What is Trust?

For many trust is a moral matter – either we trust someone because they’re good or we don’t trust them because they’re bad. There is however another answer to the question what is trust, a way I find more useful. I picked up from Newfield coaching network and recently revisited in Amsterdam with Newfield Europe’s Aboodi Shabi.

In this way of looking at what trust is – competence, sincerity and reliability are seen as key. Trust is our personal assessment of these things in fact.

Can someone do something? This is domain specific, meaning that I might trust someone to fix a car but not fly a plane I am on for example. We assess people’s competence based on experience, qualifications and references (“Did the garage do a good job on your car?”)

Does someone mean to do something when they make a promise (commitment to action)? A broken promise based on a lack of sincerity is different from when where someone thought they could do something but couldn’t.

Has someone kept promises to you in a specific area in the past? If a friend has been 30 minutes late for the last five times you met them they are unreliable (or reliably late), even if they mean to each time.

Note that a person is not just trustworthy or not. They may be capable but not reliable for example, and trust worthy (here predictive not moral) in different areas of life. This way of looking at trust also means that trust can be repaired when there is a breakdown in the “promise cycle” – there’s more to it than I have pace for here. Note also that while the focus here is language the body is also important – particularly in regard to assessing sincerity. It can also be built through bodily practices though rarely through the old-school training one shown!

I highly recommend Newfield anyone interested in what trust is, and also the work of Fernando Flores who wrote a book on the subject. I’ve found these distinctions extremely useful for getting things done with people and deciding who I wish to work with.