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Welcome to the Humanizing Work Show, this is Peter Green, and today I’m excited to share with you an overview and some takeaways from a fantastic new audiobook by Rachel Botsman called How to Trust and Be Trusted.
For a business, trust is oxygen. Without it, the business will die. Customers need to trust the business to solve their problems at a price that’s fair. Teammates need to trust each other to make and keep commitments. Leadership needs to trust first line employees to do their jobs in an ethical, engaged way. Employees need to trust that management is treating them fairly and considers their interests when making decisions.
Remove trust from any of these relationships, and everything about the business goes downhill, fast.
So, what exactly is trust? It’s something that I thought I had a pretty good understanding of before I came across Rachel’s book. She’s an Oxford lecturer and a world expert on trust. And I found that her descriptions and advice were so compelling that I wanted to create this graphic overview with my commentary of her book, which again is called How to Trust and Be Trusted. It’s an audiobook only, and it’s great. It’s short and really well produced. It’s done by Pushkin, and if you’re familiar with their work, they make audiobooks that are patterned after professionally produced podcast episodes, so if you find this graphic overview compelling, go buy it wherever you get your audiobooks. It’s worth your investment.
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How to trust and be trusted is organized around some of the big questions most of us have about trust–like How to Trust the Right People, How to Be More Trustworthy, How to Repair Trust, How to Use Transparency, and How Trust drives Change and Innovation. Whether you’re on a team and you want to increase the trust level with your teammates, a manager that wants to have stronger relationship with their direct reports, or an executive team that wants to create a culture of trust, these five lessons will help you think more clearly about trust and improve your ability to make good decisions related to it.
Let’s start with her definition of trust. Trust, according to Botsman, is a confident relationship with the unknown. And when we talk about whether we trust a person, a group, a company, or whatever it may be, she recommends we get more specific. Instead of saying “I trust this person,” say “I trust this person to do this thing in this context.” She uses the example that she hopes her readers trust her to provide useful information about this topic, in hopefully an entertaining way. But that you should not trust her to drive you safely anywhere. Another example is that you might trust a company to get you a product quickly at a good price, but you may not trust that same company to treat its employees fairly or behave ethically towards their competitors. So, trust is a confident relationship with the unknown, and it helps to define the presence of trust in a specific context. With that as our foundation, let’s get to the five lessons.
Lesson one answers the question: who should I trust, and it has a subtle subtext of “why do we often make such bad decisions about who to trust?”
Botsman begins by pointing out that in any relationship, there is a trust giver and a trust receiver, which seems obvious, but it’s helpful to separate those. Because the receiver can’t force the trust giver to trust them, it has to be given.
And when we are the trust giver, we make decisions about who to trust based on all kinds of signals, what Botsman calls trust signals. These are the sometimes subtle clues we knowingly or unknowingly use to make decisions about trust.
And some signals are much louder than others. She gives lots of interesting examples and research on this in the book, but suffice it to say, if I look like you, or talk like you, or went to the same school as you, that’s going to be a very loud trust signal–you’re automatically much more likely to trust me than someone who doesn’t have those familiar characteristics, regardless of whether or not I’m actually more trustworthy.
It’s why con artists will start getting information from us and then fabricating similarities. Like “Hey, where’d you go to school? Oh, East High? Yeah, my cousin went to East High. What year did you graduate? Oh, he was a few years behind you.” And now, subconsciously, we feel like we know this person a little bit, and if we believe them, we might just trust them a little bit.
Botsman also addresses the question about the role of intuition, our “gut feeling” on someone. The sad news is that our gut feeling about someone’s trustworthiness, which we usually form within seconds of meeting them, has only a 50/50 shot of being right. So she recommends that we let our gut feeling about someone be the driver of a decision, but not the decider. Let it tell you, “Ok, I need to make a decision here. But now let me think about what signals I’m considering.”
Just taking the time to think through that question is critical. It’s what Botsman calls a “Trust Pause.” Think through the actual facts beyond how you’re feeling about a person. What evidence do you have about their trustworthiness? What are the other trust signals you might consider?
Now you’re in a better position to make a good decision. We won’t always get it right, and sometimes even without strong evidence we’ll need to trust someone, sometimes just out of convenience, but taking a trust pause is great advice that I plan to remember. Now, what kind of evidence should we be looking for? We’ll get some categories in the second lesson–How to be more trustworthy.
But the second lesson starts with a great and, in my experience, maybe controversial take, which is that we should stop talking about building trust, like “I’m going to go take these actions and that will make this person trust me more.” Instead of trying to build trust, Botsman recommends we focus on trying to earn it. That simple shift from building to earning makes it clear that the trust giver we talked about in lesson 1 will choose whether or not we’ve earned their trust. We can’t force it.
Ok, so what can we do to be more trustworthy? Botsman’s research indicates that there are four traits that determine whether someone is trustworthy or not. Two of the traits are about the person’s capability, how they do things, and two are about their character; why they do things.
