A Working Definition of Trust

I was recently invited to facilitate a workshop on Trust for a group of Entrepreneurs. The event is the annual leadership summit, this year to be held in Bend, Oregon. Every year the US West Regional leadership from the Entrepreneurs Organization hosts a conference to bring together the leaders of its 18 chapters in a conference designed to build connection and improve leadership skill. What’s more, in EO, Trust and respect are treated as one twinned virtue, and as our core value of the organization.

That’s all well and good, every organization should have values, and I believe they should state them openly. However, (and there’s always a however), what precisely do they mean by Trust? What is it to trust someone? What is it when people trust you?

As is my style, I think about these things, quite deeply. My engineering mind (and experience) tells me details matter. What’s more, words matter. There are many suitcase words out there¹. A suitcase word is a word that can hold many meanings, and different people pack (or unpack) different meanings from that word.² What makes it a suitcase word is that it is impossible (or extremely difficult) from the context to tell which definition or meaning someone put into, or is taking out of, that word.

I once sat in a room full of early stage entrepreneurs I coached who were freely tossing around that word when I paused the conversation and asked, “What do you mean by strategy? I mean, use another word, tell me like I’m 12 years old what you mean.” Six out of seven people used a different definition of the word.

In my experience, Trust is another word that carries different meanings for different people. Therefore, I am a fan of what I call Working Definitions. A working definition is not the be all end all definition of a word, it is the singular agreed upon definition we will use for this specific conversation. While we are working, we all agree to the working definition so we can… you know… work.

An Example

Since this concept may seem rather abstract, allow me to give you one of my favorite working definitions.

My working definition for Faith is this: Belief in the absence of proof.

I find this definition skirts the complexities of religion and other dogmatic structures, but it is also extremely useful for raising children. Many parents believe in their children long before they have earned it. It is also a common attribute of many entrepreneurs who believed in their ideas long before they had proven them successful in the marketplace.

Faith, as I have defined it, is a useful word.

What is Trust?

With that example out of the way, I take my working definition of Trust from Stuart Diamond, professor of negotiation at Wharton School of Business. In his excellent book Getting More, I developed my working definition of trust to be this:

The degree to which another party will look out for your interests, above their own.

That is the working definition, but it still feels a little abstract, and it is a spectrum. Basically it means will the other person put your interests ahead of theirs? The archetypal example is that of the Secret Service. They will quite literally put their lives on the line to protect the President of the United States.³

The other extreme is an example of low trust or distrust where the person only ever looks out for themselves and their own interests.

And then you get everything in between. Like I said, it is a spectrum.

A good working definition helps everyone get on the same page. When people are not on the same page, they might say something like a coworker once said to me. He told me I should trust him because he only looked out for his own interests. “No,” I thought, “That makes you predictable, not trustworthy.” From my perspective, the person who puts their interests ahead of everyone else’s is the least trustworthy person you could ever hope to meet.

So What?

Well, in a conference about leadership, where we have volunteer leaders leading other volunteer leaders, then Trust becomes important on a whole other level. Trust becomes the lubricant that makes the organization work. If my interests are tied to your commitment to get something done, then your level of commitment is a direct reflection of how much trust the people counting on you can have in you.

That seems somewhat obvious. However, the question becomes, how do you build trust?

As I said trust exists on a spectrum, and it would be foolhardy of me to suggest that I can help you build ultimate trust with anyone. However, modern social psychology does give us some clues and practical advice in how to grow trust. Yes, you can build trust, one conversation at a time.

Why it Matters

We can learn a lot about trust from two organizations that put people’s lives on the line in hostile environments where they have to work together, the Navy SEALs, and NASA. The Navy SEALs found that the most technically competent soldiers did not always make for the best teammates. Simon Sinek shared an apocryphal quote in his book The Infinite Game⁴. Sinek claims to have asked a SEAL about trust, and the man replied, “It’s more than our lives depending on each other, but that’s not enough.” The veteran said they now think about trust in a broader sense:

Sure I can trust you with my life, but can I trust you with my wallet, or my wife?

The SEALs believe that high levels of personal trust lead to better overall team performance.

Evaluating Trust

So we know trust is important, (that feels obvious) but how do you evaluate trust?

Dr. Terry McGuire, the lead psychiatrist for astronaut selection at NASA⁵, developed a technique for evaluating what you might call base-line or intrinsic trust.

Like the Navy SEALs, NASA discovered that trust matters a lot, especially when you cram people into small metal cans and shoot them into space for long periods of time. When you can’t just “get away” from each other by “stepping outside,” individual performance becomes a secondary factor in team cohesion.

