Trust is one of the foundations of team performance and harmony, but it isn’t often unpacked in detail.
Values, personality and personal history, culture, learned skills and community all play a role.
The best answer to the question “How can I make people trust me?” remains, of course, “Be trustworthy.”
Can I trust you?
Trust can be broken down into subcomponents, each with their own direction and magnitude:
- Benevolence: Do I believe you’re well intentioned? Are you kind to people?
- Alignment: Are your purposes sympathetic or antagonistic to mine?
- Personal and team loyalty and “continence”: Will you betray me, steal from me, if you are tempted or it benefits you?
- Reliability-as-promise-keeping: Do you consistently do what you say you will do?
- Reliability-as-accurate-narration: Did you do the things you say you did? Did things happen the way you described?
- Moral judgement: Do you know the right thing to do in most situations?
- Moral fortitude and courage: Do you do the right things in the face of resistance? How easily do you compromise on key values?
- Professional judgement: Do you have the task-relevant maturity to know what needs to be done?
- Administrative ability: Can you keep track of the things that need to be done?
- Technical competence: Do you have the hard skills to execute on agreed tasks towards our shared goals?
- Social competence: Can you get things done without upsetting or alienating key people? Can you win people over?
- Predictability and consistency: Do you act broadly in the way I have come to expect that you’ll behave?
- Communication: Can we communicate clearly about what matters? Do we understand each other?
- Taste: Do I generally agree with the way you go about doing things? With how you talk to people / the way you write / the flavour of your content and design work? When you do something surprising, do I like the surprise?
- Attack surface: are there personal, social, structural or cultural factors that might pressurise you into breaking trust?
- Reverse trust – Do you trust me?
- Rapport: Do we “click”? Do we enjoy working together and spending time in each other’s company?
- History: Over how many years and in how many circumstances have you demonstrated your trustworthiness?
Homework:
What’s missing?