On the capability side, we have competence, which is the time, skills, and experience to do the thing we are asking someone to trust us about. The second, Reliability, is about doing what I said I’d do, and communicating clearly what can be expected, then doing what I communicated. Reliability has a strong time aspect to it–do I make deadlines? Do I show up on time, or even, can people rely on me to always be a few minutes late, but they know they can rely on me being late but then present.
On the character side, the WHY we do things, integrity means I walk the talk. If I say I value direct feedback, do I welcome it when it’s given or do I get defensive? If I say I have a strong boundary on my work time and my non-work time, do I then go sending emails and Slack messages to my team at 2am?
Finally, empathy is used here to describe a curiosity about what’s going on for the other person. Managers pay close attention here. Bostman points out that this trait is not really the kind of empathy where I feel what you’re feeling, but just that I’m curious about your experience and I’m actively seeking to be helpful to you. In one interview I heard with Botsman, she pointed out that she liked the word “care” better here, because it’s an active way of describing the same idea. So, we tend to trust people that demonstrate active curiosity in our experience and point of view, and a desire to help us get what’s important to us.
So, if you want to be more trustworthy, consider the four traits and where you might be falling a little short. Depending on the context of the trust, what you want someone to trust you to do, one of the four traits might be more important, so this isn’t a blanket statement to try and move all the dials on all four at once. For example, if I’m picking a surgeon, Competence is probably more important to me than the others. It’s not that I don’t want an empathetic surgeon, but I’m going to be asleep most of the time anyway, so it’s not the primary driver. On the other hand, if I’m deciding whether to trust a romantic partner, then empathy and integrity might way outweigh the capability skills, especially the more serious and long term the relationship becomes. So, context is king when considering the four traits.
I found these really helpful in thinking about how I could be more trustworthy, but also in diagnosing why I might struggle to trust someone else. It was like shining a light on something that was maybe a little hidden before. I could now be a little clearer about what was preventing me from trusting them, and, if it’s important to resolve, it provides a clue into the types of conversations I’d need to have if I wanted to increase my trust for that person in that context.
Which brings us to lesson 3–how to repair trust. Botsman has a really nice companion definition in this lesson, which is: Distrust is a Confident expectation of things feared. I love the precision in her definitions.
In any relationship, our level of trust is more like a flowing river than a fixed container, where we dump the trust in, and then we’re good. So we’ll use an image here that has some flow in and out of it.
When we connect with a person, our trust level tends to go up. But our trust level can drop when we have some kind of a disconnect in any of the four traits. Did someone demonstrate lower competence than we previously attributed to them? Trust is going to drop. Did they drop the ball, they proved less reliable than we’d hoped? Trust is going to drop. Did they act inconsistently with their stated values or beliefs? Trust is going to drop. Did they act in a way that showed no empathy or curiosity about our experience? Again, trust will drop.
And as trust drops, Botsman describes three levels of distrust. The first is defensiveness. This is the initial stage of distrust, where the trust giver may feel attacked or undermined. Common signs here include reacting to requests or feedback as if they’re personal attacks, feeling the need to constantly justify or defend our actions, often blaming, or judging, complaining, or criticizing others, and sort of an overall sense of “pushing against” other people in their interactions.
If distrust is not addressed at this stage, it can progress to level 2, which is disengagement. This stage is marked by pulling back from relationships or interactions, reduced energy and enthusiasm in our tasks or our teamwork, avoiding collaboration and withdrawing from meaningful communication, and a shift from paying attention to actively turning away from engagement. Then again, if we don’t address it at that stage,
The final stage is disenchantment, where distrust becomes deeply ingrained, and often results in resentment and rivalry. Characteristics here include viewing others as competitors rather than collaborators, even on the same team, harboring feelings of resentment and vindictiveness, often spreading that distrust to others, leading to fractured relationships, bad group dynamics, and eventually reaching a point where the relationship or collaboration might be irreparable, often at this stage, we find people deciding just to call it quits (they’re going to leave the relationship, team, or organization).
The three levels of distrust illustrate this progressive breakdown in trust and relationships. And addressing distrust early, especially during the defensiveness stage, is critical to preventing it from escalating into disengagement or eventually disenchantment, where it may be too late to repair it.
When you notice that disconnection, that defensiveness in yourself or in someone else, and if the relationship is important, it’s time to have a difficult, but hopefully productive conversation. Now, there are entire great books written on this topic, including Crucial Conversations and the books on Non-Violent Communication, but Botsman does a nice job of summarizing the steps that need to be taken in any of these types of conversations, which are first to identify what’s at stake, why does the conversation matter, why is it important to address, second to find some common ground, things we can all agree about, then, third, to be specific, where we’re not talking about patterns or identities, like, “Oh, you’re always so…,” (this way). Instead use a specific recent example. Then, fourth, make sure we’re demonstrate empathy by listening to their perspective and experience of the situation. It’s really important to remember that we only have part of the story—our part of it. And to remember that there’s something called the fundamental attribution error at this step. Fundamental attribution error is where we attribute “bad behavior” in others to “just who they are,” and bad behavior in ourselves to “all the reasons I had to behave that way in that specific situation.” Then, moving through those steps, we can look for a path forward that allows us to increase our trust, even if it’s just an experiment.
