The idea for this article came suddenly; It is all about what trust isn’t. There are countless definitions and examples of what trust is. You could spend a lifetime reading books and articles that try to define the concept.  I thought it would be fun to attempt to define the opposite of trust.

The opposite of faith and confidence 

Trust is linked to our feelings for another person where we feel high confidence. We believe the other person will always act in our best interest. What is the opposite of that?  We could say low confidence, but that is really a state of confusion.  I am inclined to say that the opposite of trust in this definition is indifference. We simply do not care if the other person acts in our best interest.

Definition by Charles Feltman in The Thin Book of Trust 

Feltman said that Trust is “choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.” The opposite of that is to guard what you value and not let it be vulnerable. It has the connotation of hoarding what you care about because it is not safe to be vulnerable. If you hide what you consider valuable so you won’t risk the loss of it, that shows the opposite of trust. That is only one aspect of trust, but it’s a good example to use.

Linking trust to safety 

A leader’s responsibility is to create psychological safety within the organization. That is a feeling you have that you can speak the truth without fear of reprisal. The opposite of safety is fear.  People are fearful of speaking up because they believe they may be ridiculed or even fired. If people clam up and do not share what they are thinking it may cause dangerous ethical problems.  Leaders need to be informed when something they are advocating is borderline in terms of ethics.

Having a culture where people feel free to share their opinions also leads to more creativity and analytical thinking.

Trust is never absolute 

We may feel like we totally trust something to happen, but in real life, trust is never absolute. Trust is never totally present or totally absent in our interfaces.

The trust fall

You can imagine how the famous trust fall experiment would work if trust was absent.  In a trust fall, you have one person who is elevated lean backward until he falls over. The experiment works because the victim trusts that another person is there to catch him. The opposite of a trust fall is to refuse to lean backward at all.

Another result could be that the person falling back just falls to the floor and breaks his neck. In this case, the person falling expected to be caught by the other person, but his trust was violated.

The trust fall is a metaphor that has parallels in real life. Many times we are taking a risk with what we say or do. We expect the other person will be there to catch us before we hit the floor. 

Trust in financial transactions 

There are many situations with money where we show trust that another person is not going to abscond with the cash. The opposite of this aspect is to never let the cash out of your possession.  That action would make commerce very difficult. You would always need exact change to make any purchase.

There are financial transactions that end up being shared on social networks. You trusted that the information would be kept confidential, but that trust was violated.  

Another example

Stephen M.R. Covey described 13 Trust behaviors in his book The Speed of Trust. For each behavior, he identified the opposite and what he called the counterfeit behavior. For example, behavior 13 was “Extend Trust.”  He identified the opposite as withholding trust. The counterfeit was extending fake trust. It is acting like you trust someone but “snoopervising” or hovering over them.

Many managers today practice the counterfeit of extending trust, and that has led to the practice of quiet quitting.

Conclusion

I end with the thought that it is much easier to define what trust is than to identify what it is not. We experience trust numerous times every day and often do not even realize it.  Think about that next time you step on the brake pedal in your car.  You just have faith that the car will react properly and stop. You do not need to think about it. You trust the brakes. If you didn’t trust the brakes, your car would be in the shop.

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations

Ten aspects of a high trust group are easy to witness. I have seen groups accomplish a doubling of productivity in less than 12 months.

Shift from a command-and-control environment to one of high trust. Your organization will achieve remarkable gains in productivity.

I have a little exercise that I use to engage groups in my seminars and leadership classes. I lay out ten dimensions and ask small groups of participants to analyze each dimension. I have them contrast what it is like for high trust groups versus low trust groups.

Ten aspects of trust and a brief observation on each one

1. Solving problems – High trust groups solve problems quickly and easily. They also come up with more creative solutions because members are more open.
2. Group focus – Groups with high trust focus on the vision and what is important now. Low trust groups are more myopic and focus on each other most of the time. There is often a lot of acrimony.
3. Communication – In high trust groups communication is efficient and believable. When operating in a low trust environment, there is a lot of skepticism.
4. Customer Retention – Customers interfacing with high trust groups see the esprit décor between people. Those customers will return for more.
5. Environment – The environment of a high trust group is real. In low trust situations, people play games with each other.
6. Saving Time – Less time is wasted in a high trust group because there is less bickering. Productivity is normally at least twice as high as low trust groups.
7. Perfection Not Required – Leaders do not need to be perfect in high trust groups. In low trust environments, people are ready to spring on any potential misstep.
8. Growth – High trust groups spend more time developing their people to be their best.
9. Reinforcement – When leaders reinforce a high trust group people are grateful. In low trust situations, reinforcement is met with skepticism that there is an ulterior motive.
10. Positive Atmosphere – Going to work in a high trust organization is fun. Working in a low trust situation is a constant battle.

