On Trust

happy friday! let’s talk about trust today. it’s a long one, but a fun one.

tl;dr

• Trust is a multi-dimensional idea.

• Example of trust: if I have trust in you to do something, it means I believe you will be reliable and see the task through, signifiying reliability, capability, and accuracy.

• A high-trust environment allows people to admit mistakes, have difficult conversations, be accountable, and cultivate a culture of candidness.

• A low-trust environment is marked by avoidance, no accountability, and no reliability.

• Trust involves expectation and predictability. If I trust you not on a task, but on behavior, I expect both reliable outcomes and behavior from you that hopefully reflects well on me.

• High-trust is downstream of being high-quality. Being a high-trust person is an important aspect of being high-quality.

• Trust is something you can build. It is not fixed. Through growth and character development, people can become more reliable and thoughtful.

• Understanding of the world and that which resonates with you, comes from personal reflection, real experience, and thoughtful research. That is where ideas resonate and help you grow.

• This tl;dr, while conveinent, does not show the thought process of how I came to these conclusions orgnaically, and thus don’t carry the same weight or value as the long-form blog post below. It’s like a cake. Sure, the frosting takes good (above), but you really should eat some of the yellow cake inside (below) to get a real feeling about how it tastes (i.e., does the thought process and ideas deeply resonate with you).

The singular word “TRUST” is worth writing about. A multi-dimensional word, where a simple textbook definition scratches only surface of the meaning and implications toward behavior, character, experience.

(I’m not referring to trust in the legal sense, like setting up a trust fund or trust beneficiaries).

Alas, starting with the textbook definition:

Example: When I trust someone at work to report back in three months, I’m not just expecting them to remember to follow up. I’m trusting that they know how to do the work, that they’ll tell me the truth, and that they’ll see it through. In that sense, trust includes ability, honesty, and consistency. I visualize the definition in this example.

I understand it is an adjective and now curious about what defines a high-trust environment, and a low-trust environment.

Let’s start with a good sandbox of an example: a work environment.
This will help us qualify what is high-trust and low-trust by putting it into tangible example.

A high-trust work environment: hard conversations can happen, people can openly admit mistakes, and difficult conversations can be had without fear of backlash. The culture supports candidness. All of these things are downstream of a high-trust work environment.

In a low-trust environment: people hide their mistakes, avoid responsibility, have no accountability, people can’t expect others to be reliable, or feedback is withheld because they don’t believe others will follow through nor respond constructively.

What goes then into the idea of high-trust?

On the same line of reliability, there is an idea of predictability…expectation when I say, “I trust you,” I am comfortable and understand what the outcome of something and someone will be.
I ask you to do something in 3 months: if I trust you, I expect you to see it through, accurately, and of course be capable of doing it.

It doesn’t just need to be an activity or task, but also behavior!

If I’m introducing you to someone, your behavior reflects on me.
If I trust you, I trust your behavior, what you say, how you dress, how you act, while a proponent of your self-expression, does have some reflection on me, so long as I indicate to the new third person that you are someone I trust (or think are high-quality or whatever).
I bet that you’ll represent me well.

Now we’ve linked trust and expectation.

I also think about how trust works, not just downstream (i.e., what is enabled by being high-trust) but rather upstream (i.e., what uses the idea of high-trust).
I put the idea of quality, and whether someone is high- or low-quality, to be a criteria where someone of high-quality is (most often) high-trust.
Sure, there are a few criteria that will determine if someone is high-quality, of which high-trust is one of them. Now we can see that trust works in both directions.

Trust also has this ability to enable considerably positive outcomes.

Say I have a company (I’m the CEO) and I have 5 individuals on the Executive team that I have high-trust relations with.
Each Executive runs a division that produces, markets, and sells products that bring value to people and allow the company to capture some of the value.
If I have high-trust in those Executives to carry through their tasks, that will enable the company to build on its foundation, provide more value to people and to the company: more people benefit from the product, more jobs are created, more wealth is created.
This is enabled by scaling high-trust relations.

Now I start thinking about the levels of which I can view trust.

We talked about trust in an organization/culture, and then for a relationship, but it also works at the single individual level. Are you a high-trust person.

Note: This is not the EXACT same to me as trustworthy; both are very similar but have nuanced differences. Elucidating the differences here:

It is a matter of when, not if, we all will have lapses in judgment and make mistakes of differing degrees.

Through this there is a form of being capable, and willing, to grow as a person to be a higher-trust individual. This is not innate to you from birth.

You can BECOME more reliable, steady, thoughtful as a person.

Example: If Person A is low-trust, and their friend Person B says “Person A, you are cool, but I cannot introduce you to my friend Person C, because you are low-trust”
but in twelve months, Person A grows and improves their character, Person B may say “Person A, I have seen your capability and willingness to grow and improve as a person, and now are someone who is high-trust, and now am comfortable introducing you to Person C”

You can improve yourself and others can gauge your individual growth. This adds a layer to the idea of a relation being low or high-trust.

Lastly, I want to touch on the idea of trust and thinking about trust.

You can go read the Wikipedia page on trust as an idea in social science, the different types of trust (contractual, competence, generalized), and learn more about ethical values and how trust plays into psychology.

This is all very helpful.

But I first think, how can I come to conclusions on how things work, organically?

There may well already be a name for ideas and concepts I come up with myself, and of which those ideas have been discussed, talked, and written about previously.

The goal is that I can come to these ideas organically myself, and if I believe in them, they’ll easily resonate with me, because I am the genesis of the idea.

I am the source. It’s not MY idea but an idea I came up with.

Comparatively, if I read an article and consume it all externally, there is a slightly larger gap between external consumption and internal resonance.

I also hear, “Oh, you need to experience something to have it truly resonate.”

There is truth to this! I love the idea in theory. But in reality, you can’t go experience everything you need: you’ll be chronically behind.

The best place: a happy medium between accruing experiences yourself, being thoughtful and objective about what those experiences are and aren’t, extrapolate potential scenarios and come to your own conclusions, and corroborate everything with formal research you’ve done on the idea.

The melding, the intersection, of both of that is where you get ideas that a) resonate with you, b) have justification and value, c) can propel yourself to get more of what you want and figure life out to the greatest degree you desire to reach.

• nothing terribly notable: just working on personal projects

• Some funky music for this week. I’m late to this.

‘Til next time,

Vishal