When trust is low, everything is hard.
As trust erodes, communication breaks down and collaboration is miserable.
That’s why it makes sense that we intentionally nurture trust on our teams and in our organizations. To do that, it helps to understand how trust works.
The complexity of trust requires two adjustments in our thinking.
For one thing, trust doesn’t toggle; it slides. Trust isn’t a binary. It’s not all or nothing. The idea that we either trust someone or we don’t isn’t really the way trust works. Instead, every interaction moves a slider on a scale up or down, toward more trust or less.
Also, trust isn’t just one thing. According to Charles Feltman’s valuable little book The Thin Book of Trust, we actually invest our trust in four different ways:
- Care: Can I trust that you care about me, that you have my best interests at heart?
- Sincerity: Are you who you seem to be? Do you mean what you say? Do your actions match your words?
- Reliability: Can I count on you to deliver what you promised? Do you do what you said you would do in the manner it was meant to be done?
- Competence: Are you capable of doing the thing that I trust you for? Can you do it with the level of quality needed?
We might trust someone’s care but not their competence. For example, I completely trust my husband’s care for me. I wouldn’t trust him to put a new roof on our house. We might trust that someone is competent to do something but not reliable. Realizing that trust is complex helps us resist the temptation to toggle.
Breaking trust down into components also helps us understand how we can grow in our own trustworthiness by focusing on the skill sets related to each component.
To build trustworthiness in care, build your capacity for empathy. Learn to listen well and hear the stories of others without judgment. Work for the best interests of others and seek win/win solutions where possible.
To demonstrate trustworthiness with sincerity, learn to be authentic. Say what you see from where you sit. Make sure your actions match your words.
To grow your reliability, work on time management and executive function so that you can meet deadlines. Ask questions to clarify expectations. When you can’t deliver, clean up the mess.
To earn trust in your competence, intentionally grow your skills and knowledge about the things you are responsible for. Practice until you reach excellence. When you don’t know something, ask for help and learn.
Seeing trust as complex and behavioral takes it out of the realm of emotional reactivity and into the spaces where we can practice, learn and grow.