What Dr. McGuire learned was that astronauts who demonstrated skill in matching the people around them built more solid working relationships with their peers. Better working relationships lead to superior team performance and higher job satisfaction. I say that like high job satisfaction and performance is the goal. And it is. But honestly, sometimes you just want to stop people from wanting to kill each other.⁶

Matching

But what exactly is “Matching”? Dr. McGuire tested for matching by demonstrating a behavior that did not obviously appear to be a part of the test. Sometimes he would wear a goofy tie and when the interviewee noticed it, he would say his daughter gave it to him. Or he would spill a folder full of papers on the ground. In the case of the tie, he was looking for the person to share their experience either as a parent, or a child, when they were given or gave something silly or useless but which the recipient saw as precious. If he spilled his papers, did the other person move to help? And did they comfort Dr. McGuire? Consoling him with statements like, “Happens to me all the time too.”

Dr. McGuire’s insight is related to work done by social psychologist Arthur Aron of Stony Brook University. He created 36 Questions, which he called the Fast Friends Procedure.⁷ The key insight that is relevant here is that trust is built up through a process of reciprocal and alternating vulnerability and matching.

It looks something like this. People start out asking surface level questions, taking turns answering, but as the questions become more personal, each person is looking for the other to match the response with a similar level of vulnerability. People are sensitive to people who violate this matching. For example, they remain at the surface, or they overshare, (sometimes called flooding), or engage in one-upmanship. Trust is built when each participant demonstrates they can look out for the interest of the other by appropriately matching their level of vulnerability.

After three rounds of 12 questions, people can build such a high level of trust, that some people consider this a magic formula for falling in love.

Not Love but Respect

The goal here is that in a business environment, the matching principle applies, and the technique that can be used to help build trust is through a progression of “trust bids” made in turn over time. Sometimes one person leads, sometimes the other. But the goal throughout the process is that people learn to read and respect each other and look out for the other person by demonstrating matching through a similar level of vulnerability and sharing.

Personal Share

For a long time, I thought it was better to be interested, than interesting. And I became quite good at interviewing people, getting them to share their experiences and feelings. This was all well and good until they, quite naturally, wanted to reciprocate and ask about me. However, I believed, mistakenly, that I should not talk about me. I would defer or give evasive answers to their questions, trying to turn attention back on them. This invariably ended badly because I now realize I came across as manipulative, or worse. It wasn’t until I learned about the power of matching, and reciprocal vulnerability that I moved past that trap and was able to have more meaningful deep conversations.

The Tool

The process for this project is a starter. I do not believe you need 36 questions⁸. We recommend starting with just two questions, and following what I think of as the trust building loop. It starts with asking a question unique to the other person. This usually begins with something personal, and something career or occupation related can be a good safe start (at least in the United States).

Round 1

You can formally ask these questions in turn, or, if you are comfortable leading a conversation, you can do this “single handedly” by alternately asking and sharing.

• Ask: What made you want to do what you do?⁹
• Listen: Give the person speaking your undivided attention.
• Look for: They will often share a detail which hints at an experience. You want to identify this experience so you can -
• Ask: What was that like?

• Match: Look for one of your own personal experiences that made you feel the way they felt, something of a similar appropriate level of vulnerability and share that.

Round 2

If things are going well, and you want to go deeper, there is a second question which directly connects to trust building.

Ask: Who trusted you before you earned it?¹⁰

Listen: Give the person speaking your undivided attention.

Look for: They will often share a detail which hints at an experience.

Ask: What was that like?

Listen: Look for emotion words and feelings.

Match: Find an experience of your own that made you feel the way they felt, something of a similar appropriate level of vulnerability and share that.

Now It’s Your Turn

Instinctively I think we all know trust is important, but I find it’s good every now and then to make sure we all know what we mean when we toss out a suitcase word like Trust in a group. Working definitions are a great way to align people around a specific idea. But what really matters is what you do with that. The process above is intended to help you strengthen relationships by forming deeper connections with people you care about. I suggest you give it a try. It’s not hard, and if your experience is anything like mine, people will not notice you “running some experiment,” what they will experience, and appreciate, is you attempting to get to know them better. What’s more, this is a tool you can use at work, with your friends, and your family. Whether or not these tools build the trust you want, they have been proven to build better connection, and that in itself is a step on the path to more trust.

Let me know how it works out for you.

Scott

Footnotes