Who do you really trust?
Keywords: how to build trust, trust at work, trust and leadership and why trust matters.
One of the things that surprised me when researching for my doctoral thesis was the role that trust played in implementing and communicating about change. I don't know why - it seems so obvious now. I think maybe I didn't really understand what trust is.
Back in the 4th century B.C. Aristotle was writing about public speakers. He spoke about persuasion being made up of three components Ethos (Character), Pathos (Emotions), Logos (Logic).
The ethos part he further split into another three sections. Over time these items have been expanded and renamed and researched and transformed, but nearly 2.5 thousand years later the core components still stand. I like to think of them as an ABC of trust.
Ability: Does this person have the ability to do what I need them to?
Benevolence: Does this person care about me and what I care about?
Consistency: Do this persons words and actions hold up? Do they do what they said they would do?
(See "An Integrative Model of Organisational Trust" - Mayer et al., 1995, or Frances Frei's TED Talk for examples for other ways these three criteria have been rebadged).
The most important aspect of this is that trust is conditional. It's not just a question of the person's ability in general or their level of consideration, but relative to what you need of them.
The easiest example is thinking about someone coming to paint your house. Do they have the ability to paint not just any house, but your house? The trust you need to have for someone to paint a square boxed apartment is different to the trust you need for a fancy new house with vaulted ceilings and mezzanine floors.
And what about the floors? Are they going to put dust sheets over the carpets? If they bash the doorframe with the ladder on the way out are they going to come back and make sure there's no damage? Do they invoice you the amount they said they would, when you were expecting it?
The level of trust you need is relative to your standards and expectations before it's anything about their performance.
I have found this framework really useful to think about trust and expectations. Think about someone in your team you aren't sure is performing - which of these areas is it that they aren't giving you? Can you change that? Think about a leader you've really admired - what do they do to create trust in each of those areas?
The one bit that Aristotle probably got wrong is that he was talking about ethos demonstrated in a particular speech, but we know that actually trust is built and broken in lots of words and actions over time. Every time we meet someone, we are assessing them against our standards and expectations.
They'll find it much easier to meet our standards if we've been clear about them in the first place.
“Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people.”