not the other? Not because he works so hard to stay healthy, but because we believe that his restaurant delivers consistently an experience that is a stew of various ingredients (venue, service, food quality, menu, selection of wines, price, etc.) in the right balance.

In the work environment, the trust that the employees have in management is always related to interactions between the employee and the company/management; it is not only about telling the truth, but also the way of telling it. It is also about leaving the right impression, providing the right context and much, much more. Trust has numerous attributes. To build trust, these attributes must be set right.

During the exchange of opinions and thoughts about concrete work-related situations, the members of this group will get the chance to recognize more and more of these attributes in real-life employee-company interactions.

Bon appétit!

Gyorgy Czanik

The Trusted HR Practice group on LinkedIn

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