Recently I had a meeting with a company client with my business partner about a project we had delivered. We discussed several topics and at some point she told me “you have gained absolute trust from every single person in all six teams. My business partner felt proud and started praising me; I felt grateful and surprised at the same time. I have been lucky enough to hear this comment from my clients and ex-managers several times in my life and it seems that this is my advantage as a person.  

Scottish author and clergyman, George Mac Donald, wrote: “To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved” and maybe it is. A question started pondering “what do I do that makes people trust me?”

In fact I never try to make people trust me; I am myself in everything I do and I have never thought of how I have gained people’s trust.   

What is trust? Defining Trust

The question:

• “how to build trust” in Google returned 660.000.000 results;

• “what is trust” returned 1.970.000.000 results.

It seems that Trust is a major concern for people who try to define it and find ways to build it in all kinds of relationships. Trust can thus be summarized as follows:

Trust is a building bock of a relationship either personal or professional and it is the basis of all forms of organization: families, cities, communities, states, corporations, unions, teams. When the first anthropoids started creating communities they started building trust. Working together and hunting together requires trust. Any activity that is carried out by people “together” is based on trust. “Togetherness” either as a community or city or team requires some form of trust as its basic essence.

When I look at a dictionary definition, for example:

The definition of Merriam-Webster (1/8/2019)   is the following: trust noun \ ˈtrəst

 1a : assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something - b : one in which confidence is placed

 2a : dependence on something future or contingent : hope - b : reliance on future payment for property (such as merchandise) delivered : credit bought furniture on trust

 3a : a property interest held by one person for the benefit of another - b : a combination of firms or corporations formed by a legal agreement especially : one that reduces or threatens to reduce competition

 4a : care, custody the child committed to her trust - b(1) : a charge or duty imposed in faith or confidence or as a condition of some relationship - (2) : something committed or entrusted to one to be used or cared for in the interest of another - c : responsible charge or office

 5 archaic : trustworthiness; in trust : in the care or possession of a trustee

 As defined above trust is an “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something” and therefore we can distinguish between “assured reliance on character” and “assured reliance on ability”. The two definitions indicate completely different types of Trust in the sense of you may trust a person independently of their ability, or you may trust their technical abilities but not necessarily their character. Hence having trust in both their character and ability requires building both types of trust.

Realizing the nuances of trust: May we call it Personal Trust vs. Professional Trust

Building upon the dictionary definition which broadly focuses on the ‘how’ of the descriptive ‘building block’, in the first definition Trust is about character and the second is about the ability, which is more technical and measurable.

In the workplace,

• Developing abilities and competences, adopting specific behaviours and demonstrating skills will lead to build professional trust.

• Building professionalism will lead to building trust.

• All the elements that constitute professionalism lead to create trust in the person’s environment.

Clients, co-workers and managers can recognize a person who can deliver at work and trust them for that. Professional trust is very important and vital to build a business and achieve results and therefore people who are serious professionals enjoy/value this trust they’ve earnt from their respective clients (internal/external).

On the other hand,

• Trust is an emotional and deeper dimension in any relationship, a shared and connecting emotion between individuals, which often deepens with shared experiences and greater understanding of each other, and goes beyond technical abilities and competences;

• It emanates from the true essence of a person;

• It is inspired by the personality and the character of a person.

• It is the quality of “energy” that a person creates around them and makes others feel at ease in his/her presence.

• It is what makes people share their thoughts and feelings, confide their fears, relax and laugh from their heart.

Building the quality of creating Personal Trust is a highly complex project if possible. It would require genuine honesty, fairness and integrity coupled with real care for others. This is what I believe I am being recognized for, alongside Professional trust. 

Building Personal Trust

Reflecting on my experiences, the three building blocks integral in developing trust personally (and emit oxytocin!) people need to feel:

ACCEPTED - RESPECTED - SAFE

If we want people to feel the precious Personal Trust in us, in some way we have to reconstruct their family environment in its ideal form; it is the place where the child is accepted without conditions, respected as a precious member of the pack and feel safe because each of our parents will always protect and never hurt him/her.