Conclusion

These are just ten aspects for why high trust groups always outpace their lower trust counterparts. You can probably think of several other categories.  The conclusion should be obvious. If you have achieved the status of a high trust organization, your success much more likely.

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations

Trust is not a singular concept in nature. I have studied trust for several decades, teach it in several settings, and written four books on it. Trust is such a common word that we use it numerous times a day without thinking. Just listen to the advertisements on TV and you will hear the word trust in the majority of them.

Trust is much broader than we think

Many people have a misconception about the concept of trust. They think of trust as a singular concept when using the word in daily conversation. They picture it as a kind of bond between them and another person.  It takes on a singular connotation. Either they trust another person or do not trust him or her at some level right now.

Trying to define the word

The way I get groups to think about trust more deeply is by asking what the word means. There is always a pause and awkward silence for a few seconds as people try to define it.  Then, someone will offer that trust is the confidence that another person will perform in a certain way.  Someone else will chime in that trust is taking a risk that they could be disappointed.  A third person will add that trust is about having shared values. Then someone will add that trust is having their back or sticking up for them. Once the ball gets rolling, a group can come up with a couple dozen definitions of trust quickly. 

Trust is ubiquitous

Now the group is ready to entertain the idea that trust is a multi-faceted concept. It exists not only between people, but with organizations, products, services, and all kinds of systems.  People get the idea that trust is ubiquitous and is all around them in every moment of their day.  They recognize that before they get to work in the morning, they have experienced trust several hundred times. 

We trust systems to work

They walk into the bathroom and turn on the lights. They trust the whole system to provide light. They don’t think about where the electricity is coming from unless there is some kind of rare failure. 

They turn on the water and just expect potable water to come out without any problem. If it is the left faucet, they trust that the water will become warm, then hot with time.  By the time they reach the breakfast table, trust is experienced dozens of times; then things get really complicated. 

Medications require trust

At breakfast, they are confident that the vitamin pill they are taking is safe. They have no idea who made the pill and what ingredients went into it.  They just swallow the pill and expect it to help. 

In the car

They get into their car and turn the ignition key.  Now, inside the engine, there are thousands of explosions each minute that allow the car to move. They peacefully enjoy the classical music on their favorite station and crank up the air conditioning. 

They have no worry when they press down on the brakes that the car will stop.  They drive over numerous bridges and overpasses without blinking an eye. They do not think of the consequences if the structure would become unsafe. 

Just a few examples to illustrate

On it goes all day every day that they simply take for granted things will work as designed. They recognize on occasion things might fail for some obscure reason. The failures are so remote that they put them out of their mind unless something unusual is going on. Now let’s focus on how trust between people is built and lost for all of us.

In general, we all focus our conscious energy on trust in the relationships we have with other people. Often we forget about the transactional nature of trust. It is impacted by everything (seen and unseen) that happens between people. 

Trust is always bilateral

Trust is bilateral. I trust you and you trust me at some level, and the levels are not the same.  Something happens, and I may trust you more while you trust me less.  The whole thing is dynamic and constant. Most of the trust interactions are going on in our subconscious minds. We have a kind of score card in our mind that is like the balance in a bank account.

A bank account

Many authors, including me, have likened trust to a bank account. We have a balance, and we make deposits and withdrawals. The size of the deposit or withdrawal will vary depending on what is happening. The transaction may be totally subconscious. We can make a huge withdrawal of trust with another person and be totally oblivious to it. 

A few years ago I built a model that helps people visualize this trust account and how it works. I call it my “Trust Barometer” and show it at all my programs. People really get the message about how trust works very easily. Here is a link to a Trust Barometer Video (6 minutes) about how trust is built and lost. Take a peek at this fun description and see if it helps you picture the nature of trust in your life.

Conclusion

Trust is more complex and ubiquitous in our lives than we realize.  Try to be more aware of this aspect of trust. You can see it working for you more consciously on a daily basis. It is fun, and it certainly is an eye-opener.

Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust.  He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind.  Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations

The question of who can I trust does not come up every day, but when it does, it can be an interesting puzzle.

