Self-"Non-disclosure!": Interpersonal Trust At A Premium?

The other day I administered Udai Pareek's Personal Effectiveness Scale to 19 participants of a management development program. Over a half of them (11) scored 'Low' on the dimension 'self-disclosure' - self-disclosure, as Udai defined, is "sharing with others what others do not seem to know about you." The previous day, 7 out of 11 scored low on self-disclosure - again over 60%! I went back to some old database I preserved and found that 170 out 264 managers scored low on self-disclosure! I recalled similar results in many administrations of the instrument. At the risk of gross generalisation, it looks like more than 60% of managers are low in self-disclosure.

What does this imply? Udai states - and I agree with this - that when people are low in self-disclosure, their potential to be effective, despite other capabilities, is likely to be low. People who have a low propensity to make themselves transparent are either low performers, or as more likely is to be the case, they are under-performing. Thus, there is a huge and highly avoidable wastage of potential - performance and contribution (read "wealth/value creation"!)

Why are so many people hesitant to make themselves visible? The root of this must be found in their distrust of others. If I don't trust you, I will be extremely wary of letting a lot of me be known to you. Simple: I don't trust you, so I don't share about myself; the little I will show of myself is also likely to be what you already know of me, most probably the 'professional' side of me that is non-vulnerable.

According to the Great Places to Work For formulation, trust is one of the critical elements of making an organisation great. Also, if you don't trust me, I am unlikely to trust you too. Further, if you are not trusting, you are not likely to be credible, you are not likely to respect me and you not likely to treat me fairly. May be, when over 60% of managers are not trusting, more than 60% of employees are likely to have more than 60% of their concentration on outside their current organisations!