Think of someone you fully trust. Take your time; there’s little value in reading on until you have pictured a specific face in your mind. It can be anyone: a sibling, spouse, co-worker, friend, parent, pastor, coach, whomever.
If you can’t seem to choose a face because trust itself comes more slowly to you, that’s fine. A little sad, but certainly common. If this is you, then choose someone you used to trust (before they blew it) or perhaps you can suspend your own instincts and extend a little trust to this author for a few minutes. 🙂
What can we say about the person we’ve chosen? Well, after leading workshops on building trust since 1995, experience reveals there’s an excellent chance that:
– We like them as people.
– We believe what they tell us.
– We respect their opinion, even when it differs from our own.
– We see their humanity and give them the benefit of the doubt.
– We don’t want to disappoint them.
– We want them to trust us as well – so we behave more trustworthy.
– When we work with the person, we likely do our best work.
– They take chances and level with us for our own good.
– We can be ourselves; this relationship feels free flowing, easy, and natural.
– This level of trust did not happen overnight.
We will come back to this good place but it’s important that we draw a stark distinction. So, now pick a person you distrust. Choose a name and face like before. This person need not be in your life now, but it helps. Once again, experience tells us:
– Down where it matters, we don’t like them very much.
– We wonder whether we are getting the truth from them.
– We often lock onto points of disagreement to keep that person at arm’s length.
– We see their humanity and hold it against them.
– Their opinion of us is not that important.
– We don’t go the extra mile, and often not even the expected ones.
– Little if any gut-level honesty is being shared in either direction.
– The relationship feels like a staged and often pointless choreography.
– If we can get away with it, we avoid the person altogether.
I do not suggest that we can somehow, through effective building trust skills and techniques, convert everyone whom we distrust today into people we can fully trust. Like you, I live in the real world. We are surrounded by humans.
What I do know is this: there are people in my own life – my family and friends, my church, my workplace, and my community – that may not put me on their “fully trusted persons” list. And because of this, my relationships are not all they could be, and my influence on the world around me is lessened.
The old saying that “trust is earned” is true, but not very helpful. Likewise, “Once lost, trust is hard to get back.” Our vision for building trust in our lives can be much more invigorating than this!
A Personal Vision of Trust to Consider
I want to expand trust in my life. Trust allows me to be my true self, to feel that I am at my best, and to help maximize my influence on others. Since I cannot make others trustworthy, the way to expand trust in my life is to actively and consciously build it myself. I will learn and apply the skills to do so!
In the next Building Trust blog post I will begin responding to your meaty, real-life questions. Feel free to be as general or as specific as you like; I will tweak them for a general audience.
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All I can say is you are AWESOME!! Wish there were more people around like you Bruce. Nice to see you are out there helping people. All the best to you,Denise
GREAT thoughts Bruce!
Trust is foundational to any relationship.
Bruce – Good lists of attributes. I can think of a few people I trust, and you were right on. It was harder, I have to say, to think of someone I distrust – there are a far larger number of people that fit into the “I assume they are trustworthy, but I could be wrong” category. I go through life giving people the benefit of the doubt and relying on my own ability to read people, which is often right but not always.
Anyway, the one person that came to mind in the “don’t trust” category is a former boss. In fact, the reason s/he is a “former” boss is that I couldn’t go along with his/her (un)ethical practices and thus fell victim to their effects myself. These practices were damaging the business, damaging customers and, most importantly, directly damaging individuals and families (by extension).
Though this was many years ago, the event is vivid in my mind because it was such a great disappointment (I loved the job itself). Comparing my attitudes to that boss, before I eventually got the shaft, to your list,
The following did apply:
– We wonder whether we are getting the truth from them.
– Down where it matters, we don’t like them very much.
– The relationship feels like a staged and often pointless choreography.
– If we can get away with it, we avoid the person altogether.
However, perhaps because this person held my paycheck, the following did not apply:
1. We often lock onto points of disagreement to keep that person at arm’s length.
2. We see their humanity and hold it against them.
3. Their opinion of us is not that important.
4. We don’t go the extra mile, and often not even the expected ones.
5. Little if any gut-level honesty is being shared in either direction.
Essentially, I was committed to providing the greatest possible value with integrity while trying my best to understand what was going on behind the scenes.
1. I wasn’t able to keep my boss at arm’s length – we had to interact every day.
2. I didn’t hold his/her humanity against him/her because I know I am incredibly “human” at times and don’t allow myself to assume that there is anything I couldn’t fall into given the right circumstances.
3. My boss’s opinion of my did matter – again, my own family’s financial security was at stake, and it was very uncomfortable knowingly displeasing the person who could (and eventually did) snatch all that away.
4. I didn’t just go the extra mile, I went the extra 5 miles, at least. I accomplished more in my brief tenure there than most people accomplish in 3 or 4 times as much time. I essentially went full speed ahead, determined to make the most positive improvements and leave the best legacy behind that I could if that fateful end eventually came. I know from former coworkers that the organization still benefits from those things to this day. I have to admit to feeling exonerated by that.
5. I was up-front and outright in the things I continued to do, which were taken as defiant or insubordinate.
I should mention that this was not a privately owned company – it was a small, localized part of a massive, international corporation. Had this been a privately owned company and the owner was my boss, I would have likely left on my own accord. But in this case I felt I was doing the company good even if I wasn’t giving in to the unethical whims of the local grand poobah.
Question: How do we find the sort of resolve to respond properly in a situation where we clearly have no ability to affect the trust relationship, the other person is unwilling to budge, and the consequences are dire?
Great piece, Bruce. I was particularly struck by the idea of recognizing the humanity of someone not trusted, and holding it against them. Very powerful thought. If we could all just “tune in” to that feeling and try to see beyond it, give the benefit of the doubt, we might find that we share some of the deficits we assign to others, and see them as bridges rather than road blocks to a relationship.
I enjoy your blog–looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts in the future!
It’s exhausting to find knowledgeable individuals on this subject, but you sound like you already know what you’re talking about! Thanks
Say, you got a nice post. Really looking forward to read more. Much obliged.
Thanks a lot for the article. Will read on…