Have you ever had a situation where you are with a bunch of people who are new to you and you are wondering how much you should trust a particular individual?

You do not have enough data to make a firm assessment, so what can you go on? You might say to yourself, “Well, since I don’t know any of these people yet, I’ll start off trusting everybody.” That would be a kind of “blind trust” that would backfire in some cases.

I think a better approach is to use your gut feelings about an individual based on just a few seconds of observation.  If a person seems self-absorbed and is looking around the room for who is there, I would be a bit cautious, at least at first. 

On the other hand, if an individual steps up and introduces herself to you with a friendly demeanor, then you might have a small bond already. Add in some small talk with good eye contact, and you have found a person that you can relate to and likely trust at least to some extent.

If you are not sure how to read a person, try extending a greeting and see how he or she reacts.  Obviously, if there is no reciprocal greeting, then the caution flag should go up immediately.  Something is wrong, and you need to reserve judgment until you can gather more data. 

Reading people quickly is a challenge because some people are naturally more shy than others.  Beware of the extreme case where a person is totally reticent to interact or the other extreme where a person appears overly friendly.

An example of the latter might be a person who uses a two-handed handshake when first meeting you.  That is far too presumptuous for a first handshake, almost like putting their hand on your shoulder as they shake your hand.  Hang on to your wallet!

Thankfully, the kind of situation I am talking about in this article is not very common.  Usually, you have a lot more data to go on as you decide how much trust to extend to another person.  Keep track of your emotions when meeting new people and debrief the situation with yourself to ask why you reacted the way you did.

A variant of the face-to-face situation is when the other parties are virtual. Body language is significantly more difficult to read in these cases.  For example, in a virtual discussion real eye contact is impossible to achieve.  If you look directly into the camera, then you cannot see the eyes of the other person. If you look at the screen, then you are not looking directly at the other person from their perspective. Keep in mind that the position on the screen is different for different people.

You can also have phone conversations where voice inflection is an important ingredient as well.  You need to take into account the communication limitations of whatever medium you are using.

Since the virtual arrangement, or at least a hybrid situation, is common these days, you need to go more slowly when trying to assess how much to trust another person.  Pay attention to the feelings you have as the other person addresses you and try to send consistent signals yourself.  Give it time and try to extend trust as soon as you can.

Recognize that fully mature trust does take time because it requires verification of perspectives based on the early clues. In a virtual world, it does take longer to develop full trust.  

Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow, Inc. an organization dedicated to growing leaders. Website www.leadergrow.com   BLOG www.thetrustambassador.com He is author of the following books: The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals,  Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind

In your opinion, what is the meaning of trust? Most of us use the word trust several times a day. It is actually one of the more common words in our lexicon, yet when I ask people in my seminars to define what it means, I often get an awkward silence, then a few definitions come out, like “confidence,” or “integrity,” or “walk the talk.”

Eventually, most groups come up with a dozen or more definitions, and they begin to realize that what they pictured as one single phenomenon is actually a myriad of concepts that mean vastly different things in different circumstances.  

I have been working in the area of trust for nearly 30 years. The topic is infinitely fascinating to me, and I am always gaining new understanding thanks to the many other authors and people who network with me. I have found several concepts to be central to the idea of building and maintaining trust, and as I thought about some of these words, they started to form an acronym for the word TRUST.

Acronyms are strange mutations of the language that I find curious. Sometimes an acronym will seem rather strained or far-fetched as an attempt to be cute or simply a trick to help people remember concepts.

The acronym below is neither of these; instead, it is a way for me to highlight five central issues about trust that I continue to emphasize.

Trusting others. I have coined what I call “The First Law of Building Trust.” It is that when leaders are not satisfied with the level of trust they see within their organization, the first question to ask is how they can show more trust in others.

Trust is a reciprocal relationship, and numerous authors have identified the best way to have people trust you more is to increase your visible trust in them.

I once observed a male Vice President who really struggled with trust. I asked him if he could find ways to demonstrate more trust in his people. His reaction was, “You are asking the impossible; these people show me by their actions every day that they cannot be trusted to do what is right.” 

As I dug into the situation, I found that his workers had been so abused by this leader, they had no reason to even try to do things right. It was a toxic environment, where the VP would literally yell at the people and say things like, “You are so stupid I cannot rely on you for anything. I have to watch you like a hawk or you will just goof off and not even try to do your job right.” 

This is a classic case of a Theory X management style described by Douglas McGregor in the 1960s, and the VP was truly unaware that he was the real cause of his problem.  