Ok, on to lesson 4, which was the initial hook for this book for me. And that is about the role of transparency in trust. I’ve always acted under the assumption that transparency tends to increase trust. And it might be true to a certain point. But if we go back to the definition of trust as a confident relationship with the unknown, then we can see that a demand for more transparency is actually a desire to control, not to trust. So, does that mean transparency doesn’t matter? Well, not quite. Botsman describes two approaches to transparency. The first is what she calls blanket transparency, and this is just being transparent about everything, like spraying a firehose of transparency on the wall hoping to douse any possible uncertainty. That’s not creating a more confident relationship with the unknown. The second is what she calls intentional transparency, is very targeted. In this case, we want to share specific information about specific things to demonstrate the traits of trustworthiness where they may not be obvious. Botsman suggests that if an organization wants to be more transparent, they should start with the team discussion about the specific trust issue they hope to fix with the transparency. Then, they can ask, “What’s the intention here? Are we trying to demonstrate Competence? Reliability? Integrity? Empathy? Based on the results of that conversation, we can ask what type of information do we need to disclose to align with that intention.
Then, as we think about how to share that information, we can think about sharing it in a way that it has what Botsman calls the “3 Cs of transparency”: those are that it is consistent, it’s credible, and it’s comprehensive. If we miss any of those three, then the transparency often has the opposite effect of what we had hoped for, Then we can ask, hey, if we share this information, how is it going to drive accountability, and for whom, and finally, what changes do we expect to see by sharing this information, and how will we measure that change?
This lesson alone, out of the five, is worth the price of the book for an executive team. It will save you untold hours of missteps if you follow its advice well. Making information available comes at a cost, it’s not free to create the systems that are required to share information—to be transparent about it. So use this in an intentional, targeted way to address specific trust issues. And you’ll save yourself time, hassle, bureaucracy and money.
On to the final lesson, the role of trust in creating change and innovation. All changes, including creative, innovative changes for a business, involve doing something we haven’t done before. It’s a step into the unknown. The way that Botsman describes this, is as a “trust leap” where we’re standing in a place that’s known and we’re considering taking that leap, going to jump to a place that’s unknown. We have to jump OVER the uncertainty to see what things are like over there.
Now, depending on how confident our relationship is with that unknown, we are more or less likely to be willing to take that leap. And, depending on the risk we attribute to the unknown future that will determine how high and how far we’re willing to leap.
As we try to lead change or innovation, it’s unhelpful just to push and encourage people to make the leap. Instead, it’s more useful to consider what the barriers might be, what Botsman calls trust barriers, then see how we might help reduce those barriers. The first barrier she mentions is simply a low trust state in general. If people have had their trust broken recently or frequently, or they’ve just been burned too often, their overall willingness to trust may be low. A low trust state will be a barrier to trust leaps, regardless of the inherent risk or benefits of a particular trust leap. So before considering a change, it’s useful to start with considering the people involved and what their overall current trust states might be in general, with you, and with the situation you’re considering a change.
Next, people may be unwilling to take trust leaps. There might be another barrier when they are more worried about negative results than any of the possible benefits. We love using the 5 Layers of resistance hear, what we described in episode 35, which describes different angles on the negative results. Different levels of those. Working through the 5 layers before asking someone to take a leap we found, can reduce or eliminate this barrier altogether.
The next potential barrier she mentions is that we may assume everyone else understands why the change is important, but, because of how the curse of knowledge works, because of how our brains work, we’re probably wrong about that. We’re probably thinking more about, and imagining more about what the benefits might be. So it’s important to be really clear, visionary, and purposeful in every conversation about change. Describe the future you hope for. Describe how it will be great for whoever will benefit, from it, whether that’s customers or stakeholders and especially “What’s In It For Them” referring to the person you hope will take the trust leap.
The final barrier is a lack of control. We all want a sense of choice if we’re going to take a trust leap, otherwise we’re just being pushed off the proverbial cliff. So, how can you give them more control in the situation? What can they own? How can we prepare them to own it well? Take a look at our episode 67 and our most recent one, episode 165 for our advice on how to prepare people well to take control.
Helping remove trust barriers frees people to take trust leaps that create change and innovation. And while I’ve described these from someone trying to lead change or innovation, each of these work for an individual who wants to unlock the same. You can look at all four trust barriers and do some journaling or maybe talk to a trusted friend or advisor and get some coaching on how to improve your overall trust state, how to work through the potential negative results and find ways to test their likelihood, how to get clearer on the benefits you’re hoping for, and find ways to increase your control of the situation, which we find is often done through small slice, crafted experiments.
Those are the five lessons from Rachel Botsman’s audiobook How to Trust and Be Trusted. Which of the five lessons seems particularly important to you right now? What’s one action you’ll take to improve trust in your life? I hope you’ll take that action. In a world where trust seems to be dissolving all too rapidly, we can all chip away at that trend by being more trustworthy ourselves and working on ways to safely give our trust to others.
Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Humanizing Work show, and we hope to see you again next time.