Considering the causal ambiguity of trust, how does one go about building trust?
“In our experience, trust has three core drivers: authenticity, logic, and empathy. People tend to trust you when they believe they are interacting with the real you (authenticity), when they have faith in your judgment and competence (logic), and when they feel that you care about them (empathy). When trust is lost, it can almost always be traced back to a breakdown in one of these three drivers.,” according to Frances Frei.
Gert Jan Hofstede, in his paper ‘Trust and Transparency in Supply Netchains: A Contradiction?’, extended the work of D.M. Rousseau to networked environments and found that “trust builds gradually through shared experience”.
On the note of trust building over time through shared experience, in his famous work ‘Trust’ Francis Fukiyama wrote: “Out of shared values comes trust. As a general rule, trust arises when a community shares a set of moral values in such a way as to create expectations of regular and honest behavior… Trust is not the consequence of rational calculation.”
In an unrelated, but interesting note, Fukiyama also stated in his book ‘Trust’ that, “There is usually an inverse relationship between rules and trust: the more people depend on rules to regulate their interactions, the less they trust each other, and vice versa.”
Jeffrey Gitomer, in his book ‘The Little Teal Book Of Trust’, also mentions that building trust takes time: “You cannot buy trust at any price. But slowly, over time, you can build trust for free… Dealings over time [and] personal relationships lead to trust”. Gitomer continues in his list ‘Characteristics of Trusted and Trustworthy People’ with:
- To get trust, first give trust.
- Giving value first leads to trust.
- Competency and superior skill leads to trust.
- Straight-forward truth leads to trust.
- Creativity leads to trust.
- Superior knowledge and genuine help leads to trust.
- Superior service leads to trust.
- Understanding leads to trust.
- Willingness to help leads to trust.
- Respect and reliability over time lead to trust.
- Desire to serve with a grateful heart leads to trust.
- Dedication to serving and enlightening others based on heartfelt belief leads to trust.
- Random acts of kindness and the desire to do the best job possible lead to trust.
- Accurate advice over time and friendship without condition or expectation lead to trust.
- Superior performance with passion over time leads to trust.
- Dedication to personal excellence and mastery of a craft leads to trust.
- Friendship based on respect, mutual admiration, truth, and fun leads to trust.
Thanks for reading!