Build Trust By Breaking It Down

Trust. It’s a feeling and perception that is critically important to our work relationships, and yet we are often reluctant to talk about it directly.

Trust is foundational to interpersonal dynamics. Leaders who report struggling with: delegation, micro-managing, feedback, evaluating fit for a role, or chronic friction with a teammate are talking about “a trust issue”---even if they don’t initially use the T-word.

Despite its foundational importance, trust as a concept is not well-understood. And that lack of understanding further complicates how we talk about it and explore it with others. 

A few takeaways upfront: 

1 - Trust is complex, which means it can be examined to uncover the underlying driving variables that interact with each other. By breaking “trust” down into its component parts, we can understand what’s going with more precision and talk more explicitly about the underlying drivers as part of setting expectations, exchanging feedback or engaging in inquiry. 

2 - Trusting is not the same as liking. You can like someone (or even love them!) and not trust them to do some things. And if someone doesn’t trust you to do something, that doesn’t mean they don’t like you, respect you or think you’re generally a good person. You can also trust someone to do something even if you don’t particularly like them. 

3 -  Trust is not binary, all-encompassing or permanent. Trust isn’t binary in the sense that it’s not like a light switch that is on or off. We almost never trust someone with everything or with nothing. It’s more accurate to imagine trust as a system of equations that can change over time. In other words, we usually trust people to do some things and not others. And that assessment is ongoing and dynamic. As situations change and relationships evolve, we can expand or contract our trust in others. 

4 - You can do things proactively to increase the trust others have in you, and you can also rebuild trust reactively after a breach/loss of trust. Once you understand the underlying components of trust -- you can both assess where you there are gaps you want to fill and what action you can take to rebuild trust by focusing on those component areas.  

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How Breaking Trust Down Makes It Easier To Build (Or Rebuild)

One of the most useful ways I’ve found to think about an interpersonal dynamic as complex as trust is to break it down into an “equation” that highlights the different variables or drivers that result in varying levels of trust. 

I find these equation frameworks are helpful to both leaders and teammates in understanding why they might not feel trust with someone, and, as a result, be in a better position to identify what steps they might take to build (or re-build) trust.
Many coaches, OD consultants and leadership experts have their own version of a “trust equation.” 

Clint Moloney of Trium uses: Trust = Motive + Competence + Reliability. 

Joel Peterson uses Trust = Character + Competence + Authority.

Maister-Green-Galford use: Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation. 

Note that Maister-Green-Galford use essentially the same three ingredients of the other two equations and include the fourth variable around intimacy (which they use to refer to a sense of emotional comfort/safety). 

The other elegant part of their equation is that it shows how perception of motives (their “self-orientation” variable) is more powerful than the other variables in increasing or decreasing trust. This is consistent with what we know about interpersonal dynamics, particularly when you consider positive sentiment override and the power of our filters in determining our emotional reactions to others’ behavior. 

When I help startup leaders with trust issues, I use Maister-Green-Galford’s equation, but change Intimacy and Self-Orientation into terms that are more familiar to the leaders I coach. 

First, I explain that “Trust” is an inherently subjective assessment that is setting-specific. 

So, for example, if I reflect on my trust in you to do a certain thing or show up in a certain way in a specific situation, that level of trust is influenced by my perception or experience of you in  four key areas: 

Trust   =      Credibility + Reliability + Emotional Comfort

(Negative Intent) 

Credibility = my sense of whether you are competent, knowledgeable, skilled enough in this area to be credible (this may or may not reflect your actual objective competence) 

Reliability = my sense/experience of whether you will follow-through on your commitments or what you say you will do (this is usually weighted by my past experiences of whether I found you to be reliable in the past) 

Emotional Comfort = my level of comfort with you in terms of interpersonal connection and psychological safety (note that this is where “liking” can factor in -- trust is not the same as liking, but the more comfortable I feel/the more familiar you are/the stronger a connection we have, the more likely I am to have a higher-valuable variable here) 

Negative Intent  = my subjective perception or “story” of what your intentions or motivations will be in this situation (If I perceive you as having negative intent--to hurt; to undermine; to put yourself first; to be biased or unfair -- then the “value” in this variable will be higher.) 

The equation shows that trust is maximized when the numerator (credibility + reliability + emotional comfort) is as high as possible and the denominator (perception of negative intent) is as low as possible. 

As a startup leader, you  can take this equation and apply it in several ways: 

1 - Proactive Trust Building: Even if you sense your teammates currently have high trust in you for the situations where you want them to trust you, you can reflect on what variables you are less high in so you can focus on strengthening trust proactively in that area. (For example, maybe you tend to score highly with Emotional Comfort, but as the company is growing you are letting more balls drop and are worried you  might start to decline in Reliability. Or, maybe you’re a genius in a technical area so everyone would rank you highly in Credibility, but you’re also a bit intimidating so people don’t always feel the Emotional Comfort to speak up in technical meetings with their ideas.) 

2 - Reflecting On Your Own Trust In Others: If/when you are struggling to trust a particular teammate, you can use the equation to pinpoint what specific variable is missing or “low” for you and then use that reflection to have a more direct conversation with the teammate to strengthen trust. Maybe your reflection leads to an expectations reset around hitting timelines (Reliability) or maybe you spend more time training them (Credibility) or maybe you debrief a recent interaction to better understand where they were coming from (Negative Intent) and see if you can change the negative story you walked with from that interaction. You don’t even need to use the word “trust” or “don’t trust” in any of these conversations, but can focus instead on how the person can improve in their reliability; their skills or them being clearer with their intentions. 

3 - Reactive Trust Re-building: Finally, in any situation, where you realize you have lost trust with teammates (an individual or a whole team) you can ask them to help you focus on the specific variables that are most in need of your attention/energy to change. If you discover that a perception of negative intent is a factor in how you’ve lost trust, I’d encourage you start focusing on shifting perception of your intent first as it’s the most powerful driver of trust.  And if you’re facing a more complex or widespread loss of trust (i.e., whole teams report that they don’t trust “company leadership”), check out How Stories Can Drive Alignment or Sap Morale for more detailed advice for how to approach a multi-month long effort to rebuild and regain trust.