Fostering Trust in the Real World

All high-performing organizations are high-trust organizations.  Relationship trust accelerates working effectiveness by reducing friction and doubts.  Trust is valuable in ways that can’t be fully captured in a spreadsheet. 

Leaders must foster trust.  The challenge is to overcome our fantasy views about how trust works:

• Trust is automatic, self-propagating, perpetual, and free
• Broken trust can be completely re-established at any time
• People automatically and instantly trust people who say and do the right things
• Everyone should trust everyone else absolutely
• No one is ever misunderstood
• Everyone should trust you because you’re great!

None of these are true.  We need to understand how trust works in the real world.

You cannot work on trust directly – it is an epiphenomenon of human relationships in space and time.  Trust operates at the We level, not the Me level.

A formula for trust:

Trust = f(competence, character) | (prior experiences)

{In English, trust is product of individual’s competence and character interacting with prior experiences.}

There are three additional realities which affect trust levels. 

First, an individual’s self-narratives are not easily shifted or changed. 

Second, trust is more complex than a display of sincerity or authenticity.  Sincerity is not a measure of truth.  Authenticity is not a measurement of competence (e.g., people can be authentic jerks and nincompoops). 

Third, when trust is low, people rightly expect compensation.  They could want more money, more favors, a higher interest rate, perks, a future promise, etc., but something must be provided to compensate for low trust. 

It is natural, normal, and perfectly acceptable that we do not trust everyone equally. Consider how much you trust these people:

• Your mom
• Your covenant relationships
• The CEO
• Your peers
• Your boss
• Your direct reports
• Other workgroups in your company
• Vendors, Suppliers, Outside partners

Occasionally trust is damaged even in the best of organizations.  It is a leadership responsibility and an opportunity to rebuild that trust.

Business economists describe what often happens after an economic shock as a “K-shaped recovery” – not every part of the economy recovers at the same rate.

You will see the same pattern in an organization after there has been a breach in trust. It takes time, and plenty of positive “deposits” in the trust account, and some people will come back to a high level of trust. Others will not.

Expecting instantaneous and uniform recoveries after a breach in trust is unrealistic. A leader can say and do all the right things for a long time before trust is restored, and even then, not everyone will fully trust that leader again. Trust is built and re-built by multiple “deposits.” Cause and Effect are not close in space or time.

What are the biggest obstacles to overcome if you want to build a high-trust organization? There are four: Prior bad experiences, broken promises, pride, and immaturity.

These build a person’s perception framework. Leaders are often surprised that their words, actions, and intentions are misunderstood. Marshall Goldsmith said, “In leadership, it doesn’t matter what you say. It only matters what they hear.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson once told a critic, “I cannot hear what you are saying because what you are is shouting so loudly.”

In many ways, trust is what the other person believes and does. We can do our part, but because trust is a product of human interactions over time, the other person must cooperate as well. Our words, actions, and intents are necessary but insufficient. 

A specific portion of a person’s perception framework is about the perception of intent. We often assume intent incorrectly. Sometimes I remind myself of Hanlon’s Razor when I think someone is out to get me: “Do not attribute to malice what is more easily explained by incompetence.”

You can substitute “pride,” “immaturity,” or “inaccurate interpretation” for “incompetence” in that statement, and it could be equally true. We are messy, flawed people, and rarely interpret everything correctly. Remember the old saw about Assume – making as Ass out of U and Me.

Now that you appreciate the challenges about building and restoring trust in the real world, and that you can only operate on trust indirectly, what should you do?

You can model and inspire trust even if you cannot command it. Here are five specific ways you can foster trust in your organization:

1. Begin with positive intent. It is infrequent that someone is acting maliciously, so begin your assessment with the idea that a person is behaving in a sincere way. Call out cases where someone is not beginning with positive intent.
2. Intentionally trust people “more than they deserve” and risk being hurt. Prefer these problems to problems of NOT trusting.
3. Articulate trust. Say things like “I’m glad we can trust you” and “I’m confident in your ability to execute this” and “I observe how other people respond to you, because they trust you.” 
4. Differentiate skepticism of ideas/plans from mistrusting individuals and groups.
5. Create opportunities to work together and share responsibilities. Joint experiences are rich soil where trust can grow.