What it takes to have trust

Trust is choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else
Charles Feltman

Trusting someone is an assessment about how well another or other persons are likely to take care of things that are important to us.

As indicated by the quote above trusting someone opens us up to a certain vulnerability –and not having that vulnerability taken care of can have a powerful impact on our relationships.
Another way of looking at it is that we are handing over a little bit of our-selves to another…and we want it looked after.

The trusting relationship a two-way relationship that involves one or more of the following elements:

Competence

Competence is an assessment that people have the skills and abilities to do what they say they will do and to accomplish these with a certain ease, speed, and proficiency. You might think speed is a strange component to have under competence but if someone takes a very long time to produce something you have asked for, or to come back with an answer, this raises the question of competency for the task.

Involvement

Involvement means being attuned to the concerns of others and relating to them with a certain amount of compassion. Compassion may be a strange thing to talk about in a business environment but our assessment is that it is a big component in moving forward towards a more human working environment.
Compassion in this context simply means, “Do they care?”. The actions, moods and emotions of people who do not care about what you’re doing and what you’re trying to achieve have a considerable impact on your relationships – both at work and out of work.

Assessing the involvement of someone requires a certain amount of intuition and people skills, however most people give away a lack of it in the language, emotions and body.
They may not come out and say, “Whatever” in conversation – but it will be as if they did.
An assessment of care through involvement may be the single most important element in the trust pie as it deeply taps into what it is to be human.

Sincerity

Perhaps the most obvious element of trust, sincerity simply means to assess people to be genuine in what they say and do and is that there is congruency between what they say publicly and privately behind your back.
Sincerity is defined as, “the absence of pretence, deceit, or hypocrisy” and it is hard to imagine trusting a person who is pretentious, deceitful or a hypocrite.

Reliability

Overlapping somewhat with competence, reliability concerns both language and actions. Assessing a person is reliable in what they say, that it is backed up with facts or that they produce things as and when they say they will – or both – invokes a sense of reliability of that person.

Only you can be the judge whether trusting someone needs all four components: you may assess some to be more important than others and one could argue that there are different levels of trust.

Different situations in life may require someone who is sincere and involved but where competence is not required.
Talking to a friend about a difficult relationship may be a good example of this especially if you’re not seeking advice. Of course, it may help if they have competence in their own relationships!

In another article I discussed requests, and trust is an important component of making (and receiving) effecting requests. Put yourself in the shoes of making a request but not trusting the person you are making the request to.
How does that feel?

Trust is an essential component for good communication in business and in private.

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