Trust is a two-way street. How much can we trust others? How much trust do others have in us? Earning and giving trust are pivotal aspects of any interpersonal relationship and matter hugely from a professional perspective.
Michelle and Dennis Reina are renowned trust experts and have outlined three critical dimensions of trust: “trust of capability”, “trust of character” and “trust of communication”. Put together, these three dimensions help create and maintain a trusted relationship.
As Charles Feltman explains in “The Thin Book of Trust” building trust requires being trustworthy and trusting wisely. The choice to trust comprises four assessments about how someone is likely to act:
- Care — To what extent have you got the other person’s interests in mind as well as your own when making decisions or taking action?
- Sincerity — Are you honest? Do you say what you mean and do you mean what you say? It also means that your opinions are backed up by sound thinking and evidence.
- Reliability — Do you stick to your promises? Do you deliver on what you’ve committed to?
- Competence — Do you have the ability to do what you’re doing or what you’re proposing to do?
When people do assess that you care about them or what they care about you don’t have to convince them every time you need their trust. The assessment of sincerity is that you’re telling the truth as you see it and that you mean what you say. Reliability is the assessment that you fulfil the commitments you make, that you keep your promises. Competence is the assessment that you have the ability to do what you’re doing or propose to do.
The Thin Book of Trust contains numerous tips on how to build trust, providing practical suggestions for each of the four components of trust — care, sincerity, reliability and competence. For example:
- Care — Tell the people that you work with what your hopes and desires are for the work that you’re doing together and ask them about their aspirations. I personally make a point of asking team members of their expectations of me, and I’ll share my expectations with them. When you make decisions or take action, let people know you understand how it affects them, even if the effect is adverse. I’ve definitely made the mistake of taking action without telling people my reasons or acknowledging the impact on others. Equally I’ve made the made the mistake of seeking to be understood before trying to understand!
- Sincerity — Be intentional about what you say to people. Things that are factually incorrect or simply untrue will cause people to doubt your sincerity or stop believing you altogether. Similarly, Feltman explains the importance of being intentional when you speak about your intentions, ideas, beliefs or expectations. Before speaking, ask yourself, think about what expectation you create in your listeners’ minds. I’ve learned to ‘pause’ and take a moment to think about how committed you are to what you’re going to say. If you don’t want to create an expectation, caveat your comment with something like “I haven’t thought this through all the way, but here are some of my ideas …”
- Reliability — An obvious thing you can do to establish reliability is to check you can commit to something before responding to a request. “Have I got the time to do this?” or “Can I meet the requested deadline?” You can always negotiate with the other person about priorities or clarify the request.
- Competence — You can define the standards by which your competence is assessed or make a list to clarify to the others the areas that you claim competence in. Similar to creating clarity about expectations, when standards are clear and agreed on, it’s much easier to assess competence or incompetence.
The point about building trust is that it’s a continuous exercise; people need time to establish trust. Building and maintaining trusted relationships takes time and effort.
In my experience, the more solid the trusted relationship, the less likely it is that you’ll lose trust. However, distrust exists where one decides not to make themselves vulnerable to another person’s actions. You might feel that something that you value isn’t safe with the other person. The question then becomes whether you confront the distrust and how you start the conversation. In The Thin Book of Trust, Feltman describes five steps of the conversation where you discuss the distrust:
- Start the conversation by expressing your desire to fully trust the person.
- Describe the specific actions or behaviours that have impacted your trust in this person using neutral language.
- Ask them to tell you how they see the situation you described.
- Describe what they can do to regain your trust.
- Ask them if they’ll commit to do what’s needed to regain your trust.
Even in strong, trusted relationship people can betray trust. This doesn’t automatically have to mean the end of the trusted relationship, but the betrayal is likely to have a big impact. It means that both parties will have to put in the time and effort to discuss how trust was lost and how it can be rebuilt.
Main learning point: There are different areas where trust can be built (and broken). We can, for example, build trust based on character, communication or capability. I personally like Charles Feltman’s four assessments about how someone is likely to act, and I can see how we as (product) people need to be conscious of these assessments when building trust.
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