The Trust Economy
What does it mean to earn someone’s trust? Once we have it, does it grow or diminish with time? When do we give our trust to others, and why? What do we expect in return? Whether you’re a provider seeing patients all day or the CEO of a large organization, trust is the most important asset you have. It’s also the most fragile.
A few years ago, Google did extensive research to figure out why some of their teams were more productive than others. They measured all kinds of parameters--intelligence, experience, communication styles, demographics, beliefs, habits--and found that the culture and structure of a team was much more important than who was on it. The most productive teams had several characteristics in common, but the one that made the greatest difference was something they called “psychological safety.” This was a sense among team members that they were safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other. In other words: trust.
Google is a data-driven organization. They invested time and money in that research because they knew the answers would be critical to their success. And yet, as soon as you start throwing around a word like “trust” with medical people, they start to squirm. It all seems so touchy-feely and vague. Let’s try to pin it down with a little more precision.
Charles Feltman, author of The Thin Book of Trust, defines trust as choosing to make something you value vulnerable to someone else. Conversely, he defines mistrust as the feeling that what’s important to you is not safe with someone else. Embedded in these definitions is an inherent asymmetry. To trust someone is to make a choice based on their behavior, but to mistrust them is to feel unsafe around them. It can take a lot of work and an accumulated track record to earn someone’s trust. But as soon as someone feels unsafe, that trust can dissolve in a heartbeat.
There are four broad categories of behavior that earn trust:
Caring. A lack of genuine caring is a deal-breaker. If we don’t think someone actually cares about us, it’s hard to trust them about anything. On the other hand, if we believe in their caring, we tend to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Honesty. Not just factual honesty, but emotional and ethical honesty as well. Someone whose words don’t match their emotions seem to be hiding something. Similarly, we tend to feel safer around people who act with integrity--whose behavior doesn’t depend on which way the winds of self-interest are blowing.
Reliability. This boils down to keeping your promises. It’s important to remember that over-promising leads to mistrust as well. When we extend an offer to someone, no matter how generous, unsolicited and sincere, a failure to follow-through is a broken commitment.
Competence. This one is about performing up to an expected standard. Notice that “expected” is the key here. If expectations aren’t clear and agreed upon, that often leads to a loss of trust.
It’s by displaying these four behaviors that we earn one another’s trust. But every interaction is an opportunity to build or erode that trust, and if we aren’t doing one, we’re probably doing the other. Mistrust tends to generalize. Even a small, isolated incident, if it weakens our sense of psychological safety, can undermine a relationship. And once it’s lost, regaining that trust is twice as hard the next time around.
So what does a culture of trust look like in practice? Usually, it isn’t all calm and consensus. When we feel safe, we voice our opinions and sometimes we disagree, so a healthy culture is a little messy at times. But beware the team where no one ever voices dissent. On the surface, everyone agrees, but underneath they may be avoiding conflict, hiding mistakes and nursing chronic wounds and resentments.
We are social animals, and every team of human beings is held together by a complex, finely tuned system of give and take. Trust is our legal tender: we invest it, withdraw it, compound it and sometimes squander it. And when it runs out, the system grinds to a halt.
