Trust Piece
Trust Takes Two
Here are some musings on trust, and how to support one another in building it.
Trust has to be mutual: it goes both ways, and one-way trust isn’t enough. To build mutual trust, signs of trust are needed, and these, too, go both ways.
Whoever expects to be trusted, has to show signs of trustworthiness, ideally be consistent in their behaviour, and admit mistakes when they happen. Whoever needs to trust, needs to make a bit of a leap of faith and also express what signs of trustworthiness they expect to see to be able to make that leap more easily.
Trust is given, it cannot be demanded. At the same time, it is all too easy to make it unnecessarily hard for someone to be trusted if a mistake on their part is interpreted solely as a sign of _un_trustworthiness rather than a possible glitch. This is what makes that leap of faith so fundamentally important: without a basic readiness to give trust, without a willingness to assume good intentions, it’s a pointless exercise.
Building mutual trust is hard if one party isn’t willing to do both: show signs of trustworthiness and grant the other party that they’re acting out of good intentions, even if a mistake happens.
A Practical Example
After one leadership question-and-answer session following an all-hands meeting at work, there was some irritation about how leadership had not directly responded to one of the questions. The question addressed some organisational changes and restructurings that had taken place shortly before the all-hands. I acknowledge that this topic is contentious, and that anxiety easily arises around it.
Us folks in leadership are usually fine with answering questions, even tricky ones. What’s difficult is to respond to a question in public that was raised by an individual who had not just asked about some sheer observable facts, but who had made several assumptions and taken them as granted, and who had then asked the question from that advanced point of view. I will not disclose the question here, or go into any level of detail about the assumptions (some of which were incorrect). Suffice it to say that such questions are best discussed in private, to clarify where the individual is really coming from, and to answer the questions on an agreed-upon factual foundation. We, in leadership, are available for such discussions.
In this excellent piece about communication by Charity Majors - I wholeheartedly recommend to read it in its entirety -, the author makes this brilliant point (emojis elided from the quote): “The way trust gets rebuilt is by small, positive interactions.” Engaging in a direct, open, 1:1 conversation is such a small interaction. As far as “positive” is concerned, recall that trust is something that’s given - it takes a leap of faith. So, approaching that conversation with the will to trust is a good start. Making clear at the beginning what signals will help with building trust is even better. Needless to say, that spirit would have helped in the aforementioned all-hands Q&A situation.
Trust Words
Reconsidering how trust gets established to begin with, here are some observations from a somewhat linguistic perspective, with German as the language at hand. (Being a native speaker, I know it somewhat well.)
Before I start, let me emphasise that in order to appreciate these observations, it is a key prerequisite to accept the following premise. Two people are involved: A trusts, B is trusted. Note how A plays the active part here: A trusts B. Trust cannot happen without A doing something. If you assume that trust can be established just by B, without A doing anything, don’t read on, first make up your mind.
In German, trust is “Vertrauen”. There are some idioms in the German language that point out different modes of establishing trust.
“Vertrauen schenken”: this is literally “gifting trust”. A gives trust as a gift to B. Gifts are given without expecting anything in return. This is the purest form of establishing trust: A just trusts, making a big leap of faith.
“Vertrauen entgegenbringen”: bringing trust to one another; the “entgegen” part suggests a mutual motion towards one another. A brings trust to B, but B also moves. This is probably the most common form of establishing trust: B sends signals of trustworthiness; A decides to interpret these in good faith, and to trust B.
“Vertrauen erwerben”: this can be translated as “obtaining trust”. B obtains trust from A in exchange for something; it’s an economic view. There are conditions here that B needs to work (hard) to meet. Note that A still needs to trust B in the end. Also, the conditions must be clear - otherwise it’s a bit unfair. This is a form of establishing trust that can easily be abused by A: not naming the terms, or moving the goalposts, can make it impossible for B to come across as trustworthy (another economic term). That’s downright toxic on A’s part.
“Vertrauen erwecken”: the literal translation of this is “awaken trust”, or, slightly less literally, “inspire trust”. Here, B behaves, without preconditions, in a way that just inspires A to trust. Obviously, not every A is the same: not everyone takes the same inspirations. Also, A still has to trust, this decision can’t be taken away. However, the act of making that leap of faith is inspired simply by observing B, without thinking too hard. This is about as good as the first one, where A gives trust as a gift, only here there’s an inspiration happening first.
These different modes form a spectrum. They range from “A does the heavy lifting” to “B does (most of) the heavy lifting”. The “most of” is emphasised because, after all, whichever mode is employed, A has to make the ultimate move of trusting. It’s an act of volition. A should not be unfair and just expect B to do everything right. A needs to either freely give trust (“schenken”), or name the terms, in which case then both parties need to contribute, or be ready to be inspired to trust.
Tags: work