Four Trust Principles You Already Know

In The Trusted Advisor, David Maister talks about several fundamental principles of trust that leaders need to know. Given that trust is such a hard concept to define concisely, his principles help give it dimensions. Here are four of the principles that will support you in your leadership endeavors. I bet you already know this in your bones.

Trust is both rational and emotional

Trust exists on the full spectrum of the polarity between rational experience — logic — and the emotional realm. In subtle everyday exchanges, we often experience trust emotionally first and only later figure out the rationale behind our feelings. Then, in bigger dealings when there are blatant trust violations, the rational explanation is obvious.

Take the example of a colleague ignoring your email. There's the emotional experience of possibly feeling ignored and dismissed, as well as the more rational-but-still-emotional experience of feeling confused at the silence. And then, looked at completely rationally, it's easy to take the personal dimension out of the question — they're busy, they may have missed it, and they probably intended to get back to you and forgot. Still, lack of response can easily affect your trust in, at the very least, their ability to respond in a timely manner.

Trust involves risk

Trusting someone is to extend the belief that they will meet your expectations for behavior and intention before they actually do. My husband and I recently started letting our 8-year-old daughter bike to her friend's house about 1/2 a mile away. In doing so, I've been very in touch with this risk quality of trust.

In this case and in many others, choosing to trust without being able to see into the future to confirm 100% that it was the right choice was a trade-off we were willing to make because, by our calculations, the rewards of increased trust (in this case, confidence and independence in our daughter and convenience for us) outweighed the risks (insert highly unlikely worst-case-scenario parental nightmares here).

Trust must be earned

While trust may be extended without fully knowing that the risk will pay off as I just explained, I picture it as an incremental leap-frog kind of development. Upon first meeting a client, there are subtle, interpersonal ways to show trust: arriving on time, showing attentiveness and kindness, listening and articulating what you know about how you can help, without exaggerating what you know. Maybe you offer to follow up with additional materials.

This "bootstrapping" of trust leaps the relationship forward. So you earn a little bit of trust, and then more is extended to you before you've necessarily earned it. You prove to the other person that they will benefit from extending that trust, and more is built and received. Up it goes.

Trust is everything

Warren Buffet said, "Trust is like the air we breathe. When it is present, nobody really notices. But when it's absent, everybody notices." The absence of trust creates a propensity to make assumptions, to fill in the blanks with less-than-ideal scenarios and stories, and to overcompensate for the lack of trust with exhausting vigilance, extra explanations, and other forms of wasted time and effort too 'micro' to elaborate on here (but you know what I’m talking about). As leaders, it's important we are clear on the costs of not consciously cultivating trust.

And when you have it, trust enables a sense of freedom and ease that underpins creative, inspirational forces. When you take leadership action to cultivate a high-trust team, you increase the drive within teammates to live up to that trust and bring their best to the table. 

In conclusion, don't be so hard on yourself if you experience the emotional downside of losing or missing trust. It matters. Go into the risks of extending trust and receiving extensions of trust with eyes wide open, and don't take it for granted. Earn that trust consciously and prove you're worthy of more. Trust can lubricate relationships and unfurl the sails that will harness natural energy and momentum. It is everything.