Re-creating these ‘ideal’ conditions in the workplace

Can we make people feel accepted, respected and safe in our presence? And if we do, will this condition be honest and sustainable or it will collapse in our first disagreement with them?

Respect – Acceptance – Safety

Respect is a prerequisite for Acceptance. When we truly respect people as human beings we open the way to accept them for who they are. Acceptance is difficult though; we are all raised in a specific set of stereotypes and hierarchy, and each shaped by our unique experiences. One of the traits which is typically coupled with respect is success. Success is usually defined by social class, education, wealth and professional achievement; successful people are highly respected and always accepted even if their behavior is inappropriate and disrespectful to their colleagues or neighbours.

‘Hierarchical’ Respect in most cases is reserved for the “successful” while all others will usually be treated casually. For example, the CEO of an organisation is always respected by everybody while the cleaner may be treated as a “second class” citizen whose opinion is not to be taken seriously. Respect is not just about talking to a person or typically asking for their opinion, it is about considering their views equally in a decision and involving them in the process.

As a result of Respect comes Acceptance. When we respect people we accept them as they are without comparing them with others, without asking them to do or be something different; we just accept them for who they are, for what they know, for what they do and for what they can or can’t do; we accept them as human beings with their right in participating equally in the process. True Acceptance is when we don’t have expectations from a person; we don’t expect them to behave in a certain way or achieve a goal; we acknowledge the value of their Being as such.

Creating a Safe context that typically resembles a nurturing family environment where the child can be themselves without being judged, are protected from danger and rescued if needed. Providing Safety is about being kind and honest. In this context we don’t compete, we support; we don’t criticize, we share ideas and knowledge; we don’t have secret goals, we are open and transparent. 

Inspiring Trust starts and ends inside ourselves

Creating a working environment of Respect, Acceptance and Safety for others requires us to be able to balance our Ego too. We live in an individualistic era in which the individual goals prevail over the good of the community. Our civilization in the 21rst century is about individual achievement, happiness and success. Compared to older times’ value systems, there is no reference to “we”, which includes everybody together as one community without individual distinctions. Rather it was about survival of the community and that was possible through our meaning-making process of “togetherness”.  

Today, the model has changed: the individual must succeed and be recognized for that – the Ego is further pumped up by numerous likes on Facebook and thousands of followers in Instagram.  Having a big Ego is an obstacle in offering full Acceptance, Respect or Safety to another person. A big Ego takes up the space; there is no room left for others. They must fight to find a place “on the stage”  be visible and therefore exist.  Social stereotypes that direct people to strive for success lead them to focus exclusively on their own highest performance and excellence in which:

• Competition is hidden behind excellence;

• Rejection is the side effect of preference; every time we choose a person over another we reject those who are not selected.

• Individual goals may be called purpose. Still individual purpose and not connected to shared goals for the good of the community or the society.

Excellence, preference and purpose may be necessary for success in our competitive and unpredictable times but they often produce behaviours and attitudes that don’t help create the context for Personal Trust.

We all have preferences, work for excellence and live our own purpose and that has created impressive results in science and art throughout the human history; we should always be vigilant for their negative signs in behaviour, like competitiveness, rejection, selfishness and many others and prevent them from manifesting in our coaching relationships.

They may appear unconsciously when we ask an inappropriate question that will make the person feel inadequate or unsuccessful.

Before we start trying to build the context for Personal Trust, we should invest time in discovering our beliefs and stereotypes, our attitude and behavior towards others and our expectations from it. If it doesn’t happen easily, we must check our deep rooted beliefs and stereotypes about ourselves and others. We should also be working on/with our Ego so that it allows others to be as they are without infecting them with our expectations, preferences and biases when we’re in contact. Engaging any coaching contract with our clients, we need to Build genuine Respect for others whether we like them or not; Accept them by allowing them to be as they are without suggesting them our ideas for their improvement and make them feel Safe without comparisons and criticism.   It will be a very useful exercise for our own development.

To connect with Maria Biquet

Further reading: Definition of trust
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(social_science)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trust/
https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/trust-project/videos/murnighan-ep-1.aspx