I grant that in any workforce, there are some bad apples who can never be trusted, but if you have any of these people on your team and tolerate them, shame on you. Get rid of them.

The vast majority of workers, I believe over 95%, will respond positively and do good work if they are well led. When trust is low, The First Law of Building Trust puts the onus on the leader to do three things:

1. Recognize his/her own contribution to the problem,
2. Modify his/her behavior to be more trustworthy, and
3. Start showing more trust in his/her workers.

Unfortunately, the first step is the most difficult. I have observed numerous leaders who are simply blind to the fact that they are causing their own problems. It is so much easier to blame the workers than to take a hard look in the mirror and ask some tough questions.

There are numerous other actions required to build and maintain trust, but the three steps above are the precursors that must be in place, or nothing will change.

Also, recognize that the process to rebuild lost trust is arduous. Wounded workers will observe improved behaviors for a long time before believing they are genuine.

Reinforcing candor. After a couple decades studying trust, I believe the most central enabler of it is reinforcing candor. This is the leader’s ability to refrain from punishing people when they speak their truth. Most leaders cannot do this.

When workers state that a leader is doing things inconsistent with the vision, they take a risk because most leaders punish that kind of candor. Brilliant leaders recognize that if they can establish a pattern of making people glad when they bring up difficult issues, it enables trust more than any other single factor. The concept is called enabling psychological safety.

I put reinforcing candor in the center of my Leadergrow Trust Model because it is the one skill that most leaders find difficult to do, yet once they understand its power, they have a much easier time creating and maintaining trust.

Universal goals. I have found when trust is absent in an organization, usually, individuals and groups have conflicting goals. They often do not realize they are pulling in different directions.

When you have an organization that is truly focused on one consistent set of goals, then you have alignment. Many organizations struggle with poor alignment such that only a small fraction of the workforce is actually pulling in the direction of the stated vision. Organizations with high trust achieve the reverse of that condition and have almost all people in the organization pulling in the direction of the vision.

It is easy to see if goals are not universal when you observe silo thinking, conflict, low trust, lack of respect, fear, management abuse, and any number of other organizational ills.

The starting points for establishing an environment of high trust are 1) complete agreement on where the organization is trying to go, and 2) enrolling all members of the organization to engage their full effort toward that vision.

Sincerity. This is the human dimension that shows leaders care about everyone in the organization. It is never the case that all people in an organization are exactly equal, yet the role played by each individual is of critical importance to the organization’s success. When managers and leaders are duplicitous, people quickly get the idea, because they see a lack of sincerity and care for individuals.

The antidote for low sincerity is very simple. The Golden Rule is the most important concept to show others that we care about them. If you treat other people the way you would like to be treated, you will find they respond in a positive way because they know you care.

It is quite simple, but unfortunately, many leaders have their priorities mixed and put short-term financial performance above the notion of caring for the people in the organization.

The best approach is to treat people the right way, which means being alert to the needs of each person as a unique individual and treating him or her as a person who will happily perform well if treated properly.

Transparency. The final T in my trust acronym is transparency. Organizations that share information widely about what is happening, what the goals are, where we are going, what the strategies are, what behaviors are needed, and how we have been performing recently, get the best that people have to offer.

Transparency is an interesting concept because it is not always good, or even legal, to be totally transparent. You must combine common sense, kindness, ethical behavior, and care into the equation when deciding how much information to reveal. Unfortunately, most organizations err on the side of too little transparency rather than too much.

The irony is that transparency is becoming less of a choice for senior executives due to social networking and the ability for people to get information more quickly and easily than ever before.

Leaders who try to hide information from workers are becoming increasingly frustrated because the information leaks out anyway, often in the form of rumors. A better approach is to aim for maximum transparency and a very fast response time when incorrect information gets out in the social networks.

These five concepts: Trusting others, Reinforcing candor, Universal goals, Sincerity, and Transparency form the acronym TRUST. While there are many other concepts and issues around trust and being trustworthy, I believe these five concepts are really at the core of creating an environment of higher trust.

Researchers have established through numerous studies that organizations with higher trust out-perform those that have low trust. A high trust group enjoys two to five times the productivity of a low trust group. No organization can survive for very long if they have an environment of low trust. Focus efforts on these five concepts, and you will improve your ability to achieve and maintain high trust in any organization.

Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow, Inc. an organization dedicated to growing leaders. Website www.leadergrow.com   BLOG www.thetrustambassador.com He is author of the following books: The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals,  Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind