I've written about trust a number of times--most notably in exploring how it helps establish a foundation for experimentation and risk-taking, which in turn support change and growth--but nearly 5 years ago I discussed a formula for trust:
Trust = Motive + Reliability + Competence
In essence this suggests that before we can trust someone we must be assured of their motive, their reliability and their competence. (I first heard this formulation from Clinton Moloney of the Trium Group, but Charles Green substantially expanded my understanding of its origins.)
And while I continue to find this formula useful, in the context of my recent research on the neuroscience of emotions it strikes me as an entirely accurate but somehow insufficient "if-then" statement that implies that trust is the result of logic. But it's clear that we don't arrive at the conclusions that constitute trust through reasoning alone. Our logical assessment of someone's motive, reliability and competence is obviously crucial, but in many (and perhaps most) circumstances we're operating with imperfect data. At a certain point we can reason no further, and the decision to trust someone or not is made on the basis of our emotional response toward that person.
A recent exchange I had with Joel Peterson reinforced the emotional dimension of trust for me. Joel had discussed the importance of trust in a session at an Executive Education program at Stanford, and the group I've been coaching found his remarks highly compelling. I shared their response with him afterwards, and he said:
We tend to be so wrapped up in ourselves, so self-referencing, so insecure that we're driven, above all, to protect a fragile ego. If we can learn to let go, to feel safe, we can learn to trust, to be trustworthy and to move ourselves to better motivations.
The emotional content of Joel's response jumps out at me: Our reluctance to trust is rooted in feelings of insecurity and egotism, and our ability to trust is founded in feelings of safety and acceptance. The specific steps we take to we reach that place where we feel capable of trust is a post for another day, but at the moment I'm finding it helpful simply to highlight this emotional dimension in the hopes that it promotes the idea of "emotional competence" that I've been thinking about recently.
Photo by the U.S. Army